The whole letter is a most remarkable one, and fully bears out the eulogies which all who had an opportunity of judging pronounced on her ability.  But the most striking reflection which it suggests is with what admirable sagacity the whole of the arrangements for the flight of the royal family had been concerted, and with what judgment the agents had been chosen, since, though the enterprise was not attempted till more than four months after this letter was written, the secret was kept through the whole of that time without the slightest hint of it having been given, or the slightest suspicion of it having been conceived, by the most watchful or the most malignant of the king’s enemies.

Yet during the winter and early spring the conduct of the Jacobin party in the Assembly, and of the Parisian mob whom they were keeping in a constant state of excitement, increased in violence; while one occurrence which took place was, in Mirabeau’s opinion, especially calculated to prompt a suspicion of the king’s intentions.  Louis had at, last, and with extreme reluctance, sanctioned, the bill which required the clergy to take an oath to comply with the new ecclesiastical arrangements, in the vain hope that the framers of it would be content with their triumph, and would forbear to enforce it by fixing any precise date for administering the oath.  But, at the end of January, Barnave obtained from the Assembly a decree that it should be taken within twenty-four hours, under the penalty of deprivation of all their preferments to all who should refuse it; the clerical members of the Assembly were even threatened by the mob in the galleries with instant death if they declined or even delayed to swear.  And as very few of any rank complied, the main body of the clergy was instantly stripped of all their appointments and reduced to beggary, and a large proportion of them fled at once from the kingdom.  Those who took the oath, and who in consequence were appointed to the offices thus vacated, were immediately condemned and denounced by the pope; and the consequence was that a great number of their flocks fled with their old priests, not being able to reconcile to their consciences to stay and receive the sacrament and rites of the Church from ministers under the ban of its head.

Among those who thus fled were the king’s two aunts, the Princesses Adelaide and Victoire.  Bigotry was their only virtue; and they determined to seek shelter in Rome.  Louis highly disapproved of the step, which, as Mirabeau,[14] in a very elaborate and forcible memorial which he drew up and submitted to him, pointed out, might be very dangerous for the king and queen as well as for themselves, since it could be easily represented by the evil-minded as a certain proof that they also were designing to flee.  And he even recommended that Louis should formally notify to the Assembly that he disapproved of his aunts’ journey, and should make it a pretext for demanding a law which should give him the power of regulating the movements of the members of his family.