Captains on furlough, burnt-out Seigneurs, may likewise be met with, ‘in the Cafe de Valois, and at Meot the Restaurateur’s.’  There they fan one another into high loyal glow; drink, in such wine as can be procured, confusion to Sansculottism; shew purchased dirks, of an improved structure, made to order; and, greatly daring, dine.  (Dampmartin, ii. 129.) It is in these places, in these months, that the epithet Sansculotte first gets applied to indigent Patriotism; in the last age we had Gilbert Sansculotte, the indigent Poet. (Mercier, Nouveau Paris, iii. 204.) Destitute-of-Breeches:  a mournful Destitution; which however, if Twenty millions share it, may become more effective than most Possessions!

Meanwhile, amid this vague dim whirl of fanfaronades, wind-projects, poniards made to order, there does disclose itself one punctum-saliens of life and feasibility:  the finger of Mirabeau!  Mirabeau and the Queen of France have met; have parted with mutual trust!  It is strange; secret as the Mysteries; but it is indubitable.  Mirabeau took horse, one evening; and rode westward, unattended,—­to see Friend Claviere in that country house of his?  Before getting to Claviere’s, the much-musing horseman struck aside to a back gate of the Garden of Saint-Cloud:  some Duke d’Aremberg, or the like, was there to introduce him; the Queen was not far:  on a ’round knoll, rond point, the highest of the Garden of Saint-Cloud,’ he beheld the Queen’s face; spake with her, alone, under the void canopy of Night.  What an interview; fateful secret for us, after all searching; like the colloquies of the gods! (Campan, ii. c. 17.) She called him ‘a Mirabeau:’  elsewhere we read that she ’was charmed with him,’ the wild submitted Titan; as indeed it is among the honourable tokens of this high ill-fated heart that no mind of any endowment, no Mirabeau, nay no Barnave, no Dumouriez, ever came face to face with her but, in spite of all prepossessions, she was forced to recognise it, to draw nigh to it, with trust.  High imperial heart; with the instinctive attraction towards all that had any height!  “You know not the Queen,” said Mirabeau once in confidence; “her force of mind is prodigious; she is a man for courage.” (Dumont, p. 211.)—­And so, under the void Night, on the crown of that knoll, she has spoken with a Mirabeau:  he has kissed loyally the queenly hand, and said with enthusiasm:  “Madame, the Monarchy is saved!”—­Possible?  The Foreign Powers, mysteriously sounded, gave favourable guarded response; (Correspondence Secrete (in Hist.  Parl. viii. 169-73).) Bouille is at Metz, and could find forty-thousand sure Germans.  With a Mirabeau for head, and a Bouille for hand, something verily is possible,—­if Fate intervene not.