Jacobins, at the time when the Emperor Leopold declared for the coalition,
it was said, speaking of him, that a pie-crust would settle that matter.
At this period Barnave obtained the Queen's consent that he should read
all the letters she should write. He was fearful of private
correspondences that might hamper the plan marked out for her; he
mistrusted her Majesty's sincerity on this point; and the diversity of
counsels, and the necessity of yielding, on the one hand, to some of the
views of the constitutionalists, and on the other, to those of the French
Princes, and even of foreign Courts, were unfortunately the circumstances
which most rapidly impelled the Court towards its ruin.

However, the emigrants showed great apprehensions of the consequences
which might follow in the interior from a connection with the
constitutionalists, whom they described as a party existing only in idea,
and totally without means of repairing their errors. The Jacobins were
preferred to them, because, said they, there would be no treaty to be made
with any one at the moment of extricating the King and his family from the
abyss in which they were plunged.




CHAPTER VII.


In the beginning of the year 1792, a worthy priest requested a private
interview with me. He had learned the existence of a new libel by Madame
de Lamotte. He told me that the people who came from London to get it
printed in Paris only desired gain, and that they were ready to deliver
the manuscript to him for a thousand louis, if he could find any friend of