The confederation only suspended the hostility of parties. Petty intrigues
were resumed in the assembly as well as out of doors. The duke of Orleans
had returned from his mission, or, more strictly speaking, from his exile.
The inquiry respecting the events of the 5th and 6th of October, of which
he and Mirabeau were accused as the authors, had been conducted by the
Chatelets inquiry, which had been suspended, was now resumed. By this
attack the court again displayed its want of foresight; for it ought to
have proved the accusation or not to have made it. The assembly having
decided on giving up the guilty parties, had it found any such, declared
there was no ground for proceeding; and Mirabeau, after an overwhelming
outburst against the whole affair, obliged the Right to be silent, and
thus arose triumphantly from an accusation which had been made expressly
to intimidate him.

They attacked not only a few deputies but the assembly itself. The court
intrigued against it, but the Right drove this to exaggeration. "We like
its decrees," said the abbe Maury; "we want three or four more of them."
Hired libellists sold, at its very doors, papers calculated to deprive it
of the respect of the people; the ministers blamed and obstructed its
progress. Necker, still haunted by the recollection of his former
ascendancy, addressed to it memorials, in which he opposed its decrees and
gave it advice. This minister could not accustom himself to a secondary
part: he would not fall in with the abrupt plans of the assembly, so
entirely opposed to his ideas of gradual reform. At length, convinced or
weary of the inutility of his efforts, he left Paris, after resigning, on
the 4th of September, 1790, and obscurely traversed those provinces which
a year before he had gone through in triumph. In revolutions, men are
easily forgotten, for the nation sees many in its varied course. If we
would not find them ungrateful, we must not cease for an instant to serve