Pinet, who had been a confidential agent of the Duc d’Orleans, himself told the Duc de Penthievre that D’ORLEANS had monopolised all the corn.  This communication, and the activity of the Count Fersen, saved France, and Paris in particular, from perishing for the want of bread.  Even at the moment of the abominable masquerade, in which Her Majesty’s agents were made to appear the enemies who were starving the French people, out of revenge for the checks imposed by them on the royal authority, it was well known to all the Court that both Her Majesty and the King were grieved to the soul at their piteous want, and distributed immense sums for the relief of the poor sufferers, as did the Duc de Penthievre, the Duchesse d’Orleans, the Prince de Conde, the Duc and Duchesse de Bourbon, and others; but these acts were done privately, while he who had created the necessity took to himself the exclusive credit of the relief, and employed thousands daily to propagate reports of his generosity.  Mirabeau, then the factotum agent of the operations of the Palais Royal and its demagogues, greatly added to the support of this impression.  Indeed, till undeceived afterwards, he believed it to be really the Duc d’Orleans who had succoured the people.

“I dispensed two hundred and twenty thousand livres merely to discover the names of the agents who had been employed to carry on this nefarious plot to exasperate the people against the throne by starvation imputed to the Sovereign.  Though money achieved the discovery in time to clear the characters of my royal mistress and the King, the detection only followed the mischief of the crime.  But even the rage thus wickedly excited was not enough to carry through the plot.  In the faubourgs of Paris, where the women became furies, two hundred thousand livres were distributed ere the horror could be completely exposed.

“But it is time for me to enter upon the scenes to which all the intrigues I have detailed were intended to lead—­the removal of the Royal Family from Versailles.

“My heart sickens when I retrace these moments of anguish.  The point to which they are to conduct us yet remains one of the mysteries of fate.”

SECTION VI.

“Her Majesty had been so thoroughly lulled into security by the enthusiasm of the regiments at Versailles that she treated all the reports from Paris with contempt.  Nothing was apprehended from that quarter, and no preparations were consequently made for resistance or protection.  She was at Little Trianon when the news of the approach of the desolating torrent arrived.  The King was hunting.  I presented to her the commandant of the troops at Versailles, who assured Her Majesty that a murderous faction, too powerful, perhaps, for resistance, was marching principally against her royal person, with La Fayette at their head, and implored her to put herself and valuables in immediate safety; particularly all her correspondence with the Princes, emigrants, and foreign Courts, if she had no means of destroying them.