Their preparations had even gone beyond these details, minute as they were.  The king was already collecting materials for a manifesto which he designed to publish the moment that he found himself safely out of Paris.  It would explain the reasons for his flight; it would declare an amnesty to the people in general, to whom it would impute no worse fault than that of being misled (none being excepted but the chief leaders of the disloyal factions; the city of Paris, unless it should at once return to its ancient tranquillity; and any persons or bodies who might persist in remaining in arms).  To the nation in general the manifesto would breathe nothing but affection.  The Parliaments would be re-established, but only as judicial tribunals, which should have no pretense to meddle with the affairs of administration or finance.  In short, the king and she had determined to take his declaration of the 23d of June[12] as the basis of the Constitution, with such modifications as subsequent circumstances might have suggested.  Religion would be one of the matters placed in the foreground.

So sanguine were they, or rather was she, of success, that she had even taken into consideration the principles on which future ministries should be constituted; and here for the first time she speaks of herself as chiefly concerned in planning the future arrangements.  “In private we occupy ourselves with discussing the very difficult choice which we shall have to make of the persons whom we shall desire to call around us when we are at liberty.  I think that it will be best to place a single man at the head of affairs, as M. Maurepas was formerly; and if it be settled in this way, the king would thus escape having to transact business with each individual minister separately, and affairs would proceed more uniformly and more steadily.  Tell me what you think of this idea.  The fit man is not easy to find, and the more I look for him, the greater inconveniences do I see in all that occur to me.”

She proceeds to discuss foreign affairs, the probable views and future conduct of almost every power in Europe—­of Holland, Prussia, Spain, Sweden, England; still showing the lingering jealousy which she entertained of the British Government, which she suspected of wishing to detach the chivalrous Gustavus from the alliance of France by the offer of a subsidy.  But she is sanguine that, “though some may he glad to see the influence of France diminished, no wise statesman in any country can desire her ruin or dismemberment.  What is going on in France would be an example too dangerous to other countries, if it were left unpunished.  Their cause is the cause of all kings, and not a simple political difficulty.[13]”