M. de Montmorin, an able man, but unequal to the difficulties of the crisis, had retired.  The two principal men of the ministry were M. de Lessart for Foreign Affairs; M. Bertrand de Molleville in the Marine Department.  M. de Lessart, placed by his position between the armed emigrants, the impatient Assembly, undecided Europe, and the inculpated king, could not fail to fall under his own good intentions.  His plan was to avoid war in his own country by temporising and negotiations—­to suspend the hostile demonstration of foreign power:  to present to the intimidated Assembly the king, as sole arbiter and negotiator of peace between his people and the foreigner; and he trusted thus to adjourn the final collisions between the Assembly and the throne, and to re-establish the regular authority of the king by preserving peace.  The personal arrangements of the emperor Leopold aided him in his plans; he had only to contend against the fatality which urges men and things to their denouement.  The Girondists, and Brissot especially, overwhelmed him with accusations, inasmuch as he was the man who could most retard their triumph.  By sacrificing him they could sacrifice a whole system:  their press and their harangues pointed him out to the fury of the people;—­the partisans of war marked him down as their victim.  He was no traitor—­but with them to negotiate was to betray.  The king, who knew he was irreproachable and confided all his plans to him, refused to sacrifice him to his enemies, and thus accumulated resentments against the minister.  As to M. de Molleville, he was a secret enemy of the constitution.  He advised the king to play the hypocrite, acting in the letter, and thus to destroy the spirit, of the law,—­advancing by subterranean ways to a violent catastrophe,—­when, according to him the monarchical cause must come out victorious.  Confiding in the power of intrigue more than in the influence of opinion, seeking everywhere traitors to the popular cause, paying spies, bargaining for consciences, believing in no one’s incorruptibility, keeping up secret intelligence with the most violent demagogues, paying in hard money for the most incendiary propositions under the idea of making the Revolution unpopular from its very excesses, and filling the tribunes of the Assembly with his agents in order to choke down with their hootings, or render effective by their applause, the discourses of certain orators, and thus to feign in the tribunes a false people and a false opinion; men of small means in great matters presuming that it is possible to deceive a nation as if it were an individual.  The king, to whom he was devoted, liked him as the depositary of his troubles, the confidant of his relations with foreign powers, and the skilful mediator of his negotiation with all parties.  M. de Molleville thus kept himself in well-managed balance between his favour with the king, and his intrigues with the revolutionary party He spoke the language of the constitution well—­he had the secret of many consciences bought and paid for.