He resolved at all risks to compel the prince to remove from the scene, and by an exercise of moral restraint or the fear of a state prosecution, to absent himself and go to London.

He made the king and queen enter into his plans, by alarming them as to the prince's intrigues, and designating him as a competitor for the throne.

La Fayette said one day to the queen, that this prince was the only man upon whom the suspicion of so lofty an ambition could fall.

"Sir," replied the queen, with a look of incredulity, "is it necessary then to be a prince in order to pretend to the throne ?" "At least, madam," replied the general, "I only know the Duc d'Orleans who aspires to it." La Fayette presumed too much on the prince's ambition.
VIII.
Mirabeau, discouraged at the hesitations and scruples of the Duc d'Orleans, and finding him above or below crime, cast him off like a despised accomplice of ambition, and tried to ally himself with La Fayette, who, possessed of the armed force, and who saw in Mirabeau the whole of the moral force, smiled at the idea of a duumvirate, which could assume to themselves empire.

There were secret interviews at Paris and at Passy between these two rivals.