La Fayette rejecting every idea of an usurpation profitable to the prince, declared to Mirabeau that he must renounce every conceived plot against the queen if he would come to an understanding with him.

"Well, general," replied Mirabeau, "since you will have it so, let her live! A humbled queen may be fit for something, but a queen with her throat cut is only good as the subject of a bad tragedy!" This atrocious remark, which treated the bloodshed of a woman as a jest, was subsequently known by the queen, who however forgave Mirabeau, and did not allow it to interfere with her _liaisons_ with the great orator.

But the cold-blooded infamy must have found its way to her heart as an ominous warning of what she might fear hereafter.
La Fayette, sure of the consent of the king and queen, supported by the feelings of the national guard, who were growing weary of factions and the factious, ventured to assume quietly towards the prince the tone of a dictator, and to pronounce against him an arbitrary exile under the appearance of a mission freely accepted.

He sent to request of the Duc d'Orleans a meeting at the Marquise de Coigny's, a noble intelligent lady attached to La Fayette, and in whose _salon_ the Duc d'Orleans occasionally met him.

After a conversation, heard by the walls alone, but the result of which showed its tenor, and which Mirabeau, to whom it was communicated, termed _very imperious on the one side, and very resigned on the other_, it was agreed that the Duc d'Orleans should forthwith set out for London.