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.