"I know,çoisRené monsieur le baron, that we must avoid wounding French _amour-propre_ and that the domination of the Russians and Austrians in Italy may revolt our military pride; but we have an easy means of contenting it, that is, to occupy Savoy ourselves. The Royalists will be charmed and the Liberals can only applaud when they see us take up an attitude worthy of our strength. We should at the same time have the good fortune to crush a demagogic revolution and the honour of restoring the preponderance of our arms. It would show a poor acquaintance with the French spirit to be afraid of collecting twenty-five thousand men to march into a foreign country and to cut an equal figure with the Russians and Austrians as a military power. I would answer for the event with my head. We have been able to remain neutral in the Neapolitan affair; can we afford to do so, for our safety and for our glory, in the Piedmontese troubles?"
Here my whole system lies disclosed: I was a Frenchman; I had a bold policy long before the Spanish War, and I foresaw the responsibility which my very successes, if I obtained any, would cause to weigh upon my head.
All that I am recalling here can doubtless interest nobody; but that is the drawback of Memoirs: when they have no historical facts to relate, they tell you only about the author's person and weary your life out with it. Let us abandon these forgotten shadows! I prefer to remind you that Mirabeau, then unknown, was, in 1786, fulfilling in Berlin an unsuspected mission[143], and that he was obliged to train a pigeon to announce to the King of France the last breath of the terrible Frederic.
"I was thrown into some perplexity," says Mirabeau. "That the city gates would be shut was certain; it was even possible that the drawbridges of the island of Potsdam would be raised the moment death should take place, and should this happen my uncertainty would continue as long as it should please the new King. On the first supposition, how send off a courier? There were no means of scaling the ramparts or the palisadoes, without being exposed to a fray, for there are sentinels at every forty paces behind the palisadoes, and at every fifty behind the wall. What was to be done?... Had I been ambassador, the certain symptoms of mortality would have determined me to have sent off an express before death. For what addition was the word death? How was I to act in my present situation? It certainly was most important to serve, and not merely to appear to have served....