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They applied to the Minister of the Interior, M. de Lessart, proposing to place the whole of their influence at the service of the Government, on condition of his securing each of them a pension of six thousand francs a month.
The prince de Kaunitz, his minister, continually wrote to M. de Lessart in this strain; and the private communications which the king received from his ambassador at the court of Vienna, the Marquis de Noailles, breathed the same spirit of conciliation.
This philosophic prince was destined to bear away with him all desire of reconciliation and every hope of peace, for he alone restrained Germany. M. de Narbonne, thwarted by public demonstrations the secret negotiations of his colleague M. de Lessart, who strove to temporise, and to refer all the differences of France and Europe to a congress.
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.
It was resolved that M. de Lessart should be impeached, and Brissot, the leader of the diplomatic committee, the advocate of war, undertook to prove his pretended crimes. The constitutional party abandoned M. de Lessart, without any defence, to the hatred of the Jacobins; this party had no suspicions, but vengeance to wreak upon M. de Lessart.
The principal minister, however, he to whose hands was to be confided the fate of his country, and who was to comprise in himself all the policy of the Girondists, was the minister for foreign affairs, destined to replace the unfortunate De Lessart.
The Girondists presented him to De Grave, and De Grave to the king, who offered him the temporary management of foreign affairs, until M. de Lessart, sent before the Haute Cour, had proved his innocence to his judges, and could resume the place reserved for him in the council.
However, the alarm with which the preparations of the emperor inspired the people, and the mischief excited by the speeches of the Girondists against the court and the ministers, agitated the capital more and more every day. At each fresh communication from M. de Lessart, minister of foreign affairs, the party of the Gironde raised a fresh cry of war and treason. Fauchet denounced the minister.
M. de Lessart, whom the gesture and the allusion of Guadet seemed to have already designated as the victim to the suspicions of the people, could not remain silent under the weight of these terrible allusions. "Mention has been made," said he, "of the political agents of the executive power: I declare that I know nothing which can authorise us to suspect their fidelity.
The Assembly remained silent from suspicion, and this suspicion was awakened whilst diplomatic notes and counter notes were exchanged between the cabinet of the Tuileries and the cabinet of Vienna. But no sooner had M. de Lessart descended from the tribune, and the Assembly closed the sitting, than the murmurs of mistrust were changed into loud and sullen exclamations of indignation.
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