The king refused to send away troops which there had
been good reason to collect, but he was ready to move,
with the Assembly, to some town at a distance from the
turbid capital. The royal message was tipped with irony,
and the deputies, in spite of Mirabeau, resolved not to
discuss it. After this first thrust Lewis flung away the
scabbard. That day, at council, it was noticed that he
was nervous and uneasy, and disguised his restlessness by
feigning sleep. At the end, taking one of the ministers
aside, he gave him a letter for Necker, who was absent.
The letter contained his dismissal, with an order for
banishment.
Necker, who for some days had known that it must come, was at dinner. He said nothing to his company, and went out, as usual, for a drive. Then he made for the frontier, and never stopped till he reached Brussels. Two horsemen who had followed, keeping out of sight, had orders to arrest him if he changed his course. He travelled up the Rhine to his own country, on the way to his home by the lake of Geneva. At the first Swiss hotel he found the Duchess de Polignac. He had left her at Versailles, the Queen's best friend and the heart of the intrigue against him; and she was now ruined and an exile, and the forerunner of the emigration. From her, and from the letters that quickly followed, forwarded by the Assembly, he learned the events that had happened since his fall, learned that he was, for one delirious moment, master of the king, of his enemies, and of the country.
The astounding news that Necker heard at "The Three Kings" at Bale was this. His friends had been disgraced with him, and the chief of the new ministry was Breteuil, who had been the colleague of Calonne and Vergennes, and had managed the affair of the Diamond Necklace. He had directed the policy of those who opposed the National Assembly, holding himself in the twilight, until strong measures and a strong man were called for. He now came forward, and proposed that the nobles should depart in a body, protesting against the methods by which the States-General had been sunk in the National
