Whatever the character, however, of the people's success, it could not but be an additional success for their leader. The revolution, of which he stood recognized the unquestioned head, was now beyond all danger of royal aggression, except by his own treacherous agency. In a campaign of unimaginable brevity, he had not only vindicated the first place as an orator in a senate now omnipotent, and become out of it the most potent demagogue of his time, but as _un homme d'etat_, surrounded by a brilliant staff of the most active spirits and practical thinkers of the day, Camille Desmoulins, Danton, Volney, Champfort, Lamourette, Cabanis, Reybaz, Dumont, Duroverai, Claviere, Servan, De Caseaux, Panchaud, Pellenc, Brissot, and others, was understood by every party to hold the future destinies of France in his hand Emerging from two insurrections, possessing, by his power, all their profits, and by his adroitness, none of their responsibility, he found it now worth his while to break terms with the Duke of Orleans, by a public expression of his contempt for him as a scoundrel not worth the trouble that might be taken for him; and excluded from the ministry, that lay open to him, by a self-denying ordonnance of the Assembly, directly leveled at his pretensions, he accepted a large subsidy from the king's brother--the Comte de Provence--and formed with him, for the restoration or upholding a monarchical authority, a mysterious and ineffective conspiracy, the character and extent of which may be conjectured from its involving the assassination of the Marquess de Lafayette.