There was opposition to him from the first. Mirabeau and Lafayette could never work wholeheartedly together, which was a pity, for with Mirabeau's eloquence to carry the National Assembly and Lafayette's popularity with the National Guard they could have done much. The cafés, those people's institutes of his young days, speedily developed into political clubs of varying shades of opinion, most of which grew more radical hourly. Marie Antoinette continued to be resentful and bitter and did all in her power to thwart reform and to influence the [Pg 203]king. In addition to parties openly for and against the new order of things there were individuals, both in high and low places, who strove to spread disorder by underhand means and to use it for selfish ends. One was the powerful Duc d'Orléans, cousin of the king, very rich and very unprincipled, whose secret desire was to supplant Louis upon the throne. He used his fortune to spread discontent through the Paris mob during the long cold winter, when half the inhabitants of the town went hungry. His agents talked of famine, complained of delay in making the Constitution, and gave large sums to the poor in ways that fed their worst passions, while supplying their very real need for bread. Even after the lapse of one hundred and thirty years it is uncertain just how much of a part he played in the stormy happenings of the early days of October, 1789. On the night of the 2d of October the king and queen visited the hall at Versailles where the Garde du Corps, the royal bodyguard, was giving a banquet. The diners sprang to their feet and drank toasts more fervent than discreet. In the course of the next two days rumor spread to Paris that they had trampled upon the Tricolor and substituted the white of the Bourbons. Out of the garrets and slums of the city the mob boiled toward the Hôtel de Ville, crying that a counter-revolution had been started and that the people were betrayed. Lafayette talked and harangued. On the 5th he held the crowds in check from nine o'clock in the morning until four, when he learned that a [Pg 204]stream of malcontents, many of them women, had broken away and started for Versailles, muttering threats and dragging cannon with them.