act of unwise enthusiasm or else of very clever malignity of which his critics made the most. After this, his enemies increased rapidly. The good will and harmony celebrated at the Feast of the Federation had been more apparent than real; a "delicious intoxication," as one of the participants called it, and the ill-temper that follows intoxication soon manifested itself. The Jacobins grew daily more radical. The club did not expel Lafayette; [Pg 213]he left it of his own accord in December, 1790; but that was almost as good for the purposes of his critics. The task he had set himself of steering a middle course between extremes became constantly more difficult. Mirabeau was president of the Jacobin Club after Lafayette left it, and their mutual distrust increased. Gouverneur Morris thought Lafayette able to hold his own and that "he was as shrewd as any one." He said that "Mirabeau has the greater talent, but his adversary the better reputation." In spite of being president of the Jacobins, Mirabeau was more of a royalist than Lafayette and did what he could to ruin Lafayette with the court party. The quarrel ended only with Mirabeau's sudden death in April, 1791. At the other extreme Marat attacked Lafayette for his devotion to the king, saying he had sold himself to that side. Newspapers circulated evil stories about his private life. Slanders and attacks, wax figures and cartoons, each a little worse than the last, flooded Paris at this time. Some coupled the queen's name with his, which increased her dislike of him, and in the end may have played its small part in her downfall. The king and queen were watched with lynxlike intensity by all parties, and about three months after Mirabeau's death they made matters much worse by betraying their fear, and what many thought their perfidy, in an attempt to escape in disguise, meaning to get help from outside countries and return to fight for their power. There had been rumors [Pg 214]that they contemplated something of this sort, and Lafayette had gone frankly to the king, urging him not to commit such folly. The king reassured him, and Lafayette had announced that he was willing to answer "with his head" that Louis would not leave Paris. One night, however, rumors were so persistent that Lafayette went himself to the Tuileries. He talked with a member of the royal family, and the queen saw him when she was actually on her way to join the king for their flight. Luck and his usual cleverness both failed Lafayette that night. He suspected nothing, yet next morning it was discovered that the royal beds had not been slept in and that the fugitives were already hours on their way. Lafayette issued orders for their arrest, but clamor was loud against him and Danton was for making him pay literally with his head for his mistake.