MirabeaiL s Secret Mission to Berlin 247 offered many advantages. The anxiety of the Enghsh diploma- tists at that time may well be exemplified by a quotation from a dis- patch from Sir Janres Harris, then minister at the Hague and after- wards better known as Lord Malmesbury, to Lord Carmarthen ; it is dated February 26, 1786. Alluding to Mirabeau, he writes: "... I must needs confess . . . that I strongly admit in my own mind the belief of a secret understanding and fellow feeling between Prussia and France, and that they say to each other, as Moliere's doctors, — Passcz moi la rlmbarbc, et je voiis passcrai le sent. — Let me alone in Holland, says France, and you, Prussia, shall have nothing to fear in Bavaria." For a few days of June Mirabeau returned to Paris. The views he had so ably presented had been heartily indorsed by the clique ; Calonne, easily influenced, and still dreading the terrible unpublished pamphlet that was to expose his financial iniquities to the public, was persuaded to agree to Mirabeau's return to Berlin as secret agent of the government. It was arranged that his dispatches should be sent through the intermediary of Talleyrand, whose task it would be to decipher them and to present them to the minister ; it was also further arranged that Calonne should supply the neces- sary funds. It was while on this brief visit to Paris that Mirabeau is asserted (by Barruel, Robison and other authorities of the same class) to have introduced the secret organization and doctrines of the Illumines into France. It is said that he had been initiated by Mauvillon and that his journey to Paris had for its principal object the initiation of Talleyrand, Orleans, Lauzun, and other prominent members of the Grand Orient. Such a statement, derived by Barruel from an un- known source, is not made to command confidence, at the same time it would be a mistake to reject a statement, otherwise probable, merely because it owes its origin to that not veiy scientific historian. Whether Mirabeau was an Illumine or not can probably never be proved now, but that he was is at least highly probable (notwith- standing his own disclaimers) ; that he initiated his friends on the occasion of his visit to Paris in June, 1786, is just as incapable of proof, but there is nothing inherently improbable about it, though it it is quite certain that such an occurrence cannot be assigned to September, 1786, as has been done by some writers, for Mirabeau spent most of that month in Dresden. The sixty-six dispatches sent to Talleyrand from Berlin are full of interest from the first line to the last ; at times they rise to the highest pitch of literary merit ; they are never dull. Mirabeau sur- veys everything that the court of Prussia can show with the keen
