Having arrived suspicious and republican to their seats in the cabinet, they quitted it almost royalists.
"The king is not known," said Roland to his wife: "a weak prince, he is one of the best of men; he does not want good intentions, but good advice: he does not like the aristocracy, and has strong affection for the people: perhaps he was born to serve as the medium between republic and monarchy.

By rendering the constitution easy to him we shall make him like it, and the popularity he will re-acquire by following our counsels will render government easy to ourselves.

His nature is so great that the throne has been unable to corrupt it, and he is equally remote from the silly brute which has been held up to the laughter of the people as from the sensitive and highly accomplished man his courtiers pretend to adore in him; his mind, without being superior, is expansive and reflecting; in a humble position his abilities would have provided for him; he has a general and occasionally sound knowledge, knows the details of business, and acts towards men with that simple but persuasive ability which gives kings the precocious necessity of governing their impressions; his prodigious memory always recalls to him at the right time things, names, and faces; he likes work, and reads every thing; he is never idle for a moment; a tender parent, a model of a husband: chaste in feeling, he has done away with all those scandals which disgraced the courts of his predecessors; he loves none but the queen, and his condescension, which is occasionally injurious to his politics, is at least a weakness 'which leans to virtue's side.' Had he been born two centuries earlier his peaceable reign would have been counted amongst the number of happy years of the monarchy.

Circumstances appear to have influenced his mind.

The Revolution has convinced him of its necessity, and we must convince him of its possibility.