"The Queen was a great admirer and patroness of Augustus Vestris, the god

of dance, as he was styled. Augustus Vestris never lost Her Majesty's

favour, though he very often lost his sense of the respect he owed to the

public, and showed airs and refused to dance. Once he did so when Her

Majesty was at the opera. Upon some frivolous pretext he refused to

appear. He was, in consequence, immediately arrested. His father,

alarmed at his son's temerity, flew to me, and with the most earnest

supplications implored I would condescend to endeavour to obtain the

pardon of Her Majesty. 'My son,' cried he, 'did not know that Her

Majesty had honoured the theatre with her presence. Had he been aware of

it, could he have refused to dance for his most bounteous benefactress?

I, too, am grieved beyond the power of language to describe, by this mal

apropos contretemps between the two houses of Vestris and Bourbon, as we

have always lived in the greatest harmony ever since we came from

Florence to Paris. My son is very sorry and will dance most bewitchingly

if Her Majesty will graciously condescend to order his release!'

"I repeated the conversation verbatim, to Her Majesty, who enjoyed the

arrogance of the Florentine, and sent her page to order young Vestris to

be set immediately at liberty.

"Having exerted all the wonderful powers of his art, the Queen applauded

him very much. When Her Majesty was about leaving her box, old Vestris

appeared at the entrance, leading his son to thank the Queen.

"'Ah, Monsieur Vestris,' said the Queen to the father, you never danced

as your son has done this evening.'

"'That's very natural, Madame,' answered old Vestris, 'I never had a

Vestris, please Your Majesty, for a master.'

"'Then you have the greater merit,' replied the Queen, turning round to

old Vestris--'Ah, I shall never forget you and Mademoiselle Guimard

dancing the minuet de la cour.'

"On this old Vestris held up his head with that peculiar grace for which

he was so much distinguished. The old man, though ridiculously vain, was

very much of a gentleman in his manners. The father of Vestris was a

painter of some celebrity at Florence, and originally from Tuscany."

SECTION IX.

"The visit of the favourite brother of Marie Antoinette, the Emperor

Joseph the Second, to France, had been long and anxiously expected, and

was welcomed by her with delight. The pleasure Her Majesty discovered at

having him with her is scarcely credible; and the affectionate tenderness

with which the Emperor frequently expressed himself on seeing his

favourite sister evinced that their joys were mutual.

"Like everything else, however, which gratified and obliged the Queen,

her evil star converted even this into a misfortune. It was said that

the French Treasury, which was not overflowing, was still more reduced by

the Queen's partiality for her brother. She was accused of having given

him immense sums of money; which was utterly false.

"The finances of Joseph were at that time in a situation too superior to

those of France to admit of such extravagance, or even to render it

desirable. The circumstance which gave a colour to the charge was this:

"The Emperor, in order to facilitate the trade of his Brabant subjects,

had it in contemplation to open the navigation of the Scheldt. This

measure would have been ruinous to many of the skippers, as well as to

the internal commerce of France. It was considered equally dangerous to

the trade and navigation of the North Hollanders. To prevent it,

negotiations were carried on by the French Minister, though professedly

for the mutual interest of both countries, yet entirely at the

instigation and on account of the Dutch. The weighty argument of the

Dutch to prevent the Emperor from accomplishing a purpose they so much

dreaded was a sum of many millions, which passed by means of some monied

speculation in the Exchange through France to its destination at Vienna.

It was to see this affair settled that the Emperor declared in Vienna his

intention of taking France in his way from Italy, before he should go

back to Austria.

"The certainty of a transmission of money from France to Austria was

quite enough to awaken the malevolent, who would have taken care, even

had they inquired into the source whence the money came, never to have

made it public. The opportunity was too favourable not to be made the

pretext to raise a clamour against the Queen for robbing France to favour

and enrich Austria.

"The Emperor, who had never seen me, though he had often heard me spoken

of at the Court of Turin, expressed a wish, soon after his arrival, that

I should be presented to him. The immediate cause of this let me

explain.

"I was very much attached to the Princesse Clotilde, whom I had caused to

be united to Prince Charles Emanuel of Piedmont. Our family had, indeed,

been principally instrumental in the alliances of the two brothers of the

King of France with the two Piedmontese Princesses, as I had been in the

marriage of the Piedmontese Prince with the Princess of France. When the

Emperor Joseph visited the Court of Turin he was requested when he saw me

in Paris to signify the King of Sardinia's satisfaction at my good

offices. Consequently, the Emperor lost no time in delivering his

message.

"When I was just entering the Queen's apartment to be presented, 'Here,'

said Her Majesty, leading me to the Emperor, 'is the Princess,' and, then

turning to me, exclaimed, 'Mercy, how cold you are!' The Emperor answered

Her Majesty in German, 'What heat can you expect from the hand of one

whose heart resides with the dead?' and subjoined, in the same language,

'What a pity that so charming a head should be fixed on a dead body.'

"I affected to understand the Emperor literally, and set him and the

Queen laughing by thanking His Imperial Majesty for the compliment.

"The Emperor was exceedingly affable and full of anecdote. Marie

Antoinette resembled him in her general manners. The similitude in their

easy openness of address towards persons of merit was very striking. Both

always endeavoured to encourage persons of every class to speak their

minds freely, with this difference, that Her Majesty in so doing never

forgot her dignity or her rank at Court. Sometimes, however, I have seen

her, though so perfect in her deportment with inferiors, much intimidated

and sometimes embarrassed in the presence of the Princes and Princesses,

her equals, who for the first time visited Versailles: indeed, so much as

to give them a very incorrect idea of her capacity. It was by no means an

easy matter to cause Her Majesty to unfold her real sentiments or

character on a first acquaintance.

"I remember the Emperor one evening at supper when he was exceedingly

good-humoured, talkative, and amusing. He had visited all his Italian

relations, and had a word for each, man, woman, or child--not a soul was

spared. The King scarcely once opened his mouth, except to laugh at some

of the Emperor's jokes upon his Italian relations.

"He began by asking the Queen if she punished her husband by making him

keep as many Lents in the same year as her sister did the King of Naples.

The Queen not knowing what the Emperor meant, he explained himself, and

said, 'When the King of Naples offends his Queen she keeps him on short

commons and 'soupe maigre' till he has expiated the offence by the

penance of humbling himself; and then, and not till then, permits him to

return and share the nuptial rights of her bed.'

"'This sister of mine,' said the Emperor, 'is a proficient Queen in the

art of man training. My other sister, the Duchess of Parma, is equally

scientific in breaking-in horses; for she is constantly in the stables

with her grooms, by which she 'grooms' a pretty sum yearly in buying,

selling, and breaking-in; while the simpleton, her husband, is ringing

the bells with the Friars of Colorno to call his good subjects to Mass.

"'My brother Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, feeds his subjects with

plans of economy, a dish that costs nothing, and not only saves him a

multitude of troubles in public buildings and public institutions, but

keeps the public money in his private coffers; which is one of the

greatest and most classical discoveries a Sovereign can possibly

accomplish, and I give Leopold much credit for his ingenuity.

"'My dear brother Ferdinand, Archduke of Milan, considering he is only

Governor of Lombardy, is not without industry; and I am told, when out of

the glimpse of his dragon the holy Beatrice, his Archduchess, sells his

corn in the time of war to my enemies, as he does to my friends in the

time of peace. So he loses nothing by his speculations!'

"The Queen checked the Emperor repeatedly, though she could not help

smiling at his caricatures.

"'As to you, my dear Marie Antoinette,' continued the Emperor, not

heeding her, 'I see you have made great progress in the art of painting.

You have lavished more colour on one cheek than Rubens would have

required for all the figures in his cartoons.' Observing one of the

Ladies of Honour still more highly rouged than the Queen, he said, 'I

suppose I look like a death's head upon a tombstone, among all these

high-coloured furies.'

"The Queen again tried to interrupt the Emperor, but he was not to be put

out of countenance.

"He said he had no doubt, when he arrived at Brussels, that he should

hear of the progress of his sister, the Archduchess Maria Christina, in

her money negotiations with the banker Valkeers, who made a good stock

for her husband's jobs.

"'If Maria Christina's gardens and palace at Lakin could speak,' observed

he, 'what a spectacle of events would they not produce! What a number of

fine sights my own family would afford!

"'When I get to Cologne,' pursued the Emperor, there I shall see my great

fat brother Maximilian, in his little electorate, spending his yearly

revenue upon an ecclesiastical procession; for priests, like opposition,

never bark but to get into the manger; never walk empty-handed; rosaries

and good cheer always wind up their holy work; and my good Maximilian, as

head of his Church, has scarcely feet to waddle into it. Feasting and

fasting produce the same effect. In wind and food he is quite an

adept--puffing, from one cause or the other, like a smith's bellows!'

"Indeed, the Elector of Cologne was really grown so very fat, that, like

his Imperial mother, he could scarcely walk. He would so over-eat

himself at these ecclesiastical dinners, to make his guests welcome,

that, from indigestion, he would be puffing and blowing, an hour

afterwards, for breath.

"'As I have begun the family visits,' continued the Emperor, 'I must not

pass by the Archduchess Mariana and the Lady Abbess at Clagenfurt; or,

the Lord knows, I shall never hear the end of their klagens.--[A German

word which signifies complaining.]--The first, I am told, is grown so

ugly, and, of course, so neglected by mankind, that she is become an

utter stranger to any attachment, excepting the fleshy embraces of the

disgusting wen that encircles her neck and bosom, and makes her head

appear like a black spot upon a large sheet of white paper. Therefore

klagen is all I can expect from that quarter of female flesh, and I dare

say it will be levelled against the whole race of mankind for their want

of taste in not admiring her exuberance of human craw!

"'As to the Lady Abbess, she is one of my best recruiting sergeants. She

is so fond of training cadets for the benefit of the army that they learn

more from her system in one month than at the military academy at

Neustadt in a whole year. She is her mother's own daughter. She

understands military tactics thoroughly. She and I never quarrel, except

when I garrison her citadel with invalids. She and the canoness,

Mariana, would rather see a few young ensigns than all the staffs of the

oldest Field-marshals!'

"The Queen often made signs to the Emperor to desist from thus exposing

every member of his family, and seemed to feel mortified; but the more

Her Majesty endeavoured to check his freedom, and make him silent, the

more he enlarged upon the subject. He did not even omit Maria Theresa,

who, he said, in consequence of some papers found on persons arrested as

spies from the Prussian camp, during the seven years' war, was reported

to have been greatly surprised to have discovered that her husband, the

Emperor Francis I., supplied the enemy's army with all kinds of provision

from her stores.

"The King scarcely ever answered excepting when the Emperor told the

Queen that her staircase and antechamber at Versailles resembled more the

Turkish bazars of Constantinople

[It was an old custom, in the passages and staircase of all the royal

palaces, for tradespeople to sell their merchandise for the accommodation

of the Court.]

than a royal palace. 'But,' added he, laughing, 'I suppose you would not

allow the nuisance of hawkers and pedlars almost under your nose, if the

sweet perfumes of a handsome present did not compensate for the

disagreeable effluvia exhaling from their filthy traffic.'

"On this, Louis XVI., in a tone of voice somewhat varying from his usual

mildness, assured the Emperor that neither himself nor the Queen derived

any advantage from the custom, beyond the convenience of purchasing

articles inside the palace at any moment they were wanted, without being

forced to send for them elsewhere.

"'That is the very reason, my dear brother,' replied Joseph, 'why I would

not allow these shops to be where they are. The temptation to lavish

money to little purpose is too strong; and women have not philosophy

enough to resist having things they like, when they can be obtained

easily, though they may not be wanted.'

"'Custom,' answered the King--

"'True,' exclaimed the Queen, interrupting him; custom, my dear brother,

obliges us to tolerate in France many things which you, in Austria, have.

long since abolished; but the French are not to be: treated like the

Germans. A Frenchman is a slave to habit. His very caprice in the

change of fashion proceeds more from habit than genius or invention. His

very restlessness of character is systematic; and old customs and

national habits in a nation virtually spirituelle must not be trifled

with. The tree torn up by the roots dies for want of nourishment; but,

on the contrary, when lopped carefully only of its branches the pruning

makes it more valuable to the cultivator and more pleasing to the

beholder. So it is with national prejudices, which are often but the

excrescences of national virtues. Root them out and you root out virtue

and all. They must only be: pruned and turned to profit. A Frenchman is

more easily killed than subdued. Even his follies generally spring from

a high sense of national dignity and honour, which foreigners cannot but

respect.'

"The Emperor Joseph while in France mixed in all sorts of society, to

gain information with respect, to the popular feeling towards his sister,

and instruction as to the manners and modes of life and thinking of the

French. To this end he would often associate with the lowest of the

common people, and generally gave them a louis for their loss of time in

attending to him.

"One day, when he was walking with the young Princesse Elizabeth and

myself in the public gardens at Versailles and in deep conversation with

us, two or three of these louis ladies came up to my side and, not

knowing who I was, whispered, 'There's no use in paying such attention to

the stranger: after all, when he has got what he wants, he'll only give

you a louis apiece and then send you about your business.'"

SECTION X.

"I remember an old lady who could not bear to be told of deaths. 'Psha!

Pshaw!' she would exclaim. 'Bring me no tales of funerals! Talk of

births and of those who are likely to be blest with them! These are the

joys which gladden old hearts and fill youthful ones with ecstasy! It is

our own reproduction in children which makes us quit the world happy and

contented; because then we only retire to make room for another race,

bringing with them all those faculties which are in us decayed; and

capable, which we ourselves have ceased to be, of taking our parts and

figuring on the stage of life so long as it may please the Supreme

Manager to busy them in earthly scenes! Then talk no more to me of weeds

and mourning, but show me christenings and all those who give employ to

the baptismal font!'

"Such also was the exulting feeling of Marie Antoinette when she no

longer doubted of her wished-for pregnancy. The idea of becoming a

mother filled her soul with an exuberant delight, which made the very

pavement on which she trod vibrate with the words, 'I shall be a mother!

I shall be a mother!' She was so overjoyed that she not only made it

public throughout France but despatches were sent off to all her royal

relatives. And was not her rapture natural? so long as she had waited

for the result of every youthful union, and so coarsely as she had been

reproached with her misfortune! Now came her triumph. She could now

prove to the world, like all the descendants of the house of Austria,

that there was no defect with her. The satirists and the malevolent were

silenced. Louis XVI., from the cold, insensible bridegroom, became the

infatuated admirer of his long-neglected wife. The enthusiasm with which

the event was hailed by all France atoned for the partial insults she had

received before it. The splendid fetes, balls, and entertainments,

indiscriminately lavished by all ranks throughout the kingdom on this

occasion, augmented those of the Queen and the Court to a pitch of

magnificence surpassing the most luxurious and voluptuous times of the

great and brilliant Louis XIV. Entertainments were given even to the

domestics of every description belonging to the royal establishments.

Indeed, so general was the joy that, among those who could do no more,

there could scarcely be found a father or mother in France who, before

they took their wine, did not first offer up a prayer for the prosperous

pregnancy of their beloved Queen.

"And yet, though the situation of Marie Antoinette was now become the

theme of a whole nation's exultation, she herself, the owner of the

precious burthen, selected by Heaven as its special depositary, was the

only one censured for expressing all her happiness!

"Those models of decorum, the virtuous Princesses, her aunts, deemed it

highly indelicate in Her Majesty to have given public marks of her

satisfaction to those deputed to compliment her on her prosperous

situation. To avow the joy she felt was in their eyes indecent and

unqueenly. Where was the shrinking bashfulness of that one of these

Princesses who had herself been so clamorous to Louis XV. against her

husband, the Duke of Modena, for not having consummated her own marriage?

"The party of the dismissed favourite Du Barry were still working

underground. Their pestiferous vapours issued from the recesses of the

earth, to obscure the brightness of the rising sun, which was now rapidly

towering to its climax, to obliterate the little planets which had once

endeavoured to eclipse its beautiful rays, but were now incapable of

competition, and unable to endure its lustre. This malignant nest of

serpents began to poison the minds of the courtiers, as soon as the

pregnancy was obvious, by innuendoes on the partiality of the Comte

d'Artois for the Queen; and at length, infamously, and openly, dared to

point him out as the cause?

"Thus, in the heart of the Court itself, originated this most atrocious

slander, long before it reached the nation, and so much assisted to

destroy Her Majesty's popularity with a people, who now adored her

amiableness, her general kind-heartedness, and her unbounded charity.

"I have repeatedly seen the Queen and the Comte d'Artois together under

circumstances in which there could have been no concealment of her real

feelings; and I can firmly and boldly assert the falsehood of this

allegation against my royal mistress. The only attentions Marie

Antoinette received in the earlier part of her residence in France were

from her grandfather and her brothers-in-law. Of these, the Comte

d'Artois was the only one who, from youth and liveliness of character,

thoroughly sympathised with his sister. But, beyond the little freedoms

of two young and innocent playmates, nothing can be charged upon their

intimacy,--no familiarity whatever farther than was warranted by their

relationship. I can bear witness that Her Majesty's attachment for the

Comte d'Artois never differed in its nature from what she felt for her

brother the Emperor Joseph.

[When the King thought proper to be reconciled to the Queen after the

death of his grandfather, Louis XV., and when she became a mother, she

really was very much attached to Louis XVI., as may be proved from her

never quitting him, and suffering all the horrid sacrifices she endured,

through the whole period of the Revolution, rather than leave her

husband, her children, or her sister. Marie Antoinette might have saved

her life twenty times, had not the King's safety, united with her own and

that of her family, impelled her to reject every proposition of

self-preservation.]

"It is very likely that the slander of which I speak derived some colour

of probability afterwards with the million, from the Queen's

thoughtlessness, relative to the challenge which passed between the Comte

d'Artois and the Duc de Bourbon. In right of my station, I was one of

Her Majesty's confidential counsellors, and it became my duty to put

restraint upon her inclinations, whenever I conceived they led her wrong.

In this instance, I exercised my prerogative decidedly, and even so much

so as to create displeasure; but I anticipated the consequences, which

actually ensued, and preferred to risk my royal mistress's displeasure

rather than her reputation. The dispute, which led to the duel, was on

some point of etiquette; and the Baron de Besenval was to attend as

second to one of the parties. From the Queen's attachment for her royal

brother, she wished the affair to be amicably arranged, without the

knowledge either of the King, who was ignorant of what had taken place,

or of the parties; which could only be effected by her seeing the Baron

in the most private manner. I opposed Her Majesty's allowing any

interview with the Baron upon any terms, unless sanctioned by the King.

This unexpected and peremptory refusal obliged the Queen to transfer her

confidence to the librarian, who introduced the Baron into one of the

private apartments of Her Majesty's women, communicating with that of the

Queen, where Her Majesty could see the Baron without the exposure of

passing any of the other attendants. The Baron was quite gray, and

upwards of sixty years of age! But the self-conceited dotard soon caused

the Queen to repent her misplaced confidence, and from his unwarrantable

impudence on that occasion, when he found himself alone with the Queen,

Her Majesty, though he was a constant member of the societies of the De

Polignacs, ever after treated him with sovereign contempt.

"The Queen herself afterwards described to me the Baron's presumptuous

attack upon her credulity. From this circumstance I thenceforward totally

excluded him from my parties, where Her Majesty was always a regular

visitor.

"The coolness to which my determination not to allow the interview gave

rise between Her Majesty and myself was but momentary. The Queen had too

much discernment not to appreciate the basis upon which my denial was

grounded, even before she was convinced by the result how correct had

been my reflection. She felt her error, and, by the mediation of the

Duke of Dorset, we were reunited more closely than ever, and so, I trust,

we shall remain till death!

"There was much more attempted to be made of another instance, in which I

exercised the duty of my office, than the truth justified--the nightly

promenades on the terrace at Versailles, or at Trianon. Though no

amusement could have been more harmless or innocent for a private

individual, yet I certainly, disapproved it for a Queen, and therefore

withheld the sanction of my attendance. My sole objection was on the

score of dignity. I well knew that Du Barry and her infamous party were

constant spies upon the Queen on every occasion of such a nature; and

that they would not fail to exaggerate her every movement to her

prejudice. Though Du Barry could not form one of the party, which was a

great source of heartburning, it was easy for her, under the

circumstances, to mingle with the throng. When I suggested these

objections to the Queen, Her Majesty, feeling no inward cause of

reproach, and being sanctioned in what she did by the King himself,

laughed at the idea of these little excursions affording food for

scandal. I assured Her Majesty that I had every reason to be convinced

that Du Barry was often in disguise, not far from the seat where Her

Majesty and the Princesse Elizabeth could be overheard in their most

secret conversations with each other. 'Listeners,' replied the Queen,

'never hear any good of themselves.'

"'My dear Lamballe,' she continued, 'you have taken such a dislike to

this woman that you cannot conceive she can be occupied but in mischief.

This is uncharitable. She certainly has no reason to be dissatisfied

with either the King or myself. We have both left her in the full

enjoyment of all she possessed, except the right of appearing at Court or

continuing in the society her conduct had too long disgraced.'

"I said it was very true, but that I should be happier to find Her

Majesty so scrupulous as never to give an opportunity even for the

falsehoods of her enemies.

"Her Majesty turned the matter off, as usual, by saying she had no idea

of injuring others, and could not believe that any one would wantonly

injure her, adding, 'The Duchess and the Princesse Elizabeth, my two

sisters, and all the other ladies, are coming to hear the concert this

evening, and you will be delighted.'

"I excused myself under the plea of the night air disagreeing with my

health, and returned to Versailles without ever making myself one of the

nocturnal members of Her Majesty's society, well knowing she could

dispense with my presence, there being more than enough ever ready to

hurry her by their own imprudence into the folly of despising criticisms,

which I always endeavoured to avoid, though I did not fear them. Of

these I cannot but consider her secretary as one. The following

circumstance connected with the promenades is a proof:

"The Abbe Vermond was present one day when Marie Antoinette observed that

she felt rather indisposed. I attributed it to Her Majesty's having

lightened her dress and exposed herself too much to the night air.

'Heavens, madame!' cried the Abbe, 'would you always have Her Majesty

cased up in steel armour, and not take the fresh air, without being

surrounded by a troop of horse and foot, as a Field-marshal is when going

to storm a fortress? Pray, Princess, now that Her Majesty, has freed

herself from the annoying shackles of Madame Etiquette (the Comtesse de

Noailles), let her enjoy the pleasure of a simple robe and breathe freely

the fresh morning dew, as has been her custom all her life (and as her

mother before her, the Empress Maria Theresa, has done and continues to

do, even to this day), unfettered by antiquated absurdities! Let me be

anything rather than a Queen of France, if I must be doomed to the

slavery of such tyrannical rules!'

"'True; but, sir,' replied I, 'you should reflect that if you were a

Queen of France, France, in making you mistress of her destinies, and

placing you at the head of her nation, would in return look for respect

from you to her customs and manners. I am born an Italian, but I

renounced all national peculiarities of thinking and acting the moment I

set my foot on French ground.'

"'And so did I,' said Marie Antoinette.

"'I know you did, Madame,' I answered; but I am replying to your

preceptor; and I only wish he saw things in the same light I do. When we

are at Rome, we should do as Rome does. You have never had a regicide

Bertrand de Gurdon, a Ravillac or a Damiens in Germany; but they have

been common in France, and the Sovereigns of France cannot be too

circumspect in their maintenance of ancient etiquette to command the

dignified respect of a frivolous and versatile people.'

"The Queen, though she did not strictly adhere to my counsels or the

Abbe's advice, had too much good sense to allow herself to be prejudiced

against me by her preceptor; but the Abbe never entered on the propriety

or impropriety of the Queen's conduct before me, and from the moment I

have mentioned studiously avoided, in my presence, anything which could

lead to discussion on the change of dress and amusements introduced by

Her Majesty.

"Although I disapproved of Her Majesty's deviations from established

forms in this, or, indeed, any respect, yet I never, before or after,

expressed my opinion before a third person.

"Never should I have been so firmly and so long attached to Marie

Antoinette, had I not known that her native thorough goodness of heart

had been warped and misguided, though acting at the same time with the

best intentions, by a false notion of her real innocence being a

sufficient shield against the public censure of such innovations upon

national prejudices, as she thought prayer to introduce,--the fatal error

of conscious rectitude, encouraged in its regardlessness of appearances

by those very persons who well knew that it is only by appearances a

nation can judge of its rulers.

"I remember a ludicrous circumstance arising from the Queen's innocent

curiosity, in which, if there were anything to blame, I myself am to be

censured for lending myself to it so heartily to satisfy Her Majesty.

"When the Chevalier d'Eon was allowed to return to France, Her Majesty

expressed a particular inclination to see this extraordinary character.

From prudential as well as political motives, she was at first easily

persuaded to repress her desire. However, by a most ludicrous

occurrence, it was revived, and nothing would do but she must have a

sight of the being who had for some time been the talk of every society,

and at the period to which I allude was become the mirth of all Paris.

"The Chevalier being one day in a very large party of both sexes, in

which, though his appearance had more of the old soldier in it than of

the character he was compelled 'malgre lui',

[It may be necessary to observe here that the Chevalier, having for some

particular motives been banished from France, was afterwards permitted to

return only on condition of never appearing but in the disguised dress of

a female, though he was always habited in the male costume underneath

it.]

to adopt, many of the guests having no idea to what sex this nondescript

animal really belonged, the conversation after dinner happened to turn on

the manly exercise of fencing. Heated by a subject to him so

interesting, the Chevalier, forgetful of the respect due to his assumed

garb, started from his seat, and, pulling up his petticoats, threw

himself on guard. Though dressed in male attire underneath, this sudden

freak sent all the ladies--and many of the gentlemen out of the room in

double--quick time. The Chevalier, however, instantly recovering from

the first impulse, quietly pat down his, upper garment, and begged pardon

in, a gentlemanly manner for having for a moment deviated from the forma

of his imposed situation. All, the gossips of Paris were presently

amused with the story, which, of coarse, reached the Court, with every

droll particular of the pulling up and clapping down the cumbrous

paraphernalia of a hoop petticoat.

"The King and Queen, from the manner in which they enjoyed the tale when

told them (and certainly it lost nothing in the report), would not have

been the least amused of the party had they been present. His Majesty

shook the room with laughing, and the Queen, the Princesse Elizabeth, and

the other ladies were convulsed at the description.

"When we were alone, 'How I should like,' said the Queen, 'to see this

curious man-woman!'--'Indeed,' replied I, 'I have not less curiosity than

yourself, and I think we may contrive to let Your Majesty have a peep at

him--her, I mean!--without compromising your dignity, or offending the

Minister who interdicted the Chevalier from appearing in your presence. I

know he has expressed the greatest mortification, and that his wish to

see Your Majesty is almost irrepressible.'

"'But how will you be able to contrive this without its being known to

the King, or to the Comte de Vergennes, who would never forgive me?'

exclaimed Her Majesty.

"'Why, on Sunday, when you go to chapel, I will cause him, by some means

or other, to make his appearance, en grande costume, among the group of

ladies who are generally waiting there to be presented to Your Majesty.'

"'Oh, you charming creature!' said the Queen. 'But won't the Minister

banish or exile him for it?'

"'No, no! He has only been forbidden an audience of Your Majesty at

Court,' I replied.

"In good earnest, on the Sunday following, the Chevalier was dressed en

costume, with a large hoop, very long train, sack, five rows of ruffles,

an immensely high powdered female wig, very beautiful lappets, white

gloves, an elegant fan in his hand, his beard closely shaved, his neck

and ears adorned with diamond rings and necklaces, and assuming all the

airs and graces of a fine lady!

"But, unluckily, his anxiety was so great, the, moment the Queen made her

appearance, to get a sight of Her Majesty, that, on rushing before the

other ladies, his wig and head-dress fell off his head; and, before they

could be well replaced, he made so, ridiculous a figure, by clapping

them, in his confusion, hind part before, that the King, the Queen, and

the whole suite, could scarcely refrain from laughing; aloud in the

church.

"Thus ended the long longed for sight of this famous man-woman!

"As to me, it was a great while before I could recover myself. Even now,

I laugh whenever I think of this great lady deprived of her head

ornaments, with her bald pate laid bare, to the derision of such a

multitude of Parisians, always prompt to divert themselves at the expense

of others. However, the affair passed off unheeded, and no one but the

Queen and myself ever knew that we ourselves had been innocently the

cause of this comical adventure. When we met after Mass, we were so

overpowered, that neither of us could speak for laughing. The Bishop who

officiated said it was lucky he had no sermon to preach that day, for it

would have been difficult for him to have recollected himself, or to have

maintained his gravity. The ridiculous appearance of the Chevalier, he

added, was so continually presenting itself before him during the service

that it was as much as he could do to restrain himself from laughing, by

keeping his eyes constantly riveted on the book. Indeed, the oddity of

the affair was greatly heightened when, in the middle of the Mass, some

charitable hand having adjusted the wig of the Chevalier, he re-entered

the chapel as if nothing had happened, and, placing himself exactly

opposite the altar, with his train upon his arm, stood fanning himself, a

la coquette, with an inflexible self-possession which only rendered it

the more difficult for those around him to maintain their composure.

"Thus ended the Queen's curiosity. The result only made the Chevalier's

company in greater request, for every one became more anxious than ever

to know the masculine lady who had lost her wig!"

BOOK 2.

SECTION I.

[From the time that the Princesse de Lamballe saw the ties between the

Queen and her favourite De Polignac drawing closer she became less

assiduous in her attendance at Court, being reluctant to importune the

friends by her presence at an intimacy which she did not approve. She

could not, however, withhold her accustomed attentions, as the period of

Her Majesty's accouchement approached; and she has thus noted the

circumstance of the birth of the Duchesse d'Angouleme, on the 19th of

December, 1778.]

"The moment for the accomplishment of the Queen's darling hope was now at

hand: she was about to become a mother.

"It had been agreed between Her Majesty and myself, that I was to place

myself so near the accoucheur, Vermond,

[Brother to the Abbe, whose pride was so great at this honour conferred

on his relative, that he never spoke of him without denominating him

Monsieur mon frere, d'accoucher de sa Majeste, Vermond.]

as to be the first to distinguish the sex of the new-born infant, and if

she should be delivered of a Dauphin to say, in Italian, 'Il figlio e

nato.'

"Her Majesty was, however, foiled even in this the most blissful of her

desires. She was delivered of a daughter instead of a Dauphin.

"From the immense crowd that burst into the apartment the instant Vermond

said, The Queen is happily delivered, Her Majesty was nearly suffocated.

I had hold of her hand, and as I said 'La regina e andato', mistaking

'andato' for 'nato', between the joy of giving birth to a son and the

pressure of the crowd, Her Majesty fainted. Overcome by the dangerous

situation in which I saw my royal mistress, I myself was carried out of

the room in a lifeless state. The situation of Her Majesty was for some

time very doubtful, till the people were dragged with violence from about

her, that she might have air. On her recovering, the King was the first

person who told her that she was the mother of a very fine Princess.

"'Well, then,' said the Queen, 'I am like my mother, for at my birth she

also wished for a son instead of a daughter; and you have lost your

wager:' for the King had betted with Maria Theresa that it would be a

son.

"The King answered her by repeating the lines Metastasio had written on

that occasion.

"'Io perdei: l'augusta figlia

A pagar, m'a condemnato;

Ma s'e ver the a voi somiglia

Tutto il moudo ha guadagnato.'"

[The Princesse de Lamballe again ceased to be constantly about the Queen.

Her danger was over, she was a mother, and the attentions of

disinterested friendship were no longer indispensable. She herself about

this time met with a deep affliction. She lost both of her own parents;

and to her sorrows may, in a great degree, be ascribed her silence upon

the events which intervened between the birth of Madame and that of the

Dauphin. She was as assiduous as ever in her attentions to Her Majesty

on her second lying-in. The circumstances of the death of Maria Theresa,

the Queen's mother, in the interval which divided the two accouchements,

and Her Majesty's anguish, and refusal to see any but De Lamballe and De

Polignac, are too well known to detain us longer from the notes of the

Princess. It is enough for the reader to know that the friendship of Her

Majesty for her superintendent seemed to be gradually reviving in all its

early enthusiasm, by her unremitting kindness during the confinements of

the Queen, till, at length, they became more attached than ever. But, not

to anticipate, let me return to the narrative.]

"The public feeling had undergone a great change with respect to Her

Majesty from the time of her first accouchement. Still, she was not the

mother of a future King. The people looked upon her as belonging to them

more than she had done before, and faction was silenced by the general

delight. But she had not yet attained the climax of her felicity. A

second pregnancy gave a new excitement to the nation; and, at length, on

the 22nd October, 1781, dawned the day of hope.

"In consequence of what happened on the first accouchement, measures were

taken to prevent similar disasters on the second. The number admitted

into the apartment was circumscribed. The silence observed left the

Queen in uncertainty of the sex to which she had given birth, till, with

tears of joy, the King said to her: 'Madame, the hopes of the nation, and

mine, are fulfilled. You are the mother of a Dauphin.'

"The Princesse Elizabeth and myself were so overjoyed that we embraced

every one in the room.

"At this time Their Majesties were adored. Marie Antoinette, with all

her beauty and amiableness, was a mere cipher in the eyes of France

previous to her becoming the mother of an heir to the Crown; but her

popularity now arose to a pitch of unequalled enthusiasm.

"I have heard of but one expression to Her Majesty upon this occasion in

any way savouring of discontent. This came from the royal aunts. On

Marie Antoinette's expressing to them her joy in having brought a Dauphin

to the nation, they replied, 'We will only repeat our father's

observation on a similar subject. When one of our sisters complained to

his late Majesty that, as her Italian husband had copied the Dauphin's

whim, she could not, though long a bride, boast of being a wife, or hope

to become a mother--"a prudent Princess," replied Louis XV., "never wants

heirs!"' But the feeling of the royal aunts was an exception to the

general sentiment, which really seemed like madness.

"I remember a proof of this which happened at the time. Chancing to

cross the King's path as he was going to Marly and I coming from

Rambouillet, my two postillions jumped from their horses, threw

themselves on the high road upon their knees, though it was very dirty,

and remained there, offering up their benedictions, till he was out of

sight.

"The felicity of the Queen was too great not to be soon overcast. The

unbounded influence of the De Polignacs was now at its zenith. It could

not fail of being attacked. Every engine of malice, envy, and detraction

was let loose; and, in the vilest calumnies against the character of the

Duchess, her royal mistress was included.

"It was, in truth, a most singular fatality, in the life of Marie

Antoinette that she could do nothing, however beneficial or

disinterested, for which she was not either criticised or censured. She

had a tenacity, of character which made her cling more closely to

attachments from which she saw others desirous of estranging her; and

this firmness, however excellent in principle, was, in her case, fatal in

its effects. The Abbe Vermond, Her Majesty's confessor and tutor, and,

unfortunately, in many respects, her ambitious guide, was really alarmed

at the rising favour of the Duchess; and, though he knew the very

obstacles thrown in her way only strengthened her resolution as to any

favourite object, yet he ventured to head an intrigue to destroy the

great influence of the De Polignacs, which, as he might have foreseen,

only served to hasten their aggrandisement.

"At this crisis the dissipation of the Duc de Guemenee caused him to

become a bankrupt. I know not whether it can be said in principle, but

certainly it may in property, 'It is an ill wind that blows no one any

good.' The Princess, his wife, having been obliged to leave her

residence at Versailles, in consequence of the Duke's dismissal from the

King's service on account of the disordered state of his pecuniary

circumstances, the situation of governess to the royal children became

necessarily vacant, and was immediately transferred to the Duchesse de

Polignac. The Queen, to enable her friend to support her station with

all the eclat suitable to its dignity, took care to supply ample means

from her own private purse. A most magnificent suite of apartments was

ordered to be arranged, under the immediate inspection of the Queen's

maitre d'hotel, at Her Majesty's expense.

"Is there anything on earth more natural than the lively interest which

inspires a mother towards those who have the care of her offspring? What,

then, must have been the feelings of a Queen of France who had been

deprived of that blessing for which connubial attachments are formed, and

which, vice versa, constitutes the only real happiness of every young

female, what must have been, I say, the ecstasy of Marie Antoinette when

she not only found herself a mother, but the dear pledges of all her

future bliss in the hands of one whose friendship allowed her the

unrestrained exercise of maternal affection,--a climax of felicity

combining not only the pleasures of an ordinary mother, but the

greatness, the dignity, and the flattering popularity of a Queen of

France.

"Though the pension of the Duchesse de Polignac was no more than that

usually allotted to all former governesses of the royal children of

France, yet circumstances tempted her to a display not a little injurious

to her popularity as well as to that of her royal mistress. She gave too

many pretexts to imputations of extravagance. Yet she had neither

patronage, nor sinecures, nor immunities beyond the few inseparable from

the office she held, and which had been the same for centuries under the

Monarchy of France. But it must be remembered, as an excuse for the

splendour of her establishment, that she entered her office upon a

footing very different from that of any of her predecessors. Her mansion

was not the quiet, retired, simple household of the governess of the

royal children, as formerly: it had become the magnificent resort of the

first Queen in Europe; the daily haunt of Her Majesty. The Queen

certainly visited the former governess, as she had done the Duchesse de

Duras and many other frequenters of her Court parties; but she made the

Duchesse de Polignac's her Court; and all the courtiers of that Court,

and, I may say, the great personages of all France, as well as the

Ministers and all foreigners of distinction, held there their usual

rendezvous; consequently, there was nothing wanting but the guards in

attendance in the Queen's apartments to have made it a royal residence

suitable for the reception of the illustrious personages that were in the

constant habit of visiting these levees, assemblies, balls, routs,

picnics, dinner, supper, and card parties.

[I have seen ladies at the Princesse de Lamballe's come from these card

parties with their laps so blackened by the quantities of gold received

in them, that they have been obliged to change their dresses to go to

supper. Many a chevalier d'industree and young military spendthrift has

made his harvest here. Thousands were won and lost, and the ladies were

generally the dupes of all those who were the constant speculative

attendants. The Princease de Lamballe did not like play, but when it was

necessary she did play, and won or lost to a limited extent; but the

prescribed sum once exhausted or gained she left off. In set parties,

such as those of whist, she never played except when one was wanted,

often excusing herself on the score of its requiring more attention than

it was in her power to give to it and her reluctance to sacrifice her

partner; though I have heard Beau Dillon, the Duke of Dorset, Lord Edward

Dillon, and many others say that she understood and played the game much

better than many who had a higher opinion of their skill in it. Lord

Edward Fitzgerald was admitted to the parties at the Duchesse de

Polignac's on his first coming to Paris; but when his connection with the

Duc d'Orleans and Madame de Genlis became known he was informed that his

society would be dispensed with. The famous, or rather the infamous,

Beckford was also excluded.]

"Much as some of the higher classes of the nobility felt aggrieved at the

preference given by the Queen to the Duchesse de Polignac, that which

raised against Her Majesty the most implacable resentment was her

frequenting the parties of her favourite more than those of any other of

the 'haut ton'. These assemblies, from the situation held by the

Duchess, could not always be the most select. Many of the guests who

chanced to get access to them from a mere glimpse of the Queen--whose

general good-humour, vivacity, and constant wish to please all around her

would often make her commit herself unconsciously and

unintentionally--would fabricate anecdotes of things they had neither

seen nor heard; and which never had existence, except in their own wicked

imaginations. The scene of the inventions, circulated against Her

Majesty through France, was, in consequence, generally placed at the

Duchess's; but they were usually so distinctly and obviously false that

no notice was taken of them, nor was any attempt made to check their

promulgation.

"Exemplary as was the friendship between this enthusiastic pair, how much

more fortunate for both would it have been had it never happened! I

foresaw the results long, long before they took place; but the Queen was

not to be thwarted. Fearful she might attribute my anxiety for her

general safety to unworthy personal views, I was often silent, even when

duty bade me speak. I was, perhaps, too scrupulous about seeming

officious or jealous of the predilection shown to the Duchess.

Experience had taught me the inutility of representing consequences, and

I had no wish to quarrel with the Queen. Indeed, there was a degree of

coldness towards me on the part of Her Majesty for having gone so far as

I had done. It was not until after the birth of the Duc de Normandie,

her third child, in March, 1785, that her friendship resumed its

primitive warmth.

"As the children grew, Her Majesty's attachment for their governess grew

with them. All that has been said of Tasso's Armida was nothing to this

luxurious temple of maternal affection. Never was female friendship more

strongly cemented, or less disturbed by the nauseous poison of envy,

malice, or mean jealousy. The Queen was in the plenitude of every

earthly enjoyment, from being able to see and contribute to the education

of the children she tenderly loved, unrestrained by the gothic etiquette

with which all former royal mothers had been fettered, but which the kind

indulgence of the Duchesse de Polignac broke through, as unnatural and

unworthy of the enlightened and affectionate. The Duchess was herself an

attentive, careful mother. She felt for the Queen, and encouraged her

maternal sympathies, so doubly endeared by the long, long disappointment

which had preceded their gratification. The sacrifice of all the cold

forms of state policy by the new governess, and the free access she gave

the royal mother to her children, so unprecedented in the Court of

France, rendered Marie Antoinette so grateful that it may justly be said

she divided her heart between the governess and the governed. Habit soon

made it necessary for her existence that she should dedicate the whole of

her time, not taken up in public ceremonies or parties, to the

cultivation of the minds of her children. Conscious of her own

deficiency in this respect, she determined to redeem this error in her

offspring. The love of the frivolous amusements of society, for which

the want of higher cultivation left room in her mind, was humoured by the

gaieties of the Duchesse de Polignac's assemblies; while her nobler

dispositions were encouraged by the privileges of the favourite's

station. Thus, all her inclinations harmonising with the habits and

position of her friend, Marie Antoinette literally passed the greatest

part of some years in company with the Duchesse de Polignac,--either

amidst the glare and bustle of public recreation, or in the private

apartment of the governess and her children, increasing as much as

possible the kindness of the one for the benefit and comfort of the

others. The attachment of the Duchess to the royal children was returned

by the Queen's affection for the offspring of the Duchess. So much was

Her Majesty interested in favour of the daughter of the Duchess, that,

before that young lady was fifteen years of age, she herself contrived

and accomplished her marriage with the Duc de Guiche, then 'maitre de

ceremonie' to Her Majesty, and whose interests were essentially, promoted

by this alliance.

[The Duc de Guiche, since Duc de Grammont, has proved how much he merited

the distinction he received, in consequence of the attachment between the

Queen and his mother-in-law, by the devotedness with which he followed

the fallen fortunes of the Bourbons till their restoration, since which

he has not been forgotten. The Duchess, his wife, who at her marriage

was beaming with all the beauties of her age, and adorned by art and

nature with every accomplishment, though she came into notice at a time

when the Court had scarcely recovered itself from the debauched morals by

which it had been so long degraded by a De Pompadour and a Du Barry, has

yet preserved her character, by the strictness of her conduct, free from

the censorious criticisms of an epoch in which some of the purest could

not escape unassailed. I saw her at Pyrmont in 1803; and even then,

though the mother of many children, she looked as young and beautiful as

ever. She was remarkably well educated and accomplished, a profound

musician on the harp and pianoforte, graceful in her conversation, and a

most charming dancer. She seemed to bear the vicissitudes of fortune

with a philosophical courage and resignation not often to be met with in

light-headed French women. She was amiable in her manners, easy of

access, always lively and cheerful, and enthusiastically attached to the

country whence she was then excluded. She constantly accompanied the

wife of the late Louis XVIII. during her travels in Germany, as her

husband the Duke did His Majesty during his residence at Mittau, in

Courland, etc. I have had the honour of seeing the Duke twice since the

Revolution; once, on my coming from Russia, at General Binkingdroff's,

Governor of Mittau, and since, in Portland Place, at the French

Ambassador's, on his coming to England in the name of his Sovereign, to

congratulate the King of England on his accession to the throne.]

"The great cabals, which agitated the Court in consequence of the favour

shown to the De Polignacs, were not slow in declaring themselves. The

Comtesse de Noailles was one of the foremost among the discontented. Her

resignation, upon the appointment of a superintendent, was a sufficient

evidence of her real feeling; but when she now saw a place filled, to

which she conceived her family had a claim, her displeasure could not be

silent, and her dislike to the Queen began to express itself without

reserve.

"Another source of dissatisfaction against the Queen was her extreme

partiality for the English. After the peace of Versailles, in 1783, the

English flocked into France, and I believe if a poodle dog had come from

England it would have met with a good reception from Her Majesty. This

was natural enough. The American war had been carried on entirely

against her wish; though, from the influence she was supposed to exercise

in the Cabinet, it was presumed to have been managed entirely by herself.

This odious opinion she wished personally to destroy; and it could only

be done by the distinction with which, after the peace, she treated the

whole English nation.'

[The daughter of the Duchesse de Polignac (of my meeting with whom I have

already spoken in a note), entering with me upon the subject of France

and of old times, observed that had the Queen limited her attachment to

the person of her mother, she would not have given all the annoyance

which she did to the nobility. It was to these partialities to the

English, the Duchesse de Guiche Grammont alluded. I do not know the

lady's name distinctly, but I am certain I have heard the beautiful Lady

Sarah Bunbury mentioned by the Princesse de Lamballe as having received

particular attention from the Queen; for the Princess had heard much

about this lady and "a certain great personage" in England; but, on

discovering her acquaintance with the Duc de Lauzun, Her Majesty withdrew

from the intimacy, though not soon enough to prevent its having given

food for scandal. "You must remember," added the Duchesse de Guiche

Grammont, "how much the Queen was censured for her enthusiasm about Lady

Spencer." I replied that I did remember the much-ado about nothing there

was regarding some English lady, to whom the Queen took a liking, whose

name I could not exactly recall; but I knew well she studied to please

the English in general. Of this Lady Spencer it is that the Princess

speaks in one of the following pages of this chapter.]

"Several of the English nobility were on a familiar footing at the

parties of the Duchesse de Polignac. This was quite enough for the

slanderers. They were all ranked, and that publicly, as lovers of Her

Majesty. I recollect when there were no less than five different private

commissioners out, to suppress the libels that were in circulation over

all France, against the Queen and Lord Edward Dillon, the Duke of Dorset,

Lord George Conway, Arthur Dillon, as well as Count Fersen, the Duc de

Lauzun, and the Comte d'Artois, who were all not only constant

frequenters of Polignac's but visitors of Marie Antoinette.

"By the false policy of Her Majesty's advisers, these enemies and

libellers, instead of being brought to the condign punishment their

infamy deserved, were privately hushed into silence, out of delicacy to

the Queen's feelings, by large sums of money and pensions, which

encouraged numbers to commit the same enormity in the hope of obtaining

the same recompense.

"But these were mercenary wretches, from whom no better could have been

expected. A legitimate mode of robbery had been pressed upon their

notice by the Government itself, and they thought it only a matter of

fair speculation to make the best of it. There were some libellers,

however, of a higher order, in comparison with whose motives for slander,

those of the mere scandal-jobbers were white as the driven snow. Of

these, one of the worst was the Duc de Lauzun.

"The first motive of the Queen's strong dislike to the Duc de Lauzun

sprang from Her Majesty's attachment to the Duchesse d'Orleans, whom she

really loved. She was greatly displeased at the injury inflicted upon

her valued friend by De Lauzun, in estranging the affection of the Duc

d'Orleans from his wife by introducing him to depraved society. Among

the associates to which this connection led the Duc d'Orleans were a

certain Madame Duthee and Madame Buffon.

"When De Lauzun, after having been expelled from the drawing-room of the

Queen for his insolent presumption,--[The allusion here is to the affair

of the heron plume.]--meeting with coolness at the King's levee, sought

to cover his disgrace by appearing at the assemblies of the Duchesse de

Polignac, Her Grace was too sincerely the friend of her Sovereign and

benefactress not to perceive the drift of his conduct. She consequently

signified to the self-sufficient coxcomb that her assemblies were not

open to the public. Being thus shut out from Their Majesties, and, as a

natural result, excluded from the most brilliant societies of Paris, De

Lauzun, from a most diabolical spirit of revenge, joined the nefarious

party which had succeeded in poisoning the mind of the Duc d'Orleans, and

from the hordes of which, like the burning lava from Etna, issued

calumnies which swept the most virtuous and innocent victims that ever

breathed to their destruction!

"Among the Queen's favourites, and those most in request at the De

Polignac parties, was the good Lady Spencer, with whom I became most

intimately acquainted when I first went to England; and from whom, as

well as from her two charming daughters, the Duchess of Devonshire and

Lady Duncannon, since Lady Besborough, I received the greatest marks of

cordial hospitality. In consequence, when her ladyship came to France, I

hastened to present her to the Queen. Her Majesty, taking a great liking

to the amiable Englishwoman, and wishing to profit by her private

conversations and society, gave orders that Lady Spencer should pass to

her private closet whenever she came to Versailles, without the formal

ceremony of waiting in the antechamber to be announced.

"One day, Her Majesty, Lady Spencer, and myself were observing the

difficulty there was in acquiring a correct pronunciation of the English

language, when Lady Spencer remarked that it only required a little

attention.

"'I beg your pardon,' said the Queen, 'that's not all, because there are

many things you do not call by their proper names, as they are in the

dictionary.'

"'Pray what are they, please Your Majesty?'

"'Well, I will give you an instance. For example, 'les culottes'--what

do you call them?'

"'Small clothes,' replied her ladyship.

"'Ma foi! how can they be called small clothes for one large man? Now I

do look in the dictionary, and I find, for the word culottes--breeches.'

"'Oh, please Your Majesty, we never call them by that name in England.'

"'Voila done, j'ai raison!'

"'We say "inexpressibles"!'

"'Ah, c'est mieux! Dat do please me ver much better. Il y a du bon sens

la dedans. C'est une autre chose!'

"In the midst of this curious dialogue, in came the Duke of Dorset, Lord

Edward Dillon, Count Fersen, and several English gentlemen, who, as they

were going to the King's hunt, were all dressed in new buckskin breeches.

"'I do not like,' exclaimed the Queen to them, dem yellow irresistibles!'

"Lady Spencer nearly fainted. 'Vat make you so frightful, my dear lady?'

said the Queen to her ladyship, who was covering her face with her hands.

'I am terrified at Your Majesty's mistake'--'Comment? did you no tell me

just now, dat in England de lady call les culottes

"irresistibles"?'--'Oh, mercy! I never could have made such a mistake,

as to have applied to that part of the male dress such a word. I said,

please Your Majesty, inexpressibles.'

"On this the gentlemen all laughed most heartily.

"'Vell, vell,' replied the Queen, 'do, my dear lady, discompose yourself.

I vill no more call de breeches irresistibles, but say small clothes, if

even elles sont upon a giant!'

"At the repetition of the naughty word breeches, poor Lady Spencer's

English delicacy quite overcame her. Forgetting where she was, and also

the company she was in, she ran from the room with her cross stick in her

hand, ready to lay it on the shoulders of any one who should attempt to

obstruct her passage, flew into her carriage, and drove off full speed,

as if fearful of being contaminated,--all to the no small amusement of

the male guests.

"Her Majesty and I laughed till the very tears ran down our cheeks. The

Duke of Dorset, to keep up the joke, said there really were some counties

in England where they called 'culottes irresistibles.

"Now that I am upon the subject of England, and the peace of 1783, which

brought such throngs of English over to France, there occurs to me a

circumstance, relating to the treaty of commerce signed at that time,

which exhibits the Comte de Vergennes to some advantage; and with that

let me dismiss the topic.

"The Comte de Vergennes, was one of the most distinguished Ministers of

France. I was intimately acquainted with him. His general character for

uprightness prompted his Sovereign to govern in a manner congenial to his

own goodness of heart, which was certainly most for the advantage of his

subjects. Vergennes cautioned Louis against the hypocritical adulations

of his privileged courtiers. The Count had been schooled in State policy

by the great Venetian senator, Francis Foscari, the subtlest politician

of his age, whom he consulted during his life on every important matter;

and he was not very easily to be deceived.

"When the treaty of commerce took place, at the period I mention, the

experienced Vergennes foresaw--what afterwards really happened--that

France would be inundated with British manufactures; but Calonne

obstinately maintained the contrary, till he was severely reminded of the

consequence of his misguided policy, in the insults inflicted on him by

enraged mobs of thousands of French artificers, whenever he appeared in

public. But though the mania for British goods had literally caused an

entire stagnation of business in the French manufacturing towns, and

thrown throngs upon the 'pave' for want of employment, yet M. de Calonne

either did not see, or pretended not to see, the errors he had committed.

Being informed that the Comte de Vergennes had attributed the public

disorders to his fallacious policy, M. de Calonne sent a friend to the

Count demanding satisfaction for the charge of having caused the riots.

The Count calmly replied that he was too much of a man of honour to take

so great an advantage, as to avail himself of the opportunity offered, by

killing a man who had only one life to dispose of, when there were so

many with a prior claim, who were anxious to destroy him 'en societe'. I

Bid M. de Calonne,' continued the Count, 'first get out of that scrape,

as the English boxers do when their eyes are closed up after a pitched

battle. He has been playing at blind man's buff, but the poverty to

which he has reduced so many of our tradespeople has torn the English

bandage from his eyes!' For three or four days the Comte de Vergennes

visited publicly, and showed himself everywhere in and about Paris; but

M. de Calonne was so well convinced of the truth of the old fox's satire

that he pocketed his annoyance, and no more was said about fighting.

Indeed, the Comte de Vergennes gave hints of being able to show that M.

de Calonne had been bribed into the treaty."

[The Princesse de Lamballe has alluded in a former page to the happiness

which the Queen enjoyed during the visits of the foreign Princes to the

Court of France. Her papers contain a few passages upon the opinions Her

Majesty entertained of the royal travellers; which, although in the order

of time they should have been mentioned before the peace with England,

yet, not to disturb the chain of the narrative, respecting the connection

with the Princesse de Lamballe, of the prevailing libels, and the

partiality shown towards the English, I have reserved them for the

conclusion of the present chapter. The timidity of the Queen in the

presence of the illustrious strangers, and her agitation when about to

receive them, have, I think, been already spoken of. Upon the subject of

the royal travellers themselves, and other personages, the Princess

expresses herself thus:]

"The Queen had never been an admirer of Catharine II. Notwithstanding

her studied policy for the advancement of civilization in her internal

empire, the means which, aided by the Princess Dashkoff, she made use of

to seat herself on the imperial throne of her weak husband, Peter the

Third, had made her more understood than esteemed. Yet when her son, the

Grand Duke of the North,--[Afterwards the unhappy Emperor Paul.]--and the

Grand Duchess, his wife, came to France, their description of Catharine's

real character so shocked the maternal sensibility of Marie Antoinette

that she could scarcely hear the name of the Empress without shuddering.

The Grand Duke spoke of Catharine without the least disguise. He said he

travelled merely for the security of his life from his mother, who had

surrounded him with creatures that were his sworn enemies, her own spies

and infamous favourites, to whose caprices they were utterly subordinate.

He was aware that the dangerous credulity of the Empress might be every

hour excited by these wretches to the destruction of himself and his

Duchess, and, therefore, he had in absence sought the only refuge. He

had no wish, he said, ever to return to his native country, till Heaven

should check his mother's doubts respecting his dutiful filial affection

towards her, or till God should be pleased to take her into His sacred

keeping.

"The King was petrified at the Duke's description of his situation, and

the Queen could not refrain from tears when the Duchess, his wife,

confirmed all her husband had uttered on the subject. The Duchess said

she had been warned by the untimely fate of the Princess d'Armstadt, her

predecessor, the first wife of the Grand Duke, to elude similar jealousy

and suspicion on the part of her mother-in-law, by seclusion from the

Court, in a country residence with her husband; indeed, that she had made

it a point never to visit Petersburg, except on the express invitation of

the Empress, as if she had been a foreigner.

"In this system the Grand Duchess persevered, even after her return from

her travels. When she became pregnant, and drew near her accouchement,

the Empress-mother permitted her to come to Petersburg for that purpose;

but, as soon as the ceremony required by the etiquette of the Imperial

Court on those occasions ended, the Duchess immediately returned to her

hermitage.

"This Princess was remarkably well-educated; she possessed a great deal

of good, sound sense, and had profited by the instructions of some of the

best German tutors during her very early years. It was the policy of her

father, the Duke of Wirtemberg, who had a large family, to educate his

children as 'quietists' in matters of religion. He foresaw that the

natural charms and acquired abilities of his daughters would one day call

them to be the ornaments of the most distinguished Courts in Europe, and

he thought it prudent not to instil early prejudices in favour of

peculiar forms of religion which might afterwards present an obstacle to

their aggrandisement.

[The first daughter of the Duke of Wirtemberg was the first wife of the

present Emperor of Austria. She embraced the Catholic faith and died

very young, two days before the Emperor Joseph the Second, at Vienna.

The present Empress Dowager, late wife to Paul, became a proselyte to the

Greek religion on her arrival at Petersburg. The son of the Duke of

Wirtemburg, who succeeded him in the Dukedom, was a Protestant, it being

his interest to profess that religion for the security of his

inheritance. Prince Ferdinand, who was in the Austrian service, and a

long time Governor of Vienna, was a Catholic, as he could not otherwise

have enjoyed that office. He was of a very superior character to the

Duke, his brother. Prince Louis, who held a commission under the

Prussian Monarch, followed the religion of the country where he served,

and the other Princes, who were in the employment of Sweden and other

countries, found no difficulty in conforming themselves to the religion

of the Sovereigns under whom they served. None of them having any

established forms of worship, they naturally embraced that which conduced

most to their aggrandisement, emolument, or dignity.]

"The notorious vices of the King of Denmark, and his total neglect both

of his young Queen, Carolina Matilda, and of the interest of his distant

dominions, while in Paris, created a feeling in the Queen's mind towards

that house which was not a little heightened by her disgust at the King

of Sweden, when he visited the Court of Versailles. This King, though

much more crafty than his brother-in-law, the King of Denmark, who

revelled openly in his depravities, was not less vicious. The deception

he made use of in usurping part of the rights of his people, combined

with the worthlessness and duplicity, of his private conduct, excited a

strong indignation in the mind of Marie Antoinette, of which she was

scarcely capable of withholding the expression in his presence.

"It was during the visit of the Duke and Duchess of the North, that the

Cardinal de Rohan again appeared upon the scene. For eight or ten years

he had never been allowed to show himself at Court, and had been totally

shut out of every society where the Queen visited. On the arrival of the

illustrious, travellers at Versailles, the Queen, at her own expense,

gave them a grand fete at her private palace, in the gardens of Trianon,

similar to the one given by the Comte de Provence--[Afterwards Louis

XVIII.]--to Her Majesty, in the gardens of Brunoi.

"On the eve of the fete, the Cardinal waited upon, me to know if he would

be permitted to appear there in the character he had the honour to hold

at Court, I replied that I had made it a rule never to interfere in the

private or public amusements of the Court, and that His Eminence must be

the best judge how far he, could obtrude himself upon the Queen's private

parties, to which only a select number had been invited, in consequence

of the confined spot where the fete was to be given.

"The Cardinal left me, not much satisfied at his reception. Determined

to follow, as usual, his own misguided passion, he immediately went too

Trianon, disguised with a large cloak. He saw the porter, and bribed

him. He only wished, he said, to be placed in a situation whence he

might see the Duke and Duchess of the North without being seen; but no

sooner did he perceive the porter engaged at some distance than he left

his cloak at the lodge, and went forward in his Cardinal's dress, as if

he had been one of the invited guests, placing himself purposely in the

Queen's path to attract her attention as she rode by in the carriage with

the Duke and Duchess.

"The Queen was shocked and thunderstruck at seeing him. But, great as

was her annoyance, knowing the Cardinal had not been invited and ought

not to have been there, she only discharged the porter who had been

seduced to let him in; and, though the King, on being made acquainted

with his treachery, would have banished His Eminence a hundred leagues

from the capital, yet the Queen, the royal aunts, the Princesse

Elizabeth, and myself, not to make the affair public, and thereby

disgrace the high order of his ecclesiastical dignity, prevented the King

from exercising his authority by commanding instant exile.

"Indeed, the Queen could never get the better of her fears of being some

day, or in some way or other, betrayed by the Cardinal, for having made

him the confidant of the mortification she would have suffered if the

projected marriage of Louis XV. and her sister had been solemnized. On

this account she uniformly opposed whatever harshness the King at any

time intended against the Cardinal.

"Thus was this wicked prelate left at leisure to premeditate the horrid

plot of the famous necklace, the ever memorable fraud, which so fatally

verified the presentiments of the Queen."

SECTION II.

[The production of 'Le Mariage de Figaro', by Beaumarchais, upon the

stage at Paris, so replete with indecorous and slanderous allusions to

the Royal Family, had spread the prejudices against the Queen through the

whole kingdom and every rank of France, just in time to prepare all minds

for the deadly blow which Her Majesty received from the infamous plot of

the diamond necklace. From this year, crimes and misfortunes trod

closely on each others' heels in the history of the ill-starred Queen;

and one calamity only disappeared to make way for a greater.

The destruction of the papers which would have thoroughly explained the

transaction has still left all its essential particulars in some degree

of mystery; and the interest of the clergy, who supported one of their

own body, coupled with the arts and bribes of the high houses connected

with the plotting prelate, must, of course, have discoloured greatly even

what was well known.

It will be recollected that before the accession of Louis XVI. the

Cardinal de Rohan was disgraced in consequence of his intrigues; that all

his ingenuity was afterwards unremittingly exerted to obtain renewed

favour; that he once obtruded himself upon the notice of the Queen in the

gardens of Trianon, and that his conduct in so doing excited the

indignation it deserved, but was left unpunished owing to the entreaties

of the best friends of the Queen, and her own secret horror of a man who

had already caused her so much anguish.

With the histories of the fraud every one is acquainted. That of Madame

Campan, as far as it goes, is sufficiently detailed and correct to spare

me the necessity of expatiating upon this theme of villany. Yet, to

assist the reader's memory, before returning to the Journal of the

Princesse de Lamballe, I shall recapitulate the leading particulars.

The Cardinal had become connected with a young, but artful and

necessitous, woman, of the name of Lamotte. It was known that the

darling ambition of the Cardinal was to regain the favour of the Queen.

The necklace, which has been already spoken of, and which was originally

destined by Louis XV. for Marie Antoinette--had her hand, by divorce,

been transferred to him--but which, though afterwards intended by Louis

XV. for his mistress, Du Barry, never came to her in consequence of his

death--this fatal necklace was still in existence, and in the possession

of the crown jewellers, Boehmer and Bassange. It was valued at eighteen

hundred thousand livres. The jewellers had often pressed it upon the

Queen, and even the King himself had enforced its acceptance. But the

Queen dreaded the expense, especially at an epoch of pecuniary difficulty

in the State, much more than she coveted the jewels, and uniformly and

resolutely declined them, although they had been proposed to her on very

easy terms of payment, as she really did not like ornaments.

It was made to appear at the parliamentary investigation that the artful

Lamotte had impelled the Cardinal to believe that she herself was in

communication with the Queen; that she had interested Her Majesty in

favour of the long slighted Cardinal; that she had fabricated a

correspondence, in which professions of penitence on the part of De Rohan

were answered by assurances of forgiveness from the Queen. The result of

this correspondence was represented to be the engagement of the Cardinal

to negotiate the purchase of the necklace secretly, by a contract for

periodical payments. To the forgery of papers was added, it was

declared, the substitution of the Queen's person, by dressing up a girl

of the Palais Royal to represent Her Majesty, whom she in some degree

resembled, in a secret and rapid interview with Rohan in a dark grove of

the gardens of Versailles, where she was to give the Cardinal a rose, in

token of her royal approbation, and then hastily disappear. The

importunity of the jewellers, on the failure of the stipulated payment,

disclosed the plot. A direct appeal of theirs to the Queen, to save them

from ruin, was the immediate source of detection. The Cardinal was

arrested, and all the parties tried. But the Cardinal was acquitted, and

Lamotte and a subordinate agent alone punished. The quack Cagliostro was

also in the plot, but he, too, escaped, like his confederate, the

Cardinal, who was made to appear as the dupe of Lamotte.

The Queen never got over the effect of this affair. Her friends well

knew the danger of severe measures towards one capable of collecting

around him strong support against a power already so much weakened by

faction and discord. But the indignation of conscious innocence

insulted, prevailed, though to its ruin!

But it is time to let the Princesse de Lamballe give her own impressions

upon this fatal subject, and in her own words.]

"How could Messieurs Boehmer and Bassange presume that the Queen would

have employed any third person to obtain an article of such value,

without enabling them to produce an unequivocal document signed by her

own hand and countersigned by mine, as had ever been the rule during my

superintendence of the household, whenever anything was ordered from the

jewellers by Her Majesty? Why did not Messieurs Boehmer and Bassange

wait on me, when they saw a document unauthorised by me, and so widely

departing from the established forms? I must still think, as I have

often said to the King, that Boehmer and Bassange wished to get rid of

this dead weight of diamonds in any way; and the Queen having

unfortunately been led by me to hush up many foul libels against her

reputation, as I then thought it prudent she should do, rather than

compromise her character with wretches capable of doing anything to

injure her, these jewellers, judging from this erroneous policy of the

past, imagined that in this instance, also, rather than hazard exposure,

Her Majesty would pay them for the necklace. This was a compromise which

I myself resisted, though so decidedly adverse to bringing the affair

before the nation by a public trial. Of such an explosion, I foresaw the

consequences, and I ardently entreated the King and Queen to take other

measures. But, though till now so hostile to severity with the Cardinal,

the Queen felt herself so insulted by the proceeding that she gave up

every other consideration to make manifest her innocence.

"The wary Comte de Vergennes did all he could to prevent the affair from

getting before the public. Against the opinion of the King and the whole

council of Ministers, he opposed judicial proceedings. Not that he

conceived the Cardinal altogether guiltless; but he foresaw the fatal

consequences that must result to Her Majesty, from bringing to trial an

ecclesiastic of such rank; for he well knew that the host of the higher

orders of the nobility, to whom the prelate was allied, would naturally

strain every point to blacken the character of the King and Queen, as the

only means of exonerating their kinsman in the eyes of the world from the

criminal mystery attached to that most diabolical intrigue against the

fair fame of Marie Antoinette. The Count could not bear the idea of the

Queen's name being coupled with those of the vile wretches, Lamotte and

the mountebank Cagliostro, and therefore wished the King to chastise the

Cardinal by a partial exile, which might have been removed at pleasure.

But the Queen's party too fatally seconded her feelings, and prevailed.

"I sat by Her Majesty's bedside the whole of the night, after I heard

what had been determined against the Cardinal by the council of

Ministers, to beg her to use all her interest with the King to persuade

him to revoke the order of the warrant for the prelate's arrest. To this

the Queen replied, 'Then the King, the Ministers, and the people, will

all deem me guilty.'

"Her Majesty's remark stopped all farther argument upon the subject, and

I had the inconsolable grief to see my royal mistress rushing upon

dangers which I had no power of preventing her from bringing upon

herself.

"The slanderers who had imputed such unbounded influence to the Queen

over the mind of Louis XVI. should have been consistent enough to

consider that, with but a twentieth part of the tithe of her imputed

power, uncontrolled as she then was by national authority, she might,

without any exposure to third persons, have at once sent one of her pages

to the garde-meuble and other royal depositaries, replete with hidden

treasures of precious stones which never saw the light, and thence have

supplied herself with more than enough to form ten necklaces, or to have

fully satisfied, in any way she liked, the most unbounded passion for

diamonds, for the use of which she would never have been called to

account.

"But the truth is, the Queen had no love of ornaments. A proof occurred

very soon after I had the honour to be nominated Her Majesty's

superintendent. On the day of the great fete of the Cordon Bleu, when it

was the etiquette to wear diamonds and pearls, the Queen had omitted

putting them on. As there had been a greater affluence of visitors than

usual that morning, and Her Majesty's toilet was overthronged by Princes

and Princesses, I fancied in the bustle that the omission proceeded from

forgetfulness. Consequently, I sent the tirewoman, in the Queen's

hearing, to order the jewels to be brought in. Smilingly, Her Majesty

replied, 'No, no! I have not forgotten these gaudy things; but I do not

intend that the lustre of my eyes should be outshone by the one, or the

whiteness of my teeth by the other; however, as you wish art to eclipse

nature, I'll wear them to satisfy you, ma belle dame!'

"The King was always so thoroughly indulgent to Her Majesty, with regard

both to her public and private conduct, that she never had any pretext

for those reserves which sometimes tempt Queens as well as the wives of

private individuals to commit themselves to third persons for articles of

high value, which their caprice indiscreetly impels them to procure

unknown to their natural guardians. Marie Antoinette had no reproach or

censure for plunging into excesses beyond her means to apprehend from her

royal husband. On the contrary, the King himself had spontaneously

offered to purchase the necklace from the jewellers, who had urged it on

him without limiting any time for payment. It was the intention of His

Majesty to have liquidated it out of his private purse. But Marie

Antoinette declined the gift. Twice in my presence was the refusal

repeated before Messieurs Boehmer and Bassange. Who, then, can for a

moment presume, after all these circumstances, that the Queen of France,

with a nation's wealth at her feet and thousands of individuals offering

her millions, which she never accepted, would have so far degraded

herself and the honour of the nation, of which she was born to be the

ornament, as to place herself gratuitously in the power of a knot of

wretches, headed by a man whose general bad character for years had

excluded him from Court and every respectable society, and had made the

Queen herself mark him as an object of the utmost aversion.

"If these circumstances be not sufficient adequately to open the eyes of

those whom prejudice has blinded, and whose ears have been deafened

against truth, by the clamours of sinister conspirators against the

monarchy instead of the monarchs; if all these circumstances, I repeat,

do not completely acquit the Queen, argument, or even ocular

demonstration itself, would be thrown away. Posterity will judge

impartially, and with impartial judges the integrity of Marie Antoinette

needs no defender.

"When the natural tendency of the character of De Rohan to romantic and

extraordinary intrigue is considered in connection with the associates he

had gathered around him, the plot of the necklace ceases to be a source

of wonder. At the time the Cardinal was most at a loss for means to meet

the necessities of his extravagance, and to obtain some means of access

to the Queen, the mountebank quack, Cagliostro, made his appearance in

France. His fame had soon flown from Strasburg to Paris, the magnet of

vices and the seat of criminals. The Prince-Cardinal, known of old as a

seeker after everything of notoriety, soon became the intimate of one who

flattered him with the accomplishment of all his dreams in the

realization of the philosopher's stone; converting puffs and French paste

into brilliants; Roman pearls into Oriental ones; and turning earth to

gold. The Cardinal, always in want of means to supply the insatiable

exigencies of his ungovernable vices, had been the dupe through life of

his own credulity--a drowning man catching at a straw! But instead of

making gold of base materials, Cagliostro's brass soon relieved his blind

adherent of all his sterling metal. As many needy persons enlisted under

the banners of this nostrum speculator, it is not to be wondered at that

the infamous name of the Comtesse de Lamotte, and others of the same

stamp, should have thus fallen into an association of the Prince-Cardinal

or that her libellous stories of the Queen of France should have found

eager promulgators, where the real diamonds of the famous necklace being

taken apart were divided piecemeal among a horde of the most depraved

sharpers that ever existed to make human nature blush at its own

degradation!

[Cagliostro, when he came to Rome, for I know not whether there had been

any previous intimacy, got acquainted with a certain Marchese Vivaldi, a

Roman, whose wife had been for years the chere amie of the last Venetian

Ambassador, Peter Pesaro, a noble patrician, and who has ever since his

embassy at Rome been his constant companion and now resides with him in

England. No men in Europe are more constant in their attachments than

the Venetians. Pesaro is the sole proprietor of one of the moat

beautiful and magnificent palaces on the Grand Canal at Venice, though he

now lives in the outskirts of London, in a small house, not so large as

one of the offices of his immense noble palace, where his agent transacts

his business. The husband of Pesaro's chere amie, the Marchese Vivaldi,

when Cagliostro was arrested and sent to the Castello Santo Angelo at

Rome, was obliged to fly his country, and went to Venice, where he was

kept secreted and maintained by the Marquis Solari, and it was only

through his means and those of the Cardinal Consalvi, then known only as

the musical Abbe Consalvi, from his great attachment to the immortal

Cimarosa, that Vivaldi was ever allowed to return to his native country;

but Consalvi, who was the friend of Vivaldi, feeling with the Marquis

Solari much interested for his situation, they together contrived to

convince Pius VI. that he was more to be pitied than blamed, and thus

obtained his recall. I have merely given this note as a further warning

to be drawn from the connections of the Cardinal de Rohan, to deter

hunters after novelty from forming ties with innovators and impostors.

Cagliostro was ultimately condemned, by the Roman laws under Pope Pius

VI., for life, to the galleys, where he died.

Proverbs ought to be respected; for it is said that no phrase becomes a

proverb until after a century's experience of its truth. In England it is

proverbial to judge of men by the company they keep. Judge of the

Cardinal de Rohan from his most intimate friend, the galley-slave.]

"Eight or ten years had elapsed from the time Her Majesty had last seen

the Cardinal to speak to him, with the exception of the casual glance as

she drove by when he furtively introduced himself into the garden at the

fete at Trianon, till he was brought to the King's cabinet when arrested,

and interrogated, and confronted with her face to face. The Prince

started when he saw her. The comparison of her features with those of

the guilty wretch who had dared to personate her in the garden at

Versailles completely destroyed his self-possession. Her Majesty's

person was become fuller, and her face was much longer than that of the

infamous D'Oliva. He could neither speak nor write an intelligible reply

to the questions put to him. All he could utter, and that only in broken

accents, was, 'I'll pay! I'll pay Messieurs Bassange.'

"Had he not speedily recovered himself, all the mystery in which this

affair has been left, so injuriously to the Queen, might have been

prevented. His papers would have declared the history of every

particular, and distinctly established the extent of his crime and the

thorough innocence of Marie Antoinette of any connivance at the fraud, or

any knowledge of the necklace. But when the Cardinal was ordered by the

King's Council to be put under arrest, his self-possession returned. He

was given in charge to an officer totally unacquainted with the nature of

the accusation. Considering only the character of his prisoner as one of

the highest dignitaries of the Church, from ignorance and inexperience,

he left the Cardinal an opportunity to write a German note to his

factotum, the Abbe Georgel. In this note the trusty secretary was

ordered to destroy all the letters of Cagliostro, Madame de Lamotte, and

the other wretched associates of the infamous conspiracy; and the traitor

was scarcely in custody when every evidence of his treason had

disappeared. The note to Georgel saved his master from expiating his

offence at the Place de Grave.

"The consequences of the affair would have been less injurious, however,

had it been managed, even as it stood, with better judgment and temper.

But it was improperly entrusted to the Baron de Breteuil and the Abbe

Vermond, both sworn enemies of the Cardinal. Their main object was the

ruin of him they hated, and they listened only to their resentments. They

never weighed the danger of publicly prosecuting an individual whose

condemnation would involve the first families in France, for he was

allied even to many of the Princes of the blood. They should have

considered that exalted personages, naturally feeling as if any crime

proved against their kinsman would be a stain upon themselves, would of

course resort to every artifice to exonerate the accused. To criminate

the Queen was the only and the obvious method. Few are those nearest the

Crown who are not most jealous of its wearers! Look at the long civil

wars of York and Lancaster, and the short reign of Richard. The downfall

of Kings meets less resistance than that of their inferiors.

"Still, notwithstanding all the deplorable blunders committed in this

business of De Rohan, justice was not smothered without great difficulty.

His acquittal cost the families of De Rohan and De Conde more than a

million of livres, distributed among all ranks of the clergy; besides

immense sums sent to the Court of Rome to make it invalidate the judgment

of the civil authority of France upon so high a member of the Church, and

to induce it to order the Cardinal's being sent to Rome by way of

screening him from the prosecution, under the plausible pretext of more

rigid justice.

"Considerable sums in money and jewels were also lavished on all the

female relatives of the peers of France, who were destined to sit on the

trial. The Abbe Georgel bribed the press, and extravagantly paid all the

literary pens in France to produce the most Jesuitical and sophisticated

arguments in his patron's justification. Though these writers dared not

accuse or in any way criminate the Queen, yet the respectful doubts, with

which their defence of her were seasoned, did indefinitely more mischief

than any direct attack, which could have been directly answered.

"The long cherished, but till now smothered, resentment of the Comtesse

de Noailles, the scrupulous Madame Etiquette, burst forth on this

occasion. Openly joining the Cardinal's party against her former

mistress and Sovereign, she recruited and armed all in favour of her

protege; for it was by her intrigues De Rohan had been nominated

Ambassador to Vienna. Mesdames de Guemenee and Marsan, rival pretenders

to favours of His Eminence, were equally earnest to support him against

the Queen. In short, there was scarcely a family of distinction in

France that, from the libels which then inundated the kingdom, did not

consider the King as having infringed on their prerogatives and

privileges in accusing the Cardinal.

"Shortly after the acquittal of this most artful, and, in the present

instance, certainly too fortunate prelate, the Princesse de Conde came to

congratulate me on the Queen's innocence, and her kinsman's liberation

from the Bastille.

"Without the slightest observation, I produced to the Princess documents

in proof of the immense sums she alone had expended in bribing the judges

and other persons, to save her relation, the Cardinal, by criminating Her

Majesty.

"The Princesse de Conde instantly fell into violent hysterics, and was

carried home apparently, lifeless.

"I have often reproached myself for having given that sudden shock and

poignant anguish to Her Highness, but I could not have supposed that one

who came so barefacedly to impress me with the Cardinal's innocence,

could have been less firm in refuting her own guilt.

"I never mentioned the circumstance to the Queen. Had I done so, Her

Highness would have been forever excluded from the Court and the royal

presence. This was no time to increase the enemies of Her Majesty, and,

the affair of the trial being ended, I thought it best to prevent any

further breach from a discord between the Court and the house of Conde.

However, from a coldness subsisting ever after between the Princess and

myself, I doubt not that the Queen had her suspicions that all was not as

it should be in that quarter. Indeed, though Her Majesty never confessed

it, I think she herself had discovered something at that very time not

altogether to the credit of the Princesse de Conde, for she ceased going,

from that period, to any of the fetes given at Chantilly.

"These were but a small portion of the various instruments successfully

levelled by parties, even the least suspected, to blacken and destroy the

fair fame of Marie Antoinette.

"The document which so justly alarmed the Princesse de Conde, when I

showed it to her came into my hands in the following manner:

"Whenever a distressed family, or any particular individual, applied to

me for relief, or was otherwise recommended for charitable purposes, I

generally sent my little English protegee--whose veracity, well knowing

the goodness of her heart, I could rely--to ascertain whether their

claims were really well grounded.

[Indeed, I never deceived the Princess on these occasions. She was so

generously charitable that I should have conceived it a crime. When I

could get no satisfactory information, I said I could not trace anything

undeserving her charity, and left Her Highness to exercise her own

discretion.]

"One day I received an earnest memorial from a family, desiring to make

some private communications of peculiar delicacy. I sent my usual

ambassadress to inquire into its import. On making her mission known,

she found no difficulty in ascertaining the object of the application. It

proceeded from conscientious distress of mind. A relation of this family

had been the regular confessor of a convent. With the Lady Abbess of

this convent and her trusty nuns, the Princesse de Conde had deposited

considerable sums of money, to be bestowed in creating influence in

favour of the Cardinal de Rohan. The confessor, being a man of some

consideration among the clergy, was applied to, to use his influence with

the needier members of the Church more immediately about him, as well as

those of higher station, to whom he had access, in furthering the

purposes of the Princesse de Conde. The bribes were applied as intended.

But, at the near approach of death, the confessor was struck with

remorse. He begged his family, without mentioning his name, to send the

accounts and vouchers of the sums he had so distributed, to me, as a

proof of his contrition, that I might make what use of them I should

think proper. The papers were handed to my messenger, who pledged her

word of honour that I would certainly adhere to the dying man's last

injunctions. She desired they might be sealed up by the family, and by

them directed to me.--[To this day, I neither know the name of the

convent or the confessor.]--She then hastened back to our place of

rendezvous, where I waited for her, and where she consigned the packet

into my own hands.

"That part of the papers which compromised only the Princesse de Conde

was shown by me to the Princess on the occasion I have mentioned. It was

natural enough that she should have been shocked at the detection of

having suborned the clergy and others with heavy bribes to avert the

deserved fate of the Cardinal. I kept this part of the packet secret

till the King's two aunts, who had also been warm advocates in favour of

the prelate, left Paris for Rome. Then, as Pius VI. had interested

himself as head of the Church for the honour of one of its members, I

gave them these very papers to deliver to His Holiness for his private

perusal. I was desirous of enabling this truly charitable and Christian

head of our sacred religion to judge how far his interference was

justified by facts. I am thoroughly convinced that, had he been sooner

furnished with these evidences, instead of blaming the royal proceeding,

he would have urged it on, nay, would himself have been the first to

advise that the foul conspiracy should be dragged into open day.