aunts, who were on
very intimate terms with the ambassador, adopted his opinion, and the
conduct of the King and Queen was equally and loudly censured in the
apartments of Versailles and in the hotels and coffee-houses of Paris.

Madame, the King's sister-in-law, had been the sole protectress of De
Lamotte, and had confined her patronage to granting her a pension of
twelve to fifteen hundred francs. Her brother was in the navy, but the
Marquis de Chabert, to whom he had been recommended, could never train a
good officer. The Queen in vain endeavoured to call to mind the features
of this person, of whom she had often heard as an intriguing woman, who
came frequently on Sundays to the gallery of Versailles. At the time when
all France was engrossed by the persecution against the Cardinal, the
portrait of the Comtesse de Lamotte Valois was publicly sold. Her
Majesty desired me one day, when I was going to Paris, to buy her the
engraving, which was said to be a tolerable likeness, that she might
ascertain whether she could recognise in it any person whom she might have
seen in the gallery.

[The public, with the exception of the lowest class, were admitted into
the gallery and larger apartments of Versailles, as they were into the
park.--MADAME CAMPAN.]

The woman De Lamotte's father was a peasant at Auteuil, though he called
himself Valois. Madame de Boulainvilliers once saw from her terrace two
pretty little peasant girls, each labouring under a heavy bundle of
sticks. The priest of the village, who was walking with her, told her
that the children possessed some curious papers, and that he had no doubt
they were descendants of a Valois, an illegitimate son of one of the
princes of that name.

The family of Valois had long ceased to appear in the world. Hereditary
vices had gradually plunged them into the deepest misery. I have heard
that the last Valois then known occupied the estate called Gros Bois; that
as he seldom came to Court, Louis XIII. asked him what he was about that
he remained so constantly in the country; and that this M. de Valois
merely answered, "Sire, I only do there what I ought." It was shortly
afterwards discovered that he was coining.

Neither the Queen herself nor any one near her ever had the slightest
connection with the woman De Lamotte; and during her prosecution she could
point out but one of the Queen's servants, named Desclos, a valet of the
Queen's bedchamber, to whom she pre