ries, she determined to give me three hundred louis.

I bathed the Queen's hands with tears at the moment of this sorrowful
separation; and, having money at my disposal, I declined accepting her
gold. I did not dread the road I had to travel in order to rejoin her;
all my apprehension was that by treachery or miscalculation a scheme, the
safety of which was not sufficiently clear to me, should fail. I could
answer for all those who belonged to the service immediately about the
Queen's person, and I was right; but her wardrobe woman gave me
well-founded reason for alarm. I mentioned to the Queen many
revolutionary remarks which this woman had made to me a few days before.
Her office was directly under the control of the first femme de chambre,
yet she had refused to obey the directions I gave her, talking insolently
to me about "hierarchy overturned, equality among men," of course more
especially among persons holding offices at Court; and this jargon, at
that time in the mouths of all the partisans of the Revolution, was
terminated by an observation which frightened me. "You know many
important secrets, madame," said this woman to me, "and I have guessed
quite as many. I am not a fool; I see all that is going forward here in
consequence of the bad advice given to the King and Queen; I could
frustrate it all if I chose." This argument, in which I had been promptly
silenced, left me pale and trembling. Unfortunately, as I began my
narrative to the Queen with particulars of this woman's refusal to obey
me,--and sovereigns are all their lives importuned with complaints upon
the rights of places,--she believed that my own dissatisfaction had much
to do with the step I was taking; and she did not sufficiently fear the
woman. Her office, although a very inferior one, brought her in nearly
fifteen thousand francs a year. Still young, tolerably handsome, with
comfortable apartments in the entresols of the Tuileries, she saw a great
deal of company, and in the evening had assemblies, consisting of deputies
of the revolutionary party. M. de Gouvion, major-general of the National
Guard, passed almost every day with her; and it is to be presumed that she
had long worked for the party in opposition to the Court. The Queen asked
her for the key of a door which led to the principal vestibule of the
Tuileries, telling her she wished to have a similar one, that she might
not be under the necessity of going out through the pavili