hers
agreed upon. I assisted her in finding the letters, and frequently I made
an exact copy for her of all that she had ciphered, without knowing a
single word of its meaning.

There were always several secret committees in Paris occupied in
collecting information for the King respecting the measures of the
factions, and in influencing some of the committees of the Assembly. M.
Bertrand de Molleville was in close correspondence with the Queen. The
King employed M. Talon and others; much money was expended through the
latter channel for the secret measures. The Queen had no confidence in
them. M. de Laporte, minister of the civil list and of the household,
also attempted to give a bias to public opinion by means of hireling
publications; but these papers influenced none but the royalist party,
which did not need influencing. M. de Laporte had a private police which
gave him some useful information.

I determined to sacrifice myself to my duty, but by no means to any
intrigue, and I thought that, circumstanced as I was, I ought to confine
myself to obeying the Queen's orders. I frequently sent off couriers to
foreign countries, and they were never discovered, so many precautions did
I take. I am indebted for the preservation of my own existence to the
care I took never to admit any deputy to my abode, and to refuse all
interviews which even people of the highest importance often requested of
me; but this line of conduct exposed me to every species of ill-will, and
on the same day I saw myself denounced by Prud'homme, in his 'Gazette
Revolutionnaire', as capable of making an aristocrat of the mother of the
Gracchi, if a person so dangerous as myself could have got into her
household; and by Gauthier's Gazette Royaliste, as a monarchist, a
constitutionalist, more dangerous to the Queen's interests than a Jacobin.

At this period an event with which I had nothing to do placed me in a
still more critical situation. My brother, M. Genet, began his diplomatic
career successfully. At eighteen he was attached to the embassy to
Vienna; at twenty he was appointed chief secretary of Legation in England,
on occasion of the peace of 1783. A memorial which he presented to M. de
Vergennes upon the dangers of the treaty of commerce then entered into
with England gave offence to M. de Calonne, a patron of that treaty, and
particularly to M. Gerard de Rayneval, chief clerk for foreign affairs.
So long as M. de Vergennes lived,