and would be much more dangerous when they
apprised the public of the means she had used to suppress it.

Baron d'Aubier, gentleman-in-ordinary to the King, and my particular
friend, had a good memory and a clear way of communicating the substance
of the debates and decrees of the National Assembly. I went daily to the
Queen's apartments to repeat all this to the King, who used to say, on
seeing me, "Ah! here's the Postillon par Calais,"--a newspaper of the
time.

M. d'Aubier one day said to me: "The Assembly has been much occupied with
an information laid by the workmen of the Sevres manufactory. They
brought to the President's office a bundle of pamphlets which they said
were the life of Marie Antoinette. The director of the manufactory was
ordered up to the bar, and declared he had received orders to burn the
printed sheets in question in the furnaces used for baking his china."

While I was relating this business to the Queen the King coloured and held
his head down over his plate. The Queen said to him, "Do you know
anything about this, Sire?" The King made no answer. Madame Elisabeth
requested him to explain what it meant. Louis was still silent. I
withdrew hastily. A few minutes afterwards the Queen came to my room and
informed me that the King, out of regard for her, had purchased the whole
edition struck off from the manuscript which I had mentioned to her, and
that M. de Laporte had not been able to devise any more secret way of
destroying the work than that of having it burnt at Sevres, among two
hundred workmen, one hundred and eighty of whom must, in all probability,
be Jacobins! She told me she had concealed her vexation from the King;
that he was in consternation, and that she could say nothing, since his
good intentions and his affection for her had been the cause of the
mistake.

[M. de Laporte had by order of the King bought up the whole edition of the
"Memoirs" of the notorious Madame de Lamotte against the Queen. Instead
of destroying them immediately, he shut them up in one of the closets in
his house, The alarming and rapid growth of the rebellion, the arrogance
of the crowd of brigands, who in great measure composed the populace of
Paris, and the fresh excesses daily resulting from it, rendered the
intendant of the civil list apprehensive that some mob might break into
his house, carry off these "Memoirs," and spread them among the public.
In order to prevent this he gave orders to h