retirement, and at last changed into strong prejudice against him. He
wrote too much about the measures he would have pursued, and the benefits
that would have resulted to the State from them. The ministers who
succeeded him thought their operations embarrassed by the care that M.
Necker and his partisans incessantly took to occupy the public with his
plans; his friends were too ardent. The Queen discerned a party spirit in
these combinations, and sided wholly with his enemies.

After those inefficient comptrollers-general, Messieurs Joly de Fleury and
d'Ormesson, it became necessary to resort to a man of more acknowledged
talent, and the Queen's friends, at that time combining with the Comte
d'Artois and with M. de Vergennes, got M. de Calonne appointed. The Queen
was highly displeased, and her close intimacy with the Duchesse de
Polignac began to suffer for this.

Her Majesty, continuing to converse with me upon the difficulties she had
met with in private life, told me that ambitious men without merit
sometimes found means to gain their ends by dint of importunity, and that
she had to blame herself for having procured M. d'Adhemar's appointment to
the London embassy, merely because he teased her into it at the Duchess's
house. She added, however, that it was at a time of perfect peace with
the English; that the Ministry knew the inefficiency of M. d'Adhemar as
well as she did, and that he could do neither harm nor good.

Often in conversations of unreserved frankness the Queen owned that she
had purchased rather dearly a piece of experience which would make her
carefully watch over the conduct of her daughters-in-law, and that she
would be particularly scrupulous about the qualifications of the ladies
who might attend them; that no consideration of rank or favour should bias
her in so important a choice. She attributed several of her youthful
mistakes to a lady of great levity, whom she found in her palace on her
arrival in France. She also determined to forbid the Princesses coming
under her control the practice of singing with professors, and said,
candidly, and with as much severity as her slanderers could have done, "I
ought to have heard Garat sing, and never to have sung duets with him."

The indiscreet zeal of Monsieur Augeard contributed to the public belief
that the Queen disposed of all the offices of finance. He had, without
any authority for doing so, required the committee of fermiers-general to