er
mistress and Sovereign, she recruited and armed all in favour of her
protege; for it was by her intrigues De Rohan had been nominated
Ambassador to Vienna. Mesdames de Guemenee and Marsan, rival pretenders
to favours of His Eminence, were equally earnest to support him against
the Queen. In short, there was scarcely a family of distinction in
France that, from the libels which then inundated the kingdom, did not
consider the King as having infringed on their prerogatives and
privileges in accusing the Cardinal.

"Shortly after the acquittal of this most artful, and, in the present
instance, certainly too fortunate prelate, the Princesse de Conde came to
congratulate me on the Queen's innocence, and her kinsman's liberation
from the Bastille.

"Without the slightest observation, I produced to the Princess documents
in proof of the immense sums she alone had expended in bribing the judges
and other persons, to save her relation, the Cardinal, by criminating Her
Majesty.

"The Princesse de Conde instantly fell into violent hysterics, and was
carried home apparently, lifeless.

"I have often reproached myself for having given that sudden shock and
poignant anguish to Her Highness, but I could not have supposed that one
who came so barefacedly to impress me with the Cardinal's innocence,
could have been less firm in refuting her own guilt.

"I never mentioned the circumstance to the Queen. Had I done so, Her
Highness would have been forever excluded from the Court and the royal
presence. This was no time to increase the enemies of Her Majesty, and,
the affair of the trial being ended, I thought it best to prevent any
further breach from a discord between the Court and the house of Conde.
However, from a coldness subsisting ever after between the Princess and
myself, I doubt not that the Queen had her suspicions that all was not as
it should be in that quarter. Indeed, though Her Majesty never confessed
it, I think she herself had discovered something at that very time not
altogether to the credit of the Princesse de Conde, for she ceased going,
from that period, to any of the fetes given at Chantilly.

"These were but a small portion of the various instruments successfully
levelled by parties, even the least suspected, to blacken and destroy the
fair fame of Marie Antoinette.

"The document which so justly alarmed the Princesse de Conde, when I
showed it to her came into my hands in the following manner:

"