influence the best prospect of attaining their end.  One of the least respectable of the French nobles was the Duc d’Aiguillon.  As Governor of Brittany, he had behaved with notorious cowardice in the Seven Years’ War.  He had since been, if possible, still more dishonored by charges of oppression, peculation, and subornation, on which the authorities of the province had prosecuted him, and which the Parisian Parliament had pronounced to be established.  But no kind of infamy was a barrier to the favor of Louis xv.  He cancelled the resolution of the Parliament, and showed such countenance to the culprit that d’Aiguillon, who was both ambitious and covetous, conceived the idea of supplanting Choiseul in the Government.  As one of Choiseul’s principal measures had been the negotiation of the dauphin’s marriage, Marie Antoinette was known to regard him with a good-will which was founded on gratitude.  But, unfortunately, her feelings on this point were not shared by her husband; for Choiseul had had notorious differences with his father, the late dauphin, and, though it was perfectly certain that that prince had died of natural disease, people had been found to whisper in his son’s ear suspicions that he had been poisoned, and that the minister to whom he was unfriendly had been concerned in his death.

The two plots, therefore, to overthrow the minister and to weaken the influence of the dauphiness, went hand-in-hand, and, as might have been expected from the character of the patroness of both, no means were too vile or wicked for the intriguers who had set them on foot.  Madame du Barri was, indeed, seriously alarmed for the maintenance of her own ascendency.  The king took such undisguised pleasure in his new granddaughter’s company, that some of the most experienced courtiers began to anticipate that she would soon gain entire influence over him[6].  The mistress began, therefore, to disparage her personal charms, never speaking of her to Louis ("France,” as she generally called him), except as “the little blowsy,[7]” while her ally, De la Vauguyon, endeavored to further her views by exerting the influence which he mistakenly flattered himself that he still retained over the dauphin, to surround her with his own creatures.  He tried to procure the dismissal of the Abbe de Vermond, who, having been, as we have seen, the tutor of Marie Antoinette at Vienna, still remained attached to her person as her reader; and whose complete knowledge of all the ways of the court, joined to a thorough honesty and devoted fidelity to her best interests, rendered his services most valuable to his mistress in her new sphere.  He sought to recommend a creature of his own as her confessor; to obtain for his own daughter the appointment of one of her chief ladies; and, with a wickedness peculiar to the French court, he even endeavored to imitate the vile arts by which the Duc de Richelieu had deprived Marie Leczinska of the affections of the king, to