“This alone was wanting to calumniate me!  You seem to suppose that I am capable of causing you to be assassinated!” and she burst into tears.  Dumouriez was as agitated as she was.  “God forbid,” he replied, “that I should do you such an injustice!” And he added some flattering expressions of attachment, such as he thought calculated to soothe a mind so proud, yet so crushed.  And presently she calmed herself, and came up to him, putting her hand on his arm; and he resumed:  “Believe me, madame, I have no object in deceiving you; I abhor anarchy and crime as much as you do.  Believe me, I have experience; I am better placed than your majesty for judging of events.  This is not a short-lived popular movement, as you seem to think.  It is the almost unanimous insurrection of a great nation against inveterate abuses.  There are great factions which fan this flame.  In all factions there are many scoundrels and many madmen.  In the Revolution I see nothing but the king and the entire nation.  Every thing which tends to separate them tends to their mutual ruin:  I am laboring as much as I can to reunite them.  It is for you to help me.  If I am an obstacle to your designs, and if you persist in thinking so, tell me so. and I will at once send in my resignation to the king, and will retire into a corner to grieve over the fate of my country and of you.”  And he concludes his narrative by expressing his belief that he had regained the queen’s confidence by his frank explanation of his views, while he himself in his turn was evidently fascinated by the affability with which, after a brief further conversation, she dismissed him.[9] Though, if we may trust Madame de Campan, Marie Antoinette was not as satisfied as she had seemed to be, but declared that it was not possible for her to place confidence in his protestations when she recollected his former language and acts, and the party with which he was even now acting.

Madame de Campan probably gives a more correct report of the queen’s feelings than the general himself, whom the consciousness of his own integrity of purpose very probably misled into believing that he had convinced her of it.  But, though, if Marie Antoinette did listen to his professions and advice with some degree of mistrust, she undoubtedly did him less than justice:  she can hardly be blamed for indulging such a feeling, when it is remembered in what an atmosphere of treachery she had lived for the last three years.  Undoubtedly Dumouriez, though not a thorough-going Royalist like M. Bertrand, was not only in intention an honest and friendly counselor, but was by far the ablest adviser who had had access to her since the death of Mirabeau, and in one respect was a more judicious and trustworthy adviser than even that brilliant and fertile statesman; since he did not fall into the error of miscalculating what was practical, or of overrating his own influence with the Assembly or the nation.