it lost.  Silesia, it has been before observed, was always a topic by means of which the weak side of Maria Theresa could be attacked with success.  There is generally some peculiar frailty in the ambitious, through which the artful can throw them off their guard.  The weak and tyrannical Philip II., whenever the recovery of Holland and the Low Countries was proposed to him, was always ready to rush headlong into any scheme for its accomplishment; the bloody Queen Mary, his wife, declared that at her death the loss of Calais would be found engraven on her heart; and to Maria Theresa, Silesia was the Holland and the Calais for which her wounded pride was thirsting.

“But Maria Theresa was wary, even in the midst of the credulity of her ambition.  The Baron de Neni was sent by her privately to Versailles to examine, personally, whether there was anything in Marie Antoinette’s conduct requiring the extreme vigilance which had been represented as indispensable.  The report of the Baron de Neni to his royal mistress was such as to convince her she had been misled and her daughter misrepresented by Rohan.  The Empress instantly forbade him her presence.

“The Cardinal upon this, unknown to the Court of Vienna, and indeed, to every one, except his factotum, principal agent, and secretary, the Abbe Georgel, left the Austrian capital, and came to Versailles, covering his disgrace by pretended leave of absence.  On seeing Marie Antoinette he fell enthusiastically in love with her.  To gain her confidence he disclosed the conduct which had been observed towards her by the Empress, and, in confirmation of the correctness of his disclosure, admitted that he had himself chosen the spies which had been set on her.  Indignant at such meanness in her mother, and despising the prelate, who could be base enough to commit a deed equally corrupt and uncalled for, and even thus wantonly betrayed when committed, the Dauphine suddenly withdrew from his presence, and gave orders that he should never be admitted to any of her parties.

“But his imagination was too much heated by a guilty passion of the blackest hue to recede; and his nature too presumptuous and fertile in expedients to be disconcerted.  He soon found means to conciliate both mother and daughter; and both by pretending to manage with the one the self-same plot which, with the other, he was recommending himself by pretending to overthrow.  To elude detection he interrupted the regular correspondence between the Empress and the Dauphine, and created a coolness by preventing the communications which would have unmasked him, that gave additional security to the success of his deception.