“The fatal silence to which Her Majesty was thus unfortunately advised I regret from the bottom of my soul!  All the successive vile plots of the Cardinal against the peace and reputation of the Queen may be attributed to this ill-judged prudence!  Though it resulted from an honest desire of screening Her Majesty from the resentment or revenge to which she might have subjected herself from this villain, who had already injured her in her own estimation for having been credulous enough to have listened to him, yet from this circumstance it is that the Prince de Rohan built the foundation of all the after frauds and machinations with which he blackened the character and destroyed the comfort of his illustrious victim.  It is obvious that a mere exclusion from Court was too mild a punishment for such offences, and it was but too natural that such a mind as his, driven from the royal presence, and, of course, from all the noble societies to which it led (the anti-Court party excepted), should brood over the means of inveigling the Queen into a consent for his reappearance before her and the gay world, which was his only element, and if her favour should prove unattainable to revenge himself by her ruin.

“On the Cardinal’s return to France, all his numerous and powerful friends beset the King and Queen to allow of his restoration to his embassy; but though on his arrival at Versailles, finding the Court had removed to Compiegne, he had a short audience there of the King, all efforts in his favour were thrown away.  Equally unsuccessful was every intercession with the Empress-mother.  She had become thoroughly awakened to his worthlessness, and she declared she would never more even receive him in her dominions as a visitor.  The Cardinal, being apprised of this by some of his intimates, was at last persuaded to give up the idea of further importunity; and, pocketing his disgrace, retired with his hey dukes and his secretary, the Abbe Georgel, to whom may be attributed all the artful intrigues of his disgraceful diplomacy.

“It is evident that Rohan had no idea, during all his schemes to supplant the Dauphine by marrying her sister to the King, that the secret hope of Louis XV. had been to divorce the Dauphin and marry the slighted bride himself.  Perhaps it is fortunate that Rohan did not know this.  A brain so fertile in mischief as his might have converted such a circumstance to baneful uses.  But the death of Louis XV. put an end to all the then existing schemes for a change in her position.  It was to her a real, though but a momentary triumph.  From the hour of her arrival she had a powerful party to cope with; and the fact of her being an Austrian, independent of the jealousy created by her charms, was, in itself, a spell to conjure up armies, against which she stood alone, isolated in the face of embattled myriads!  But she now reared her head, and her foes trembled in her presence.  Yet she could not guard against