XVI. had made some progress in the memoirs of his time; and even his beautiful and unfortunate Queen had herself made extensive notes and collections for the record of her own disastrous career.  Hence it must be obvious how one so nearly connected in situation and suffering with her much-injured mistress, as the Princesse de Lamballe, would naturally fall into a similar habit had she even no stronger temptation than fashion and example.  But self-communion, by means of the pen, is invariably the consolation of strong feeling, and reflecting minds under great calamities, especially when their intercourse with the world has been checked or poisoned by its malice.

The editor of these pages herself fell into the habit of which she speaks; and it being usual with her benefactress to converse with all the unreserve which every honest mind shows when it feels it can confide, her humble attendant, not to lose facts of such importance, commonly made notes of what she heard.  In any other person’s hands the Journal of the Princess would have been incomplete; especially as it was written in a rambling manner, and was never intended for publication.  But connected by her confidential conversations with me, and the recital of the events to which I personally bear testimony, I trust it will be found the basis of a satisfactory record, which I pledge myself to be a true one.

I do not know, however, that, at my time of life, and after a lapse of thirty years, I should have been roused to the arrangement of the papers which I have combined to form this narrative, had I not met with the work of Madame Campan upon the same subject.

This lady has said much that is true respecting the Queen; but she has omitted much, and much she has misrepresented:  not, I dare say, purposely, but from ignorance, and being wrongly informed.  She was often absent from the service, and on such occasions must have been compelled to obtain her knowledge at second-hand.  She herself told me, in 1803, at Rouen, that at a very important epoch the peril of her life forced her from the seat of action.  With the Princesse de Lamballe, who was so much about the Queen, she never had any particular connexion.  The Princess certainly esteemed her for her devotedness to the Queen; but there was a natural reserve in the Princess’s character, and a mistrust resulting from circumstances of all those who saw much company, as Madame Campan did.  Hence no intimacy was encouraged.  Madame Campan never came to the Princess without being sent for.

An attempt has been made since the Revolution utterly to destroy faith in the alleged attachment of Madame Campan to the Queen, by the fact of her having received the daughters of many of the regicides for education into her establishment at Rouen.  Far be it from me to sanction so unjust a censure.  Although what I mention hurt her character very much in the estimation of her former friends, and constituted one