Once the Princess was deceived by a female painter of doubtful character, who supplicated her to present a work she had executed to the Queen.  I myself afterwards returned that work to its owner.  Thenceforward, the Princess became very rigid in her inquiries, previous to taking the least interest in any application, or consenting to present any one personally to the King or Queen.  She required thoroughly to be informed of the nature of the request, and of the merit and character of the applicant, before she would attend to either.  Owing to this caution Her Highness scarcely ever after met with a negative.  In cases of great importance, though the Queen’s compassionate and good heart needed no stimulus to impel her to forward the means of justice, the Princess would call the influence of the Princesse Elizabeth to her aid; and Elizabeth never sued in vain.

Marie Antoinette paid the greatest attention to all memorials.  They were regularly collected every week by Her Majesty’s private secretary, the Abbe Vermond.  I have myself seen many of them, when returned from the Princesse de Lamballe, with the Queen’s marginal notes in her own handwriting, and the answers dictated by Her Majesty to the different, officers of the departments relative to the nature of the respective demands.  She always recommended the greatest attention to all public documents, and annexed notes to such as passed through her hands to prevent their being thrown aside or lost.

One of those who were least satisfied with the appointment of the Princesse de Lamballe to the office of superintendent was her brother-in-law, the Duc d’Orleans, who, having attempted her virtue on various occasions and been repulsed, became mortified and alarmed at her situation as a check to his future enterprise.

At one time the Duc and Duchesse d’Orleans were most constant and assiduous in their attendance on Marie Antoinette.  They were at all her parties.  The Queen was very fond of the Duchess.  It is supposed that the interest Her Majesty took in that lady, and the steps to which some time afterwards that interest led, planted the first seeds of the unrelenting and misguided hostility which, in the deadliest times of the Revolution, animated the Orleanists against the throne.

The Duc d’Orleans, then Duc de Chartres, was never a favourite of the Queen.  He was only tolerated at Court on account of his wife and of the great intimacy which subsisted between him and the Comte d’Artois.  Louis XVI. had often expressed his disapprobation of the Duke’s character, which his conduct daily justified.