“That part of the papers which compromised only the Princesse de Conde was shown by me to the Princess on the occasion I have mentioned.  It was natural enough that she should have been shocked at the detection of having suborned the clergy and others with heavy bribes to avert the deserved fate of the Cardinal.  I kept this part of the packet secret till the King’s two aunts, who had also been warm advocates in favour of the prelate, left Paris for Rome.  Then, as Pius VI. had interested himself as head of the Church for the honour of one of its members, I gave them these very papers to deliver to His Holiness for his private perusal.  I was desirous of enabling this truly charitable and Christian head of our sacred religion to judge how far his interference was justified by facts.  I am thoroughly convinced that, had he been sooner furnished with these evidences, instead of blaming the royal proceeding, he would have urged it on, nay, would himself have been the first to advise that the foul conspiracy should be dragged into open day.

“The Comte de Vergennes told me that the King displayed the greatest impartiality throughout the whole investigation for the exculpation of the Queen, and made good his title on this, as he did on every occasion where his own unbiassed feelings and opinions were called into action, to great esteem for much higher qualities than the world has usually given him credit for.

“I have been accused of having opened the prison doors of the culprit Lamotte for her escape; but the charge is false.  I interested myself, as was my duty, to shield the Queen from public reproach by having Lamotte sent to a place of penitence; but I never interfered, except to lessen her punishment, after the judicial proceedings.  The diamonds, in the hands of her vile associates at Paris, procured her ample means to escape.  I should have been the Queen’s greatest enemy had I been the cause of giving liberty to one who acted, and might naturally have been expected to act, as this depraved woman did.

“Through the private correspondence which was carried on between this country and England, after I had left it, I was informed that M. de Calonne, whom the Queen never liked, and who was called to the administration against her will—­which he knew, and consequently became one of her secret enemies in the affair of the necklace—­was discovered to have been actively employed against Her Majesty in the work published in London by Lamotte.

“Mr. Sheridan was the gentleman who first gave me this information.

“I immediately sent a trusty person by the Queen’s orders to London, to buy up the whole work.  It was too late.  It had been already so widely circulated that its consequences could no longer be prevented.  I was lucky enough, however, for a considerable sum, to get a copy from a person intimate with the author, the margin of which, in the handwriting of M. de Calonne, actually contained numerous additional circumstances which were to have been published in a second edition!  This publication my agent, aided by some English gentlemen, arrived in time to suppress.