[The Duc de Guiche, since Duc de Grammont, has proved how much he merited the distinction he received, in consequence of the attachment between the Queen and his mother-in-law, by the devotedness with which he followed the fallen fortunes of the Bourbons till their restoration, since which he has not been forgotten.  The Duchess, his wife, who at her marriage was beaming with all the beauties of her age, and adorned by art and nature with every accomplishment, though she came into notice at a time when the Court had scarcely recovered itself from the debauched morals by which it had been so long degraded by a De Pompadour and a Du Barry, has yet preserved her character, by the strictness of her conduct, free from the censorious criticisms of an epoch in which some of the purest could not escape unassailed.  I saw her at Pyrmont in 1803; and even then, though the mother of many children, she looked as young and beautiful as ever.  She was remarkably well educated and accomplished, a profound musician on the harp and pianoforte, graceful in her conversation, and a most charming dancer.  She seemed to bear the vicissitudes of fortune with a philosophical courage and resignation not often to be met with in light-headed French women.  She was amiable in her manners, easy of access, always lively and cheerful, and enthusiastically attached to the country whence she was then excluded.  She constantly accompanied the wife of the late Louis XVIII. during her travels in Germany, as her husband the Duke did His Majesty during his residence at Mittau, in Courland, etc.  I have had the honour of seeing the Duke twice since the Revolution; once, on my coming from Russia, at General Binkingdroff’s, Governor of Mittau, and since, in Portland Place, at the French Ambassador’s, on his coming to England in the name of his Sovereign, to congratulate the King of England on his accession to the throne.]

“The great cabals, which agitated the Court in consequence of the favour shown to the De Polignacs, were not slow in declaring themselves.  The Comtesse de Noailles was one of the foremost among the discontented.  Her resignation, upon the appointment of a superintendent, was a sufficient evidence of her real feeling; but when she now saw a place filled, to which she conceived her family had a claim, her displeasure could not be silent, and her dislike to the Queen began to express itself without reserve.

“Another source of dissatisfaction against the Queen was her extreme partiality for the English.  After the peace of Versailles, in 1783, the English flocked into France, and I believe if a poodle dog had come from England it would have met with a good reception from Her Majesty.  This was natural enough.  The American war had been carried on entirely against her wish; though, from the influence she was supposed to exercise in the Cabinet, it was presumed to have been managed entirely by herself.  This odious opinion she wished personally to destroy; and it could only be done by the distinction with which, after the peace, she treated the whole English nation.’