throngs upon the ‘pave’ for want of employment, yet M. de Calonne either did not see, or pretended not to see, the errors he had committed.  Being informed that the Comte de Vergennes had attributed the public disorders to his fallacious policy, M. de Calonne sent a friend to the Count demanding satisfaction for the charge of having caused the riots.  The Count calmly replied that he was too much of a man of honour to take so great an advantage, as to avail himself of the opportunity offered, by killing a man who had only one life to dispose of, when there were so many with a prior claim, who were anxious to destroy him ‘en societe’.  I Bid M. de Calonne,’ continued the Count, ’first get out of that scrape, as the English boxers do when their eyes are closed up after a pitched battle.  He has been playing at blind man’s buff, but the poverty to which he has reduced so many of our tradespeople has torn the English bandage from his eyes!’ For three or four days the Comte de Vergennes visited publicly, and showed himself everywhere in and about Paris; but M. de Calonne was so well convinced of the truth of the old fox’s satire that he pocketed his annoyance, and no more was said about fighting.  Indeed, the Comte de Vergennes gave hints of being able to show that M. de Calonne had been bribed into the treaty.”

[The Princesse de Lamballe has alluded in a former page to the happiness which the Queen enjoyed during the visits of the foreign Princes to the Court of France.  Her papers contain a few passages upon the opinions Her Majesty entertained of the royal travellers; which, although in the order of time they should have been mentioned before the peace with England, yet, not to disturb the chain of the narrative, respecting the connection with the Princesse de Lamballe, of the prevailing libels, and the partiality shown towards the English, I have reserved them for the conclusion of the present chapter.  The timidity of the Queen in the presence of the illustrious strangers, and her agitation when about to receive them, have, I think, been already spoken of.  Upon the subject of the royal travellers themselves, and other personages, the Princess expresses herself thus:]

“The Queen had never been an admirer of Catharine ii.  Notwithstanding her studied policy for the advancement of civilization in her internal empire, the means which, aided by the Princess Dashkoff, she made use of to seat herself on the imperial throne of her weak husband, Peter the Third, had made her more understood than esteemed.  Yet when her son, the Grand Duke of the North,—­[Afterwards the unhappy Emperor Paul.]—­and the Grand Duchess, his wife, came to France, their description of Catharine’s real character so shocked the maternal sensibility of Marie Antoinette that she could scarcely hear the name of the Empress without shuddering.  The Grand Duke spoke of Catharine without the least disguise.  He said he travelled merely for the security of his life from his mother,