“Shortly after the acquittal of this most artful, and, in the present instance, certainly too fortunate prelate, the Princesse de Conde came to congratulate me on the Queen’s innocence, and her kinsman’s liberation from the Bastille.

“Without the slightest observation, I produced to the Princess documents in proof of the immense sums she alone had expended in bribing the judges and other persons, to save her relation, the Cardinal, by criminating Her Majesty.

“The Princesse de Conde instantly fell into violent hysterics, and was carried home apparently, lifeless.

“I have often reproached myself for having given that sudden shock and poignant anguish to Her Highness, but I could not have supposed that one who came so barefacedly to impress me with the Cardinal’s innocence, could have been less firm in refuting her own guilt.

“I never mentioned the circumstance to the Queen.  Had I done so, Her Highness would have been forever excluded from the Court and the royal presence.  This was no time to increase the enemies of Her Majesty, and, the affair of the trial being ended, I thought it best to prevent any further breach from a discord between the Court and the house of Conde.  However, from a coldness subsisting ever after between the Princess and myself, I doubt not that the Queen had her suspicions that all was not as it should be in that quarter.  Indeed, though Her Majesty never confessed it, I think she herself had discovered something at that very time not altogether to the credit of the Princesse de Conde, for she ceased going, from that period, to any of the fetes given at Chantilly.

“These were but a small portion of the various instruments successfully levelled by parties, even the least suspected, to blacken and destroy the fair fame of Marie Antoinette.

“The document which so justly alarmed the Princesse de Conde, when I showed it to her came into my hands in the following manner: 

“Whenever a distressed family, or any particular individual, applied to me for relief, or was otherwise recommended for charitable purposes, I generally sent my little English protegee—­whose veracity, well knowing the goodness of her heart, I could rely—­to ascertain whether their claims were really well grounded.

[Indeed, I never deceived the Princess on these occasions.  She was so generously charitable that I should have conceived it a crime.  When I could get no satisfactory information, I said I could not trace anything undeserving her charity, and left Her Highness to exercise her own discretion.]