“One day I received an earnest memorial from a family, desiring to make some private communications of peculiar delicacy.  I sent my usual ambassadress to inquire into its import.  On making her mission known, she found no difficulty in ascertaining the object of the application.  It proceeded from conscientious distress of mind.  A relation of this family had been the regular confessor of a convent.  With the Lady Abbess of this convent and her trusty nuns, the Princesse de Conde had deposited considerable sums of money, to be bestowed in creating influence in favour of the Cardinal de Rohan.  The confessor, being a man of some consideration among the clergy, was applied to, to use his influence with the needier members of the Church more immediately about him, as well as those of higher station, to whom he had access, in furthering the purposes of the Princesse de Conde.  The bribes were applied as intended.  But, at the near approach of death, the confessor was struck with remorse.  He begged his family, without mentioning his name, to send the accounts and vouchers of the sums he had so distributed, to me, as a proof of his contrition, that I might make what use of them I should think proper.  The papers were handed to my messenger, who pledged her word of honour that I would certainly adhere to the dying man’s last injunctions.  She desired they might be sealed up by the family, and by them directed to me.—­[To this day, I neither know the name of the convent or the confessor.]—­She then hastened back to our place of rendezvous, where I waited for her, and where she consigned the packet into my own hands.

“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.