To my insignificant losses in so mighty a ruin perhaps I ought not to allude.  I should not presume even to mention that fatal convulsion which shook all Europe and has since left the nations in that state of agitated undulation which succeeds a tempest upon the ocean, were it not for the opportunity it gives me to declare the bounty of my benefactresses.  All my own property went down in the wreck; and the mariner who escapes only with his life can never recur to the scene of his escape without a shudder.  Many persons are still living, of the first respectability, who well remember my quitting this country, though very young, on the budding of a brilliant career.  Had those prospects been followed up they would have placed me beyond the caprice of fickle fortune.  But the dazzling lustre of crown favours and princely patronage outweighed the slow, though more solid hopes of self-achieved independence.  I certainly was then almost a child, and my vanity, perhaps, of the honour of being useful to two such illustrious personages got the better of every other sentiment.  But now when I reflect, I look back with consternation on the many risks I ran, on the many times I stared death in the face with no fear but that of being obstructed in my efforts to serve, even with my life, the interests dearest to my heart—­that of implicit obedience to these truly benevolent and generous Princesses, who only wanted the means to render me as happy and independent as their cruel destiny has since made me wretched and miserable!  Had not death deprived me of their patronage I should have had no reason to regret any sacrifice I could have made for them, for through the Princess, Her Majesty, unasked, had done me the honour to promise me the reversion of a most lucrative as well as highly respectable post in her employ.  In these august personages I lost my best friends; I lost everything—­except the tears, which bathe the paper as I write tears of gratitude, which will never cease to flow to the memory of their martyrdom.

SECTION II.

Journal COMMNENCED: 

“The character of Maria Theresa, the Empress-mother of Marie Antoinette, is sufficiently known.  The same spirit of ambition and enterprise which had already animated her contentions with France in the latter part of her career impelled her to wish for its alliance.  In addition to other hopes she had been encouraged to imagine that louis XV. might one day aid her in recovering the provinces which the King of Prussia had violently wrested from her ancient dominions.  She felt the many advantages to be derived from a union with her ancient enemy, and she looked for its accomplishment by the marriage of her daughter.