When M. de Segur was presented to the Queen on his new appointment, she said to me, “You have just seen a minister of my making.  I am very glad, so far as regards the King’s service, that he is appointed, for I think the selection a very good one; but I almost regret the part I have taken in it.  I take a responsibility upon myself.  I was fortunate in being free from any; and in order to relieve myself from this as much as possible I have just promised M. de Segur, and that upon my word of honour, not to back any petition, nor to hinder any of his operations by solicitations on behalf of my proteges.”

During the first administration of M. Necker, whose ambition had not then drawn him into schemes repugnant to his better judgment, and whose views appeared to the Queen to be very judicious, she indulged in hopes of the restoration of the finances.  Knowing that M. de Maurepas wished to drive M. Necker to resign, she urged him to have patience until the death of an old man whom the King kept about him from a fondness for his first choice, and out of respect for his advanced age.  She even went so far as to tell him that M. de Maurepas was always ill, and that his end could not be very distant.  M. Necker would not wait for that event.  The Queen’s prediction was fulfilled.  M. de Maurepas ended his days immediately after a journey to Fontainebleau in 1781.

M. Necker had retired.  He had been exasperated by a piece of treachery in the old minister, for which he could not forgive him.  I knew something of this intrigue at the time; it has since been fully explained to me by Madame la Marechale de Beauvau.  M. Necker saw that his credit at Court was declining, and fearing lest that circumstance should injure his financial operations, he requested the King to grant him some favour which might show the public that he had not lost the confidence of his sovereign.  He concluded his letter by pointing out five requests—­such an office, or such a mark of distinction, or such a badge of honour, and so on, and handed it to M. de Maurepas.  The or’s were changed into and’s; and the King was displeased at M. Necker’s ambition, and the assurance with which he displayed it.  Madame la Marechale de Beauvau assured me that the Marechal de Castries saw the minute of M. Necker’s letter, and that he likewise saw the altered copy.

The interest which the Queen took in M. Necker died away during his retirement, and at last changed into strong prejudice against him.  He wrote too much about the measures he would have pursued, and the benefits that would have resulted to the State from them.  The ministers who succeeded him thought their operations embarrassed by the care that M. Necker and his partisans incessantly took to occupy the public with his plans; his friends were too ardent.  The Queen discerned a party spirit in these combinations, and sided wholly with his enemies.

After those inefficient comptrollers-general, Messieurs Joly de Fleury and d’Ormesson, it became necessary to resort to a man of more acknowledged talent, and the Queen’s friends, at that time combining with the Comte d’Artois and with M. de Vergennes, got M. de Calonne appointed.  The Queen was highly displeased, and her close intimacy with the Duchesse de Polignac began to suffer for this.