The Queen advised the King to give her St. Cloud, as a means of avoiding the establishment of a governor; her plan being to have merely a concierge there, by which means the governor’s expenses would be saved.  The King agreed, and St. Cloud was purchased for the Queen.  She provided the same liveries for the porters at the gates and servants at the chateau as for those at Trianon.  The concierge at the latter place had put up some regulations for the household, headed, “By order of the Queen.”  The same thing was done at St. Cloud.  The Queen’s livery at the door of a palace where it was expected none but that of the King would be seen, and the words “By order of the Queen” at the head of the printed papers pasted near the iron gates, caused a great sensation, and produced a very unfortunate effect, not only among the common people, but also. among persons of a superior class.  They saw in it an attack upon the customs of monarchy, and customs are nearly equal to laws.  The Queen heard of this, but she thought that her dignity would be compromised if she made any change in the form of these regulations, though they might have been altogether superseded without inconvenience.  “My name is not out of place,” said she, “in gardens belonging to myself; I may give orders there without infringing on the rights of the State.”  This was her only answer to the representations which a few faithful servants ventured to make on the subject.  The discontent of the Parisians on this occasion probably induced M. d’Espremenil, upon the first troubles about the Parliament, to say that it was impolitic and immoral to see palaces belonging to a Queen of France.

[The Queen never forgot this affront of M. d’Espremenil’s; she said that as it was offered at a time when social order had not yet been disturbed, she had felt the severest mortification at it.  Shortly before the downfall of the throne M. Espremenil, having openly espoused the King’s side, was insulted in the gardens of the Tuileries by the Jacobins, and so ill-treated that he was carried home very ill.  Somebody recommended the Queen, on account of the royalist principles he then professed, to send and inquire for him.  She replied that she was truly grieved at what had happened to M. d’Espremenil, but that mere policy should never induce her to show any particular solicitude about the man who had been the first to make so insulting an attack upon her character.—­Madame Campan]

The Queen was very much dissatisfied with the manner in which M. de Calonne had managed this matter.  The Abbe de Vermond, the most active and persevering of that minister’s enemies, saw with delight that the expedients of those from whom alone new resources might be expected were gradually becoming exhausted, because the period when the Archbishop of Toulouse would be placed over the finances was thereby hastened.