young and old, perfectly well dressed in the country costume, old chevaliers of St. Louis, young knights of Malta, and a few ecclesiastics.  I told the Queen it was probably an assemblage of persons residing in the neighbourhood who wished to see her.  She rose, opened the window, and appeared in the balcony; immediately all these worthy people said to her, in an undertone:  “Courage, Madame; good Frenchmen suffer for you, and with you; they pray for you.  Heaven will hear their prayers; we love you, we respect you, we will continue to venerate our virtuous King.”  The Queen burst into tears, and held her handkerchief to her eyes.  “Poor Queen! she weeps!” said the women and young girls; but the dread of exposing her Majesty, and even the persons who showed so much affection for her, to observation, prompted me to take her hand, and prevail upon her to retire into her room; and, raising my eyes, I gave the excellent people to understand that my conduct was dictated by prudence.  They comprehended me, for I heard, “That lady is right;” and afterwards, “Farewell, Madame!” from several of them; and all this in accents of feeling so true and so mournful, that I am affected at the recollection of them even after a lapse of twenty years.

A few days afterwards the insurrection of Nancy took place.

[The insurrection of the troops at Nancy broke out in August 1790, and was put down by Marechal de Bouille on the last day of that month.  See “Bouille,” p. 195.]

Only the ostensible cause is known; there was another, of which I might have been in full possession, if the great confusion I was in upon the subject had not deprived me of the power of paying attention to it.  I will endeavour to make myself understood.  In the early part of September the Queen, as she was going to bed, desired me to let all her people go, and to remain with her myself; when we were alone she said to me, “The King will come here at midnight.  You know that he has always shown you marks of distinction; he now proves his confidence in you by selecting you to write down the whole affair of Nancy from his dictation.  He must have several copies of it.”  At midnight the King came to the Queen’s apartments, and said to me, smiling, “You did not expect to become my secretary, and that, too, during the night.”  I followed the King into the council chamber.  I found there sheets of paper, an inkstand, and pens all ready prepared.  He sat down by my side and dictated to me the report of the Marquis de Bouille, which he himself copied at the same time.  My hand trembled; I wrote with difficulty; my reflections scarcely left me sufficient power of attention to listen to the King.  The large table, the velvet cloth, seats which ought to have been filled by none but the King’s chief councillors; what that chamber had been, and what it was at that moment, when the King was employing a woman in an office which had so little affinity with her ordinary functions; the misfortunes which had brought him to the necessity of doing so,—­all these ideas made such an impression upon me that when I had returned to the Queen’s apartments I could not sleep for the remainder of the night, nor could I remember what I had written.