The Queen said that M. de La Fayette’s thirst for popularity induced him to lend himself, without discrimination, to all popular follies.  Her distrust of the General increased daily, and grew so powerful that when, towards the end of the Revolution, he seemed willing to support the tottering throne, she could never bring herself to incur so great an obligation to him.

M. de J-----, a colonel attached to the staff of the army, was fortunate
enough to render several services to the Queen, and acquitted himself with
discretion and dignity of various important missions.

[During the Queen’s detention in the Temple he introduced himself Into that prison in the dress of a lamplighter, and there discharged his duty unrecognised.—­Madame Campan.]

Their Majesties had the highest confidence in him, although it frequently happened that his prudence, when inconsiderate projects were under discussion, brought upon him the charge of adopting the principles of the constitutionals.  Being sent to Turin, he had some difficulty in dissuading the Princes from a scheme they had formed at that period of reentering France, with a very weak army, by way of Lyons; and when, in a council which lasted till three o’clock in the morning, he showed his instructions, and demonstrated that the measure would endanger the King, the Comte d’Artois alone declared against the plan, which emanated from the Prince de Conde.

Among the persons employed in subordinate situations, whom the critical circumstances of the times involved in affairs of importance, was M. de Goguelat, a geographical engineer at Versailles, and an excellent draughtsman.  He made plans of St. Cloud and Trianon for the Queen; she was very much pleased with them, and had the engineer admitted into the staff of the army.  At the commencement of the Revolution he was sent to Count Esterhazy, at Valenciennes, in the capacity of aide-de-camp.  The latter rank was given him solely to get him away from Versailles, where his rashness endangered the Queen during the earlier months of the Assembly of the States General.  Making a parade of his devotion to the King’s interests, he went repeatedly to the tribunes of the Assembly, and there openly railed at all the motions of the deputies, and then returned to the Queen’s antechamber, where he repeated all that he had just heard, or had had the imprudence to say.  Unfortunately, at the same time that the Queen sent away M. de Goguelat, she still believed that, in a dangerous predicament, requiring great self-devotion, the man might be employed advantageously.  In 1791 he was commissioned to act in concert with the Marquis de Bouille in furtherance of the King’s intended escape.

[See the “Memoirs” of M. de Bouille, those of the Duc de Choiseul, and the account of the journey to Varennes, by M. de Fontanges, in “Weber’s Memoirs.”—­Note by the editor.]