[The Abbe de Vermond encouraged the impatience of etiquette shown by Marie Antoinette while she was Dauphiness.  When she became Queen he endeavoured openly to induce her to shake off the restraints she still respected.  If he chanced to enter her apartment at the time she was preparing to go out, “For whom,” he would say, in a tone of raillery, “is this detachment of warriors which I found in the court?  Is it some general going to inspect his army?  Does all this military display become a young Queen adored by her subjects?” He would call to her mind the simplicity with which Maria Theresa lived; the visits she made without guards, or even attendants, to the Prince d’Esterhazy, to the Comte de Palfi, passing whole days far from the fatiguing ceremonies of the Court.  The Abbe thus artfully flattered the inclinations of Marie Antoinette, and showed her how she might disguise, even from herself, her aversion for the ceremonies observed by the descendants of Louis xiv.-Madame Campan.]

His pride received its birth at Vienna, where Maria Theresa, as much to give him authority with the Archduchess as to make herself acquainted with his character, permitted him to mix every evening with the private circle of her family, into which the future Dauphiness had been admitted for some time.  Joseph ii., the elder Archduchess, and a few noblemen honoured by the confidence of Maria Theresa, composed the party; and reflections on the world, on courts, and the duties of princes were the usual topics of conversation.  The Abbe de Vermond, in relating these particulars, confessed the means which he had made use of to gain admission into this private circle.  The Empress, meeting him at the Archduchess’s, asked him if he had formed any connections in Vienna.  “None, Madame,” replied he; “the apartment of the Archduchess and the hotel of the ambassador of France are the only places which the man honoured with the care of the Princess’s education should frequent.”  A month afterwards Maria Theresa, through a habit common enough among sovereigns, asked him the same question, and received precisely the same answer.  The next day he received an order to join the imperial family every evening.

It is extremely probable, from the constant and well-known intercourse between this man and Comte de Mercy, ambassador of the Empire during the whole reign of Louis XVI., that he was useful to the Court of Vienna, and that he often caused the Queen to decide on measures, the consequences of which she did not consider.  Not of high birth, imbued with all the principles of the modern philosophy, and yet holding to the hierarchy of the Church more tenaciously than any other ecclesiastic; vain, talkative, and at the same time cunning and abrupt; very ugly and affecting singularity; treating the most exalted persons as his equals, sometimes even as his inferiors, the Abbe de Vermond received ministers and bishops when in his bath; but said at the same time that Cardinal Dubois was a fool; that a man such as he, having obtained power, ought to make cardinals, and refuse to be one himself.