My poor Queen, whom I had left in the pride and mature bloom of beauty, was sadly changed; she looked thin and worn, and was altogether the brown old French-woman; but she was still as lively and vivacious, and full of arch kindness as ever, a true daughter of the Grand Monarque, whose spirits no disasters could break.  When the little one became too noisy, she playfully ordered off both the children, as she called them, and bade me sit down on the footstool before her couch, and tell her what I had been doing to put intendants, cardinals and Queens themselves into commotion.  The little Lady Henrietta was carried off by one of the attendants, but the Prince would not go; he resumed his former position, saying that he was quite sure that Madame de Bellaise was in need of an English counsel to plead her cause.  He had grown up from a mischievous imp of a boy to a graceful elegant-looking youth.  His figure, air, and address were charming, I never saw them equaled; but his face was as ugly as ever, though with a droll ugliness that was more winning than most men’s beauty, lighted up as it was by the most brilliant of black eyes and the most engaging of smiles.  You remember that I am speaking of him as he was when he had lately arrived from Jersey, before his expedition to Scotland.  He became a very different person after his return, but he was now a simple-hearted, innocent lad, and I met him again as an old friend and playfellow, whose sympathy was a great satisfaction in the story I had to tell, though I was given in a half-mocking way.  My mother began by saying: 

’The poor child, it is as I told your Majesty; she has only been a little too charitable.’

‘Permit me, Madame,’ I said, ’I did not give half so much as most charitable ladies.’

Then the explanation came, and the Queen shook her head and told me such things would not do here, that my inexperience might be pardonable, but that the only way to treat such creatures was to feed them and clothe them for the sake of our own souls.

Here the Prince made his eyes first flash and then wink at me.

’But as to teach them or elevating them, my dear, it is as bad for them as for ourselves.  You must renounce all such chimeras, and if you had a passion for charity there is good Father Vincent to teach you safe methods.’

I brightened up when I heard of Father Vincent, and my mother engaged for me that I should do all that was right, and appealed to my brother De Solivet to assure the Queen that there had been much malignant exaggeration about the presumption of my measures and the discontent of other people’s peasants.

Queen Henrietta was quite satisfied, and declared that she would at once conduct me to her sister-in-law, the Queen-Regent, at the Tuileries, since she had of course the ‘petites entrees,’ take her by storm as it were, and it was exactly the right hour when the Queen would be resting after holding council.