to follow, as usual, his own misguided passion, he immediately went too
Trianon, disguised with a large cloak. He saw the porter, and bribed
him. He only wished, he said, to be placed in a situation whence he
might see the Duke and Duchess of the North without being seen; but no
sooner did he perceive the porter engaged at some distance than he left
his cloak at the lodge, and went forward in his Cardinal's dress, as if
he had been one of the invited guests, placing himself purposely in the
Queen's path to attract her attention as she rode by in the carriage with
the Duke and Duchess.

"The Queen was shocked and thunderstruck at seeing him. But, great as
was her annoyance, knowing the Cardinal had not been invited and ought
not to have been there, she only discharged the porter who had been
seduced to let him in; and, though the King, on being made acquainted
with his treachery, would have banished His Eminence a hundred leagues
from the capital, yet the Queen, the royal aunts, the Princesse
Elizabeth, and myself, not to make the affair public, and thereby
disgrace the high order of his ecclesiastical dignity, prevented the King
from exercising his authority by commanding instant exile.

"Indeed, the Queen could never get the better of her fears of being some
day, or in some way or other, betrayed by the Cardinal, for having made
him the confidant of the mortification she would have suffered if the
projected marriage of Louis XV. and her sister had been solemnized. On
this account she uniformly opposed whatever harshness the King at any
time intended against the Cardinal.

"Thus was this wicked prelate left at leisure to premeditate the horrid
plot of the famous necklace, the ever memorable fraud, which so fatally
verified the presentiments of the Queen."