levelled by parties, even the least suspected, to blacken and destroy the
fair fame of Marie Antoinette.

"The document which so justly alarmed the Princesse de Conde, when I
showed it to her came into my hands in the following manner:

"Whenever a distressed family, or any particular individual, applied to
me for relief, or was otherwise recommended for charitable purposes, I
generally sent my little English protegee--whose veracity, well knowing
the goodness of her heart, I could rely--to ascertain whether their
claims were really well grounded.

[Indeed, I never deceived the Princess on these occasions. She was so
generously charitable that I should have conceived it a crime. When I
could get no satisfactory information, I said I could not trace anything
undeserving her charity, and left Her Highness to exercise her own
discretion.]

"One day I received an earnest memorial from a family, desiring to make
some private communications of peculiar delicacy. I sent my usual
ambassadress to inquire into its import. On making her mission known,
she found no difficulty in ascertaining the object of the application. It
proceeded from conscientious distress of mind. A relation of this family
had been the regular confessor of a convent. With the Lady Abbess of
this convent and her trusty nuns, the Princesse de Conde had deposited
considerable sums of money, to be bestowed in creating influence in
favour of the Cardinal de Rohan. The confessor, being a man of some
consideration among the clergy, was applied to, to use his influence with
the needier members of the Church more immediately about him, as well as
those of higher station, to whom he had access, in furthering the