grounded; nor could I blame her, in my heart, for the uprightness of her
principle, in showing that what she had once undertaken should not be
abandoned through female caprice. I told Her Majesty that the system
upon which she acted was praiseworthy; and that its application in the
present instance would have been so had the Archbishop possessed as much
talent as he lacked; but, that now it was quite requisite for her to stop
the public clamour by renouncing her protection of a man who had so
seriously endangered the public tranquillity and her own reputation.

"As a proof how far my caution was well founded, there was an immense
riotous mob raised about this time against the Queen, in consequence of
her having, appointed the dismissed Minister's niece, Madame de Canisy,
to a place at Court, and having given her picture, set in diamonds, to
the Archbishop himself.

"The Queen, in many cases, was by far too communicative to some of her
household, who immediately divulged all they gathered from her unreserve.
How could these circumstances have transpired to the people but from
those nearest the person of Her Majesty, who, knowing the public feeling
better than their royal mistress could be supposed to know it, did their
own feeling little credit by the mischievous exposure? The people were
exasperated beyond all conception. The Abbe Vermond placed before Her
Majesty the consequences of her communicativeness, and from this time
forward she never repeated the error. After the lesson she had received,
none of her female attendants, not even the Duchesse de Polignac, to whom
she would have confided her very existence, could, had they been ever so
much disposed, have drawn anything upon public matters from her. With
me, as her superintendent and entitled by my situation to interrogate and
give her counsel, she was not, of course, under the same restriction. To
his other representations of the consequences of the Queen's indiscreet