openness, the Abbe Vermond added that, being obliged to write all the
letters, private and public, he often found himself greatly embarrassed
by affairs having gone forth to the world beforehand. One misfortune of
putting this seal upon the lips of Her Majesty was that it placed her
more thoroughly in the Abbe's power. She was, of course, obliged to rely
implicitly upon him concerning many points, which, had they undergone the
discussion necessarily resulting from free conversation, would have been
shown to her under very different aspects. A man with a better heart,
less Jesuitical, and not so much interested as Vermond was to keep his
place, would have been a safer monitor.

"Though the Archbishop of Sens was so much hated and despised, much may
be said in apology for his disasters. His unpopularity, and the Queen's
support of him against the people, was certainly a vital blow to the
monarchy. There is no doubt of his having been a poor substitute for the
great men who had so gloriously beaten the political paths of
administration, particularly the Comte de Vergennes and Necker. But at
that time, when France was threatened by its great convulsion, where is
the genius which might not have committed itself? And here is a man
coming to rule amidst revolutionary feelings, with no knowledge whatever
of revolutionary principles--a pilot steering into one harbour by the
chart of another. I am by no means a vindicator of the Archbishop's
obstinacy in offering himself a candidate for a situation entirely
foreign to the occupations, habits, and studies of his whole life; but
his intentions may have been good enough, and we must not charge the
physician with murder who has only mistaken the disease, and, though
wrong in his judgment, has been zealous and conscientious; nor must we
blame the comedians for the faults of the comedy. The errors were not so
much in the men who did not succeed as in the manners of the times.