When I had learnt the ciphering and deciphering, and was to be sent to
Italy, the Queen acknowledged to the Princesse de Lamballe that she was
fully persuaded I might be trusted, as she had good reason to know that
my fidelity was not to be doubted or shaken.

Dear, hapless Princess! She said to me, in one of her confidential
conversations on these matters, "The Queen has been so cruelly deceived
and so much watched that she almost fears her own shadow; but it gives me
great pleasure that Her Majesty had been herself confirmed by one of her
own emissaries in what I never for a moment doubted.

"But do not fancy," continued the Princess, laughing, "that you have had
only this spy to encounter. Many others have watched your motions and
your conversations, and all concur in saying you are the devil, and they
could make nothing of you. But that, 'mia cara piccola diavolina', is
just what we want!"




SECTION VIII.

Editor in continuation.


I am compelled, with reluctance, to continue personally upon the stage,
and must do so for the three ensuing chapters, in order to put my readers
in possession of circumstances explanatory of the next portion of the
Journal of the Princesse de Lamballe.