MARIE ANTOINETTE.




MEMOIR OF MADAME CAMPAN.


JEANNE LOUISE HENRIETTE GENET was born in Paris on the 6th of October,
1752. M. Genet, her father, had obtained, through his own merit and the
influence of the Duc de Choiseul, the place of first clerk in the Foreign
Office.

Literature, which he had cultivated in his youth, was often the solace of
his leisure hours. Surrounded by a numerous family, he made the
instruction of his children his chief recreation, and omitted nothing
which was necessary to render them highly accomplished. His clever and
precocious daughter Henriette was very early accustomed to enter society,
and to take an intelligent interest in current topics and public events.
Accordingly, many of her relations being connected with the Court or
holding official positions, she amassed a fund of interesting
recollections and characteristic anecdotes, some gathered from personal
experience, others handed down by old friends of the family.

"The first event which made any impression on me in my childhood," she
says in her reminiscences, "was the attempt of Damiens to assassinate
Louis XV. This occurrence struck me so forcibly that the most minute
details relating to the confusion and grief which prevailed at Versailles
on that day seem as present to my imagination as the most recent events. I