the Queen generally inspired, secret intrigues continued in operation
against her. A short time after the ascension of Louis XVI. to the
throne, the minister of the King's household was informed that a most
offensive libel against the Queen was about to appear. The lieutenant of
police deputed a man named Goupil, a police inspector, to trace this
libel; he came soon after to say that he had found out the place where the
work was being printed, and that it was at a country house near Yverdun.
He had already got possession of two sheets, which contained the most
atrocious calumnies, conveyed with a degree of art which might make them
very dangerous to the Queen's reputation. Goupil said that he could
obtain the rest, but that he should want a considerable sum for that
purpose. Three thousand Louis were given him, and very soon afterwards he
brought the whole manuscript and all that had been printed to the
lieutenant of police. He received a thousand louis more as a reward for
his address and zeal; and a much more important office was about to be
given him, when another spy, envious of Goupil's good fortune, gave
information that Goupil himself was the author of the libel; that, ten
years before, he had been put into the Bicetre for swindling; and that
Madame Goupil had been only three years out of the Salpetriere, where she
had been placed under another name. This Madame Goupil was very pretty
and very intriguing; she had found means to form an intimacy with Cardinal
de Rohan, whom she led, it is said, to hope for a reconciliation with the
Queen. All this affair was hushed up; but it shows that it was the
Queen's fate to be incessantly attacked by the meanest and most odious
machinations.

Another woman, named Cahouette de Millers, whose husband held an office in
the Treasury, being very irregular in conduct, and of a scheming turn of
mind, had a mania for appearing in the eyes of her friends at Paris as a
person in favour at Court, to which she was not entitled by either birth