persons of a superior class. They saw in it an attack upon the customs of
monarchy, and customs are nearly equal to laws. The Queen heard of this,
but she thought that her dignity would be compromised if she made any
change in the form of these regulations, though they might have been
altogether superseded without inconvenience. "My name is not out of
place," said she, "in gardens belonging to myself; I may give orders there
without infringing on the rights of the State." This was her only answer
to the representations which a few faithful servants ventured to make on
the subject. The discontent of the Parisians on this occasion probably
induced M. d'Espremenil, upon the first troubles about the Parliament, to
say that it was impolitic and immoral to see palaces belonging to a Queen
of France.

[The Queen never forgot this affront of M. d'Espremenil's; she said that
as it was offered at a time when social order had not yet been disturbed,
she had felt the severest mortification at it. Shortly before the
downfall of the throne M. Espremenil, having openly espoused the King's
side, was insulted in the gardens of the Tuileries by the Jacobins, and so
ill-treated that he was carried home very ill. Somebody recommended the
Queen, on account of the royalist principles he then professed, to send
and inquire for him. She replied that she was truly grieved at what had
happened to M. d'Espremenil, but that mere policy should never induce her
to show any particular solicitude about the man who had been the first to
make so insulting an attack upon her character.--MADAME CAMPAN]

The Queen was very much dissatisfied with the manner in which M. de
Calonne had managed this matter. The Abbe de Vermond, the most active and
persevering of that minister's enemies, saw with delight that the
expedients of those from whom alone new resources might be expected were
gradually becoming exhausted, because the period when the Archbishop of