highly impolitic step, on trial with a subject, who ought to have been
dealt with by the power of the King alone. The Princes and Princesses of
the House of Conde, and of the Houses of Rohan, Soubise, and Guemenee, put
on mourning, and were seen ranged in the way of the members of the Grand
Chamber to salute them as they proceeded to the palace, on the days of the
Cardinal's trial; and Princes of the blood openly canvassed against the
Queen of France.

The Pope wished to claim, on behalf of the Cardinal de Rohan, the right
belonging to his ecclesiastical rank, and demanded that he should be
judged at Rome. The Cardinal de Bernis, ambassador from France to his
Holiness, formerly Minister for Foreign Affairs, blending the wisdom of an
old diplomatist with the principles of a Prince of the Church, wished that
this scandalous affair should be hushed up. The King's aunts, who were on
very intimate terms with the ambassador, adopted his opinion, and the
conduct of the King and Queen was equally and loudly censured in the
apartments of Versailles and in the hotels and coffee-houses of Paris.

Madame, the King's sister-in-law, had been the sole protectress of De
Lamotte, and had confined her patronage to granting her a pension of
twelve to fifteen hundred francs. Her brother was in the navy, but the
Marquis de Chabert, to whom he had been recommended, could never train a
good officer. The Queen in vain endeavoured to call to mind the features
of this person, of whom she had often heard as an intriguing woman, who
came frequently on Sundays to the gallery of Versailles. At the time when
all France was engrossed by the persecution against the Cardinal, the
portrait of the Comtesse de Lamotte Valois was publicly sold. Her
Majesty desired me one day, when I was going to Paris, to buy her the
engraving, which was said to be a tolerable likeness, that she might
ascertain whether she could recognise in it any person whom she might have