their speedy departure, urging the necessity of it; the King was silent;
but his emotion was evident, and his eyes were suffused with tears. The
Queen rose, the King went out, and Madame Elisabeth followed him; the
Queen stopped and said to me, in the recess of a window, "I am sorry I
brought the King here! I am sure Elisabeth thinks with me; if the King
had but given utterance to a fourth part of what he thinks of those brave
men they would have been in ecstacies; but he cannot overcome his
diffidence."

The Emperor Joseph died about this time. The Queen's grief was not
excessive; that brother of whom she had been so proud, and whom she had
loved so tenderly, had probably suffered greatly in her opinion; she
reproached him sometimes, though with moderation, for having adopted
several of the principles of the new philosophy, and perhaps she knew that
he looked upon our troubles with the eye of the sovereign of Germany
rather than that of the brother of the Queen of France.

The Emperor on one occasion sent the Queen an engraving which represented
unfrocked nuns and monks. The first were trying on fashionable dresses,
the latter were having their hair arranged; the picture was always left in
the closet, and never hung up. The Queen told me to have it taken away;
for she was hurt to see how much influence the philosophers had over her
brother's mind and actions.

Mirabeau had not lost the hope of becoming the last resource of the
oppressed Court; and at this time some communications passed between the
Queen and him. The question was about an office to be conferred upon him.
This transpired, and it must have been about this period that the Assembly
decreed that no deputy could hold an office as a minister of the King
until the expiration of two years after the cessation of his legislative