sufficient power of attention to listen to the King. The large table, the
velvet cloth, seats which ought to have been filled by none but the King's
chief councillors; what that chamber had been, and what it was at that
moment, when the King was employing a woman in an office which had so
little affinity with her ordinary functions; the misfortunes which had
brought him to the necessity of doing so,--all these ideas made such an
impression upon me that when I had returned to the Queen's apartments I
could not sleep for the remainder of the night, nor could I remember what
I had written.

The more I saw that I had the happiness to be of some use to my employers,
the more scrupulously careful was I to live entirely with my family; and I
never indulged in any conversation which could betray the intimacy to
which I was admitted; but nothing at Court remains long concealed, and I
soon saw I had many enemies. The means of injuring others in the minds of
sovereigns are but too easily obtained, and they had become still more so,
since the mere suspicion of communication with partisans of the Revolution
was sufficient to forfeit the esteem and confidence of the King and Queen;
happily, my conduct protected me, with them, against calumny. I had left
St. Cloud two days, when I received at Paris a note from the Queen,
containing these words:

"Come to St. Cloud immediately; I have something concerning you to
communicate." I set off without loss of time. Her Majesty told me she
had a sacrifice to request of me; I answered that it was made. She said
it went so far as the renunciation of a friend's society; that such a
renunciation was always painful, but that it must be particularly so to
me; that, for her own part, it might have been very useful that a deputy,
a man of talent, should be constantly received at my house; but at this
moment she thought only of my welfare. The Queen then informed me that