Coster, so that he might not mistake it when he should take the portfolio
to her. The day before her departure the Queen particularly recommended
me to proceed to Lyons and the frontiers as soon as she should have
started. She advised me to take with me a confidential person, fit to
remain with M. Campan when I should leave him, and assured me that she
would give orders to M. ------ to set off as soon as she should be known
to be at the frontiers in order to protect me in going out. She
condescended to add that, having a long journey to make in foreign
countries, she determined to give me three hundred louis.

I bathed the Queen's hands with tears at the moment of this sorrowful
separation; and, having money at my disposal, I declined accepting her
gold. I did not dread the road I had to travel in order to rejoin her;
all my apprehension was that by treachery or miscalculation a scheme, the
safety of which was not sufficiently clear to me, should fail. I could
answer for all those who belonged to the service immediately about the
Queen's person, and I was right; but her wardrobe woman gave me
well-founded reason for alarm. I mentioned to the Queen many
revolutionary remarks which this woman had made to me a few days before.
Her office was directly under the control of the first femme de chambre,
yet she had refused to obey the directions I gave her, talking insolently
to me about "hierarchy overturned, equality among men," of course more
especially among persons holding offices at Court; and this jargon, at
that time in the mouths of all the partisans of the Revolution, was
terminated by an observation which frightened me. "You know many
important secrets, madame," said this woman to me, "and I have guessed
quite as many. I am not a fool; I see all that is going forward here in
consequence of the bad advice given to the King and Queen; I could
frustrate it all if I chose." This argument, in which I had been promptly
silenced, left me pale and trembling. Unfortunately, as I began my