ce are the only places which the man honoured with the care of the
Princess's education should frequent." A month afterwards Maria Theresa,
through a habit common enough among sovereigns, asked him the same
question, and received precisely the same answer. The next day he
received an order to join the imperial family every evening.

It is extremely probable, from the constant and well-known intercourse
between this man and Comte de Mercy, ambassador of the Empire during the
whole reign of Louis XVI., that he was useful to the Court of Vienna, and
that he often caused the Queen to decide on measures, the consequences of
which she did not consider. Not of high birth, imbued with all the
principles of the modern philosophy, and yet holding to the hierarchy of
the Church more tenaciously than any other ecclesiastic; vain, talkative,
and at the same time cunning and abrupt; very ugly and affecting
singularity; treating the most exalted persons as his equals, sometimes
even as his inferiors, the Abbe de Vermond received ministers and bishops
when in his bath; but said at the same time that Cardinal Dubois was a
fool; that a man such as he, having obtained power, ought to make
cardinals, and refuse to be one himself.

Intoxicated with the reception he had met with at the Court of Vienna, and
having till then seen nothing of high life, the Abbe de Vermond admired no
other customs than those of the imperial family; he ridiculed the
etiquette of the House of Bourbon incessantly; the young Dauphiness was
constantly incited by his sarcasms to get rid of it, and it was he who
first induced her to suppress an infinity of practices of which he could
discern neither the prudence nor the political aim. Such is the faithful
portrait of that man whom the evil star of Marie Antoinette had reserved
to guide her first steps upon a stage so conspicuous and so full of danger
as that of the Court of Versailles.

It will be thought, perhaps, that I draw the character of the Abbe de
Vermond too unfavourably; but how can I view with any complacency one who,
after having arrogated to himself the office of confidant and sole
counsellor of the Queen, guided her with so little prudence, and gave us
the mortification of seeing that Princess blend, with qualities which
charmed all that surrounded her, errors alike injurious to her glory and
her happiness?

While M. de Choiseul, satisfied with the person whom M. de Brienne had
presented, despatched