the Dauphin's marriage the Duc de Choiseul was disgraced, and
Madame de Marsan and Madame de Guemenee, who grew more powerful through
the Duke's disgrace, conferred that embassy, upon Prince Louis de Rohan,
afterwards cardinal and grand almoner.

Hence it will be seen that the Gazette de France is a sufficient answer to
those libellers who dared to assert that the young Archduchess was
acquainted with the Cardinal de Rohan before the period of her marriage. A
worse selection in itself, or one more disagreeable to Maria Theresa, than
that which sent to her, in quality, of ambassador, a man so frivolous and
so immoral as Prince Louis de Rohan, could not have been made. He
possessed but superficial knowledge upon any subject, and was totally
ignorant of diplomatic affairs. His reputation had gone before him to
Vienna, and his mission opened under the most unfavourable auspices. In
want of money, and the House of Rohan being unable to make him any
considerable advances, he obtained from his Court a patent which
authorised him to borrow the sum of 600,000 livres upon his benefices, ran
in debt above a million, and thought to dazzle the city and Court of
Vienna by the most indecent and ill-judged extravagance. He formed a
suite of eight or ten gentlemen, of names sufficiently high-sounding;
twelve pages equally well born, a crowd of officers and servants, a
company of chamber musicians, etc. But this idle pomp did not last;
embarrassment and distress soon showed themselves; his people, no longer
receiving pay, in order to make money, abused the privileges of
ambassadors, and smuggled with so much effrontery that Maria Theresa, to
put a stop to it without offending the Court of France, was compelled to
suppress the privileges in this respect of all the diplomatic bodies, a
step which rendered the person and conduct of Prince Louis odious in
every foreign Court.

[I have often heard the Queen say that, at Vienna, in the office of the
secretary of the Prince de Rohan, there were sold in one year more silk
stockings than at Lyons and Paris together.--MADAME CAMPAN.]

He seldom obtained private audiences from the Empress, who did not esteem
him, and who expressed herself without reserve upon his conduct both as a
bishop and as an ambassador. He thought to obtain favour by assisting to
effect the marriage of the Archduchess Elizabeth, the elder sister of
Marie Antoinette, with Louis XV., an affair which was awkwardly
under