s a faithful portrait of the unfortunate reign of Louis XVI.,
the Marechal du Muy, M. de Maurepas, M. de Vergennes, M. de Malesherbes,
the Duc d'Orleans, M. de La Fayette, the Abby de Vermond, the Abbe
Montesquiou, Mirabeau, the Duchesse de Polignac, and the Duchesse de
Luynes should have noted faithfully in writing all the transactions in
which they took decided parts. The secret political history of a later
period has been disseminated among a much greater number of persons;
there are Ministers who have published memoirs, but only when they had
their own measures to justify, and then they confined themselves to the
vindication of their own characters, without which powerful motive they
probably would have written nothing. In general, those nearest to the
Sovereign, either by birth or by office, have left no memoirs; and in
absolute monarchies the mainsprings of great events will be found in
particulars which the most exalted persons alone could know. Those who
have had but little under their charge find no subject in it for a book;
and those who have long borne the burden of public business conceive
themselves to be forbidden by duty, or by respect for authority, to
disclose all they know. Others, again, preserve notes, with the
intention of reducing them to order when they shall have reached the
period of a happy leisure; vain illusion of the ambitious, which they
cherish, for the most part, but as a veil to conceal from their sight
the hateful image of their inevitable downfall! and when it does at
length take place, despair or chagrin deprives them of fortitude to
dwell upon the dazzling period which they never cease to regret.

Louis XVI. meant to write his own memoirs; the manner in which his
private papers were arranged indicated this design. The Queen also had
the same intention; she long preserved a large correspondence, and a great
number of minute reports, made in the spirit and upon the event of the
moment. But after the 20th of June, 1792, she was obliged to burn the
larger portion of what she had so collected, and the remainder were
conveyed out of France.

Considering the rank and situations of the persons I have named as capable
of elucidating by their writings the history of our political storms, it
will not be imagined that I aim at placing myself on a level with them;
but I have spent half my life either with the daughters of Louis XV. or
with Marie Antoinette. I knew the characters of those