to eclipse its beautiful rays, but were now incapable of
competition, and unable to endure its lustre. This malignant nest of
serpents began to poison the minds of the courtiers, as soon as the
pregnancy was obvious, by innuendoes on the partiality of the Comte
d'Artois for the Queen; and at length, infamously, and openly, dared to
point him out as the cause?

"Thus, in the heart of the Court itself, originated this most atrocious
slander, long before it reached the nation, and so much assisted to
destroy Her Majesty's popularity with a people, who now adored her
amiableness, her general kind-heartedness, and her unbounded charity.

"I have repeatedly seen the Queen and the Comte d'Artois together under
circumstances in which there could have been no concealment of her real
feelings; and I can firmly and boldly assert the falsehood of this
allegation against my royal mistress. The only attentions Marie
Antoinette received in the earlier part of her residence in France were
from her grandfather and her brothers-in-law. Of these, the Comte
d'Artois was the only one who, from youth and liveliness of character,
thoroughly sympathised with his sister. But, beyond the little freedoms
of two young and innocent playmates, nothing can be charged upon their
intimacy,--no familiarity whatever farther than was warranted by their
relationship. I can bear witness that Her Majesty's attachment for the
Comte d'Artois never differed in its nature from what she felt for her
brother the Emperor Joseph.

[When the King thought proper to be reconciled to the Queen after the
death of his grandfather, Louis XV., and when she became a mother, she
really was very much attached to Louis XVI., as may be proved from her
never quitting him, and suffering all the horrid sacrifices she endured,
through the whole period of the Revolution, rather than leave her
husband, her children, or her sister. Marie Antoinette might have saved
her life twenty times, had not the King's safety, united with her own and
that of her family, impelled her to reject every proposition of
self-preservation.]

"It is very likely that the slander of which I speak derived some colour
of probability afterwards with the million, from the Queen's
thoughtlessness, relative to the challenge which passed between the Comte
d'Artois and the Duc de Bourbon. In right of my station, I was one of
Her Majesty's confidential counsellors, and it became my duty to put
restraint upo