ce this
libel; he came soon after to say that he had found out the place where the
work was being printed, and that it was at a country house near Yverdun.
He had already got possession of two sheets, which contained the most
atrocious calumnies, conveyed with a degree of art which might make them
very dangerous to the Queen's reputation. Goupil said that he could
obtain the rest, but that he should want a considerable sum for that
purpose. Three thousand Louis were given him, and very soon afterwards he
brought the whole manuscript and all that had been printed to the
lieutenant of police. He received a thousand louis more as a reward for
his address and zeal; and a much more important office was about to be
given him, when another spy, envious of Goupil's good fortune, gave
information that Goupil himself was the author of the libel; that, ten
years before, he had been put into the Bicetre for swindling; and that
Madame Goupil had been only three years out of the Salpetriere, where she
had been placed under another name. This Madame Goupil was very pretty
and very intriguing; she had found means to form an intimacy with Cardinal
de Rohan, whom she led, it is said, to hope for a reconciliation with the
Queen. All this affair was hushed up; but it shows that it was the
Queen's fate to be incessantly attacked by the meanest and most odious
machinations.

Another woman, named Cahouette de Millers, whose husband held an office in
the Treasury, being very irregular in conduct, and of a scheming turn of
mind, had a mania for appearing in the eyes of her friends at Paris as a
person in favour at Court, to which she was not entitled by either birth
or office. During the latter years of the life of Louis XV. she had made
many dupes, and picked up considerable sums by passing herself off as the
King's mistress. The fear of irritating Madame du Barry was, according to
her, the only thing which prevented her enjoying that title openly. She
came regularly to Versailles, kept herself concealed in a furnished
lodging, and her dupes imagined she was secretly summoned to Court.

This woman formed the scheme of getting admission, if possible, to the
presence of the Queen, or at least causing it to be believed that she had
done so. She adopted as her lover Gabriel de Saint Charles, intendant of
her Majesty's finances,--an office, the privileges of which were confined
to the right of entering the Queen's apartment on Sunday. Mad