Abbe de Vermond threw the whole blame of the
imprudence and impolicy of the affair of the Cardinal de Rohan upon the
minister, and ceased to be the friend and supporter of the Baron de
Breteuil with the Queen.

In the early part of the year 1786, the Cardinal, as has been said, was
fully acquitted, and came out of the Bastille, while Madame de Lamotte was
condemned to be whipped, branded, and imprisoned. The Court, persisting
in the erroneous views which had hitherto guided its measures, conceived
that the Cardinal and the woman De Lamotte were equally culpable and
unequally punished, and sought to restore the balance of justice by
exiling the Cardinal to La Chaise-Dieu, and suffering Madame de Lamotte to
escape a few days after she entered l'Hopital. This new error confirmed
the Parisians in the idea that the wretch De Lamotte, who had never been
able to make her way so far as to the room appropriated to the Queen's
women, had really interested the Queen herself.

[Further particulars will be found in the "Memoirs of the Comte de
Beugnot" (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1871), as he knew Madame de Lamotte
from the days of her early childhood (when the three children, the Baron
de Valois, who died captain of a frigate, and the two Mademoiselles de
Saint-Remi, the last descendants of the Baron de Saint-Remi, a natural son
of Henri II., were almost starving) to the time of her temporary
prosperity. In fact, he was with her when she burnt the correspondence of
the Cardinal, in the interval the Court foolishly allowed between his
arrest and her capture, and De Beugnot believed he had met at her house,
at the moment of their return from their successful trick, the whole party
engaged in deluding the Cardinal. It is worth noting that he was then
struck by the face of Mademoiselle d'Oliva, who had just personated the
Queen in presenting a rose to the Cardinal. It may also be cited as a
pleasing quality of Madame de Lamotte that she, "in her ordinary
conversation, used the words stupid and honest as synonymous."--See
"Beugnot," vol. i., p. 60.]

CHAPTER XIV.

The Abbe de Vermond could not repress his exultation when he succeeded in
getting the Archbishop of Sens appointed head of the council of finance. I
have more than once heard him say that seventeen years of patience were
not too long a term for success in a Court; that he spent all that time in
gaining the end he had in view; but that at length the Archbishop wa