Queen's service. The King takes the same precaution on his
part respecting all who are about him. He said there was with him a
person of great integrity, to whom he would commit this inquiry; and that,
with regard to the Queen's household, you must be spoken to, that he had
long studied your character, and that he esteemed your veracity."

The Princess had a list of the names of all who belonged to the Queen's
chamber on her desk. She asked me for information respecting each
individual. I was fortunate in having none but the most favourable
information to give. I had to speak of my avowed enemy in the Queen's
chamber; of her who most wished that I should be responsible for my
brother's political opinions. The Princess, as the head of the chamber,
could not be ignorant of this circumstance; but as the person in question,
who idolised the King and Queen, would not have hesitated to sacrifice her
life in order to save theirs, and as possibly her attachment to them,
united to considerable narrowness of intellect and a limited education,
contributed to her jealousy of me, I spoke of her in the highest terms.

The Princess wrote as I dictated, and occasionally looked at me with
astonishment. When I had done I entreated her to write in the margin that
the lady alluded to was my declared enemy. She embraced me, saying, "Ah!
do not write it! we should not record an unhappy circumstance which ought
to be forgotten." We came to a man of genius who was much attached to the
Queen, and I described him as a man born solely to contradict, showing
himself an aristocrat with democrats, and a democrat among aristocrats;
but still a man of probity, and well disposed to his sovereign. The
Princess said she knew many persons of that disposition, and that she was
delighted I had nothing to say against this man, because she herself had
placed him about the Queen.

The whole of her Majesty's chamber, which consisted entirely of persons of
fidelity, gave throughout all the dreadful convulsions of the Revolution
proofs of the greatest prudence and self-devotion. The same cannot be
said of the antechambers. With the exception of three or four, all the
servants of that class were outrageous Jacobins; and I saw on those
occasions the necessity of composing the private household of princes of
persons completely separated from the class of the people.

The situation of the royal family was so unbearable during the months
which immediate