rmined to sacrifice myself to my duty, but by no means to any
intrigue, and I thought that, circumstanced as I was, I ought to confine
myself to obeying the Queen's orders. I frequently sent off couriers to
foreign countries, and they were never discovered, so many precautions did
I take. I am indebted for the preservation of my own existence to the
care I took never to admit any deputy to my abode, and to refuse all
interviews which even people of the highest importance often requested of
me; but this line of conduct exposed me to every species of ill-will, and
on the same day I saw myself denounced by Prud'homme, in his 'Gazette
Revolutionnaire', as capable of making an aristocrat of the mother of the
Gracchi, if a person so dangerous as myself could have got into her
household; and by Gauthier's Gazette Royaliste, as a monarchist, a
constitutionalist, more dangerous to the Queen's interests than a Jacobin.

At this period an event with which I had nothing to do placed me in a
still more critical situation. My brother, M. Genet, began his diplomatic
career successfully. At eighteen he was attached to the embassy to
Vienna; at twenty he was appointed chief secretary of Legation in England,
on occasion of the peace of 1783. A memorial which he presented to M. de
Vergennes upon the dangers of the treaty of commerce then entered into
with England gave offence to M. de Calonne, a patron of that treaty, and
particularly to M. Gerard de Rayneval, chief clerk for foreign affairs.
So long as M. de Vergennes lived, having upon my father's death declared
himself the protector of my brother, he supported him against the enemies
his views had created. But on his death M. de Montmorin, being much in
need of the long experience in business which he found in M. de Rayneval,
was guided solely by the latter. The office of which my brother was the
head was suppressed. He then went to St. Petersburg, strongly recommended
to the Comte de Segur, minister from France to that Court, who appointed
him secretary of Legation. Some time afterwards the Comte de Segur left
him at St. Petersburg, charged with the affairs of France. After his
return from Russia, M. Genet was appointed ambassador to the United States
by the party called Girondists, the deputies who headed it being from the
department of the Gironde. He was recalled by the Robespierre party,
which overthrew the former faction, on the 31st of May, 1793, and
condemned to appear