Happily, in this misery, the Queen found a friend. This friend was the Princess de Lamballe whose history is so well known that it is needless for me to touch upon it.
She was, however, through all vicissitudes, a faithful and affectionate friend to the Queen.
About the commencement of 1791, after the death of Mirabeau, the political horizon became so black that the King and Queen, the Count de Fersen, and Madame Elizabeth, all counselled the Princess to fly to Sardinia. Even the Pope, Pius the Sixth himself, insisted that she should visit Rome, to rejoin the friends of the King, who having raised in the Assembly the famous storm concerning the right of emigration sustained by Mirabeau, had happily crossed the frontier; but she firmly rejected all such proposals.
The Duc de Penthièvre who loved her as if she were his daughter, and the Duchess of Orleans, who admired her courage, wished by some means to force her to leave France. The Duc persuaded Louis the Sixteenth to write to the Court at Turin, in order that the King of Sardinia, as head of the family, should interpose his influence to compel the Princess to return to his dominions.
Here is the reply of the Princess de Lamballe:—
“Sire and Respected Cousin,—
“I do not remember that any of our illustrious ancestors of the House of Savoy, before or after the great Charles Emmanuel, of illustrious memory, ever disgraced themselves by an act of treachery. I should do so were I to quit the Court of France at this critical juncture. You will excuse my refusing your truly royal invitation. The shedding of blood, and the madness of the States, alike command that one and all should unite their efforts for the preservation of the King and Queen and the royal family of France. It is impossible to shake my resolution. I have determined, once and for all, never to abandon, at a moment when they are forsaken by their oldest servants, those who have none to look to but me.
“In happier days, your Majesty can count on my obedience; but to-day, as the Court of France is open to the persecutions of its most atrocious enemies, I beg humbly the right of following my own instincts of right. At the most brilliant epoch of the reign of Marie Antoinette, I felt the warmth of royal favor, and can I now abandon her? To do so, sire, would be to set the seal of eternal infamy not only on my brow, but on those of all my relations; and I fear that more than all other torments.”
It was then that the Queen employed a ruse to get her to quit France.