"'Let me live to be convinced of that, monsieur, and my happiness will be concentrated in its demonstration.'
"'Indeed, gentlemen,' said the Princesse Elizabeth, the Queen has yet had but little reason to love the French.'
"'Where is our Ambassador,' said I, 'and the Neapolitan?'
"'I have had the pleasure of seeing them early this morning,' replied the Queen; 'but I told them, also, that indisposition prevented my going into public. They will be at our card-party in your apartment this evening, where I hope to see these gentlemen. The only parties,' continued Her Majesty, addressing herself to the Princesse Elizabeth and the Ambassadors, 'the only parties I shall visit in future will be those of the Princesse de Lamballe, my superintendent; as, in so doing, I shall have no occasion to go out of the palace, which, from what has happened, seems to me the only prudent course.'
"'Come, come, Madame,' exclaimed the Ambassadors; I do not give way to gloomy ideas. All will yet be well.'
"'I hope so,' answered Her Majesty; 'but till that hope is realized, the wounds I have suffered will make existence a burden to me!'
"The Duchesse de Luynes, like many others, had been a zealous partisan of the new order of things, and had expressed herself with great indiscretion in the presence of the Queen. But the Duchess was brought to her senses when she saw herself, and all the mad, democratical nobility, under the overpowering weight of Jacobinism, deprived of every privileged prerogative and levelled and stripped of hereditary distinction.
"She came to me one day, weeping, to beg I would make use of my good offices in her favour with the Queen, whom she was grieved that she had so grossly offended by an unguarded speech.
"'On my knees,' continued the Duchess, I am I ready to supplicate the pardon of Her Majesty. I cannot live without her forgiveness. One of my servants has opened my eyes, by telling me that the Revolution can make a Duchess a beggar, but cannot make a beggar a Duchess.'
"'Unfortunately,' said I, 'if some of these faithful servants had been listened to, they would still be such, and not now our masters; but I can assure you, Duchess, that the Queen has long since forgiven you. See! Her Majesty comes to tell you so herself.'