Produced by David Widger
Being Secret Memoirs of Madame du Hausset,Lady's Maid to Madame de Pompadour,and of an unknown English Girland the Princess Lamballe
Editor in continuation:
I am again, for this and the following chapter, compelled to resume thepen in my own person, and quit the more agreeable office of a transcriberfor my illustrious patroness.
I have already mentioned that the Princesse de Lamballe, on firstreturning from England to France, anticipated great advantages from therecall of the emigrants. The desertion of France by so many of thepowerful could not but be a deathblow to the prosperity of the monarchy.There was no reason for these flights at the time they began. Thefugitives only set fire to the four quarters of the globe against theircountry. It was natural enough that the servants whom they had leftbehind to keep their places should take advantage of their masters'pusillanimity, and make laws to exclude those who had, uncalled for,resigned the sway into bolder and more active hands.
I do not mean to impeach the living for the dead; but, when we see thosebearing the lofty titles of Kings and Princesses, escaping with theirwives and families, from an only brother and sister with helpless infantchildren, at the hour of danger, we cannot help wishing for a littleplebeian disinterestedness in exalted minds.
I have travelled Europe twice, and I have never seen any woman with thatindescribable charm of person, manner, and character, which distinguishedMarie Antoinette. This is in itself a distinction quite sufficient todetach friends from its possessor through envy. Besides, she was Queenof France, the woman of highest rank in a most capricious, restless andlibertine nation. The two Princesses placed nearest to her, and who werethe first to desert her, though both very much inferior in personal andmental qualifications, no doubt, though not directly, may haveentertained some anticipations of her place. Such feelings are notlikely to decrease the distaste, which results from comparisons to ourown disadvantage. It is, therefore, scarcely to be wondered at, thatthose nearest to the throne should be least attached to those who fillit. How little do such persons think that the grave they are thusinsensibly digging may prove their own! In this case it only did not bya miracle. What the effect of the royal brothers' and the nobility'sremaining in France would have been we can only conjecture. That theirdeparture caused, great and irreparable evils we know; and we have goodreason to think they caused the greatest. Those who abandon their houseson fire, silently give up their claims to the devouring element. Thusthe first emigration kindled the French flame, which, though for a whileit was got under by a foreign stream, was never completely, extinguishedtill subdued by its native current.
The unfortunate Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette ceased to be Sovereignsfrom the period they were ignominiously dragged to their jail at theTuileries. From this moment they were abandoned to the vengeance ofmiscreants, who were disgracing the nation with unprovoked and uselessmurders. But from this moment also the zeal of the Princesses Elizabethand de Lamballe became redoubled. Out of one hundred individuals andmore, male and female, who had been exclusively occupied about the personof Marie Antoinette, few, excepting this illustrious pair, and theinestimable Clery, remained devoted to the last. The saint-like virtuesof these Princ