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Cadoudal's servant stated that there often came to his master's house a mysterious man, at whose entry not only Georges but also the Polignacs and Rivière always arose. This convinced Napoleon that the Duc d'Enghien was directing the plot, and he determined to have the duke and Dumouriez seized. That they were on German soil was naught to him.
"As yet, however, nothing in particular had discovered that splendour for which the De Polignacs were afterwards so conspicuous.
The great noble families saw with envy and displeasure this supremacy of the Polignacs and the favorites of Trianon. They withdrew from the court; gave the "Queen of Trianon" over to her special friends and their citizen pleasures and sports, which, as they asserted, were not becoming to the great nobility.
I have lost my friend! I shall never see her again. Close the door, draw the bolt, that she cannot come in, I I shall die!" And the queen uttered a loud cry, and sank in a swoon. At midnight two well-packed carriages drove out of the inner courts of the palace. They were the Polignacs; they were leaving France, to take refuge in Switzerland.
The Abbe Vermond, Her Majesty's confessor and tutor, and, unfortunately, in many respects, her ambitious guide, was really alarmed at the rising favour of the Duchess; and, though he knew the very obstacles thrown in her way only strengthened her resolution as to any favourite object, yet he ventured to head an intrigue to destroy the great influence of the De Polignacs, which, as he might have foreseen, only served to hasten their aggrandisement.
The angry murmurings of the populace did not reach the ears of the gay queen, who, had she been conscious of them, might have allowed her bright eyes to become dim for a time, but would have soon forgotten the passing cloud. There was constant festivity about the queen and her companions, but no etiquette; there was no household, only friends—the Polignacs, Mme.
Rapp has behaved extremely well; he went to the Emperor, and would not leave him till he had obtained the pardon of another of the condemned, whose name I do not recollect. How much these Polignacs have interested me! There will be then at least some families who will owe him gratitude!
Recent political events connected with the drawing up of a national constitution, and the hunger of the poor, which they naturally blamed on those in power, had, he knew, raised deep animosity towards Louis XVI. and the Queen. Her thoughtless life of gaiety in past days, and the greedy demands of her friends the Polignacs, had made her particularly the mark of venomous hate.
By many, the partiality which prompted Vermond to espouse the interests of the Archbishop was ascribed to the amiable sentiment of gratitude for the recommendation of that dignitary, by which Vermond himself first obtained his situation at Court; but there were others, who have been deemed deeper in the secret, who impute it to the less honourable source of self-interest, to the mere spirit of ostentation, to the hope of its enabling him to bring about the destruction of the De Polignacs.
Thousands of them dragged on the burden of their harassed and desperate days, less like men and women than beasts of the field wrung and tortured and mercilessly overladen, in order that the Queen might gratify her childish passion for diamonds, or lavish money and estates on worthless female Polignacs and Lamballes, or kill time at a cost of five hundred louis a night at lansquenet and the faro bank.
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