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Updated: June 7, 2025
"The felicity of the Queen was too great not to be soon overcast. The unbounded influence of the De Polignacs was now at its zenith. It could not fail of being attacked. Every engine of malice, envy, and detraction was let loose; and, in the vilest calumnies against the character of the Duchess, her royal mistress was included.
But the self-conceited dotard soon caused the Queen to repent her misplaced confidence, and from his unwarrantable impudence on that occasion, when he found himself alone with the Queen, Her Majesty, though he was a constant member of the societies of the De Polignacs, ever after treated him with sovereign contempt.
The brothers of the king, the schoolmaster and mayor of Trianon, had left France and had located themselves at Coblentz on the Rhine; the Polignacs had fled to England; the Princess Lamballe, too, had, at the wish of the queen, gone to negotiate with Pitt, in order to implore the all- powerful minister of George III. to give to the oppressed French crown more material and effectual support than was afforded by the angry and bitter words which he hurled in Parliament against the riotous and rebellious French nation.
They gave the king over to his wife who ruled through him, and who, in turn, was governed by the Polignacs and the other favorites. To them and to their friends belonged all places, all honors; to them all applied who wanted to gain any thing for the court, and even they who wanted to get justice done them. Around the royal pair there was nothing but intrigues, cabals, envy, and hostility.
It was extinguished in the corruption of its descendants whose faculties grew weaker with each generation and ended in the instincts of gorillas fermented in the brains of grooms and jockeys; or rather, as with the Choiseul-Praslins, Polignacs and Chevreuses, wallowed in the mud of lawsuits which made it equal the other classes in turpitude.
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.
And what has been the consequence of Her Majesty's ungovernable partiality for these De Polignacs? "'You know, Prince, said I, 'better than I do. "'Pardon me, Prince, answered I, 'I have not withdrawn myself from the Queen, but from the new parties, with whose politics I cannot identify myself, besides some exceptions I have taken against those who frequent them.
Fouche, through the medium of his agents, had given Pichegru, Georges, and some other partisans of royalty, to understand that they might depend on Moreau, who, it was said, was quite prepared. Russillon declared on the trial that on the 14th of March the Polignacs said to some one, "Everything is going wrong they do not understand each other. Moreau does not keep his word. We have been deceived."
But the self-conceited dotard soon caused the Queen to repent her misplaced confidence, and from his unwarrantable impudence on that occasion, when he found himself alone with the Queen, Her Majesty, though he was a constant member of the societies of the De Polignacs, ever after treated him with sovereign contempt.
"As yet, however, nothing in particular had discovered that splendour for which the De Polignacs were afterwards so conspicuous.
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