The
cardinal, of course, joyfully consented to this. He sent to the
countess a document in which he humbly begged pardon for asking the
Empress Maria Theresa, years before, when Marie Antoinette was yet
Dauphiness of France, and he, the cardinal, was French ambassador in
Vienna, to chide her daughter on account of her light and haughty
behavior, and to charge herself with seeing it bettered. This was
the only offence against the queen of which he felt himself guilty,
and for this he humbly implored forgiveness. He had, at the same
time, begged the queen for an audience, that he might pay his
respects to her, and on bended knee ask her pardon. Some days after,
the Countess Lamotte-Valois had handed him a paper, written with the
queen's hand, as an answer to his letter.
The president here interrupted the cardinal: "Are you still in
possession of this document, your eminence?"
The cardinal bowed. "I have always, since I had the fortune to
receive them, carried with me the dear, and to me invaluable,
letters of the queen. On the day when I was arrested in Versailles,
they lay in my breast coat-pocket. It was my fortune, and the
misfortune of those who, after I had been carried to the Bastile,
burst into my palace, sealed my papers, and at once burned what
displeased them. In this way these letters escaped the auto-da-fe.
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