Marie Antoinette paid the greatest attention to all memorials. They were regularly collected every week by Her Majesty’s private secretary, the Abbe Vermond. I have myself seen many of them, when returned from the Princesse de Lamballe, with the Queen’s marginal notes in her own handwriting, and the answers dictated by Her Majesty to the different, officers of the departments relative to the nature of the respective demands. She always recommended the greatest attention to all public documents, and annexed notes to such as passed through her hands to prevent their being thrown aside or lost.
One of those who were least satisfied with the appointment of the Princesse de Lamballe to the office of superintendent was her brother-in-law, the Duc d’Orleans, who, having attempted her virtue on various occasions and been repulsed, became mortified and alarmed at her situation as a check to his future enterprise.
At one time the Duc and Duchesse d’Orleans were most constant and assiduous in their attendance on Marie Antoinette. They were at all her parties. The Queen was very fond of the Duchess. It is supposed that the interest Her Majesty took in that lady, and the steps to which some time afterwards that interest led, planted the first seeds of the unrelenting and misguided hostility which, in the deadliest times of the Revolution, animated the Orleanists against the throne.
The Duc d’Orleans, then Duc de Chartres, was never a favourite of the Queen. He was only tolerated at Court on account of his wife and of the great intimacy which subsisted between him and the Comte d’Artois. Louis XVI. had often expressed his disapprobation of the Duke’s character, which his conduct daily justified.
The Princesse de Lamballe could have no cause to think of her brother-in-law but with horror. He had insulted her, and, in revenge at his defeat, had, it was said, deprived her, by the most awful means, of her husband. The Princess was tenderly attached to her sister-in-law, the Duchess. Her attachment could not but make her look very unfavourably upon the circumstance of the Duke’s subjecting his wife to the humiliation of residing in the palace with Madame de Genlis, and being forced to receive a person of morals so incorrect as the guardian of her children. The Duchess had complained to her father, the Duc de Penthievre, in the presence of the Princesse de Lamballe, of the very great ascendency Madame de Genlis exercised over her husband; and had even requested the Queen to use her influence in detaching the Duke from this connexion.