“In happier days, your Majesty can count on my obedience; but to-day, as the Court of France is open to the persecutions of its most atrocious enemies, I beg humbly the right of following my own instincts of right. At the most brilliant epoch of the reign of Marie Antoinette, I felt the warmth of royal favor, and can I now abandon her? To do so, sire, would be to set the seal of eternal infamy not only on my brow, but on those of all my relations; and I fear that more than all other torments.” It was then that the Queen employed a _ruse_ to get her to quit France. She had been sent once before on a mission from the Queen to England; and the inherent grace of the family of Savoy—the same which made the Duchess of Burgundy so powerful over Louis XIV—enabled her to obtain from the King and Queen of England a promise never to forsake the King and Queen of France. The moment to recall that promise to the English Court had arrived. The Queen desired the Princess de Lamballe to set out for London, and continue the negotiations already so happily commenced. She therefore left Paris, and reached England, stopping at Calais, at the famous “Hotel Dessein,” immortalized by Sterne in his “Sentimental Journey.” It was whilst in London that the Princess learnt the flight to Varennes, the return of the royal family, and their imprisonment in the Tuileries. She sent a young English girl, in whom she had the utmost confidence, to Paris. This messenger appeared close to the Queen. She had come in the name of the Princess, to learn the exact situation in which the family were placed. The Queen sent her a letter, and a ring, enclosing a lock of her hair, as white as if her years numbered eighty. On the ring was inscribed, “Whitened by sorrow.” I give, underneath, an exact copy of the letter:— “MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,—