But why should I blame others? I was told of these things, but I did not listen. I would weep when I heard of conditions at the hospital.

After the birth of Madame Royale I had asked if I could found a lying-in hospital. This I had done. It salved my conscience. I could stop thinking about unpleasant things like dying people lying on the floor of the Hfitel-Dieu tormented by vermin while the rats leapt over them and there was no one to attend them or feed them.

Necker was constantly trying to bring in reforms—hospitals. prisons, the state of the poor. He instituted a new rule of loans not taxes, which made the people cheer him but did nothing to alleviate the situation.

Necker wanted popularity; he never criticised me. I know now that it was because the King doted on me and wished me to have my diversions; although Necker wanted to do good to France, he wanted most of all to bring power to Necker. Without the King’s support he could not do this, and therefore he must continue to please the Queen.

The lack of money seemed to affect everyone. There was a great scandal when the Prince de Guemenee became bankrupt This ruined several traders who had been supplying him for years. His enormous retinue of servants were in despair. The affair reverberated throughout Versailles and Paris; and naturally his wife could not hold her post as governess to the Enfants de France.

In her place I chose my dearest Gabrielle. She was not ‘eager. Perhaps what I loved most about the dear creature was her indifference to power. I think Gabrielle would have been happiest if she could have lived quietly in the country away from Courts. She had no desire for jewels, not even fine clothes. Perhaps she knew she was beautiful enough to do without them. She was lazy and liked nothing better than to lie on the lawns at the Trianon just with myself and perhaps a few of our very in ornate friends and idly chatter. She declared that she was not suited to the post. The Dauphin needed a nurse who was constantly watching over him.

“But shall watch over him,” I declared, ‘and so will his father and many others. We shall be together more than ever. You must accept, Gabrielle. “p>

Still she hesitated. But when her lover Vaudreuil heard, he insisted that she take the post. I often wondered what happened between them.

She declared she was terrified of him terrified but fascinated. So Gabrielle became the children’s governess. I now know that this friendship between myself and Gabrielle was one of the main causes of com plaint against me. How strange! It was so beautiful really a loving friendship: the desire of two people who had much in common to be together. Where was the harm in it? Yet it was misconstrued. I do not refer to the evil construction which was put on that friendship. There must always be libels about me and my friends.

I ignored them; they were so ridiculous. But her family were ambitious. I persuaded Louis to make Gabrielle’s husband a Duke, which meant that she had the droit au tabouret; then her family were constantly producing some member who needed a post at Court. Large sums were constantly being paid to that family from the ever-diminishing treasury. Money !

One lovely June day I was seated in my gilded apartment playing the harpsichord and my thoughts were wandering from the music. I was contemplating that I was growing old. I was nearly twenty-eight! My little daughter would be five years old in December and my little Dauphin two in October.

Ah, I sighed inwardly, I am no longer young; and a sadness took possession of me. I could not imagine myself old. What should I do when I could no longer dance, play and act? Arrange marriages for my children! Lose my sweet daughter to some monarch of a far-off country!

I shuddered. Never let me be old, I prayed.

There was a scratching at the door.

I looked up from the harpsichord and signed to the Princesse de Lamballe to see who wished to enter.

It was ‘an usher to announce a visitor.

I started as I saw him in the doorway. He had aged a good deal, but he was none the less attractive for that.

He is more distinguished than ever, I thought.

Comte Axel de Fersen was approaching. I rose. I held out my hand; he took it and kissed it.

I felt suddenly alive, glad of these moments. AU my gloomy thoughts of encroaching age had disappeared.

He had come back.

What glorious days followed. He came constantly to my drawing-room, and although we were never alone we could talk together and we did not need words to convey our feelings for each other.

When he talked to me of America he glowed with enthusiasm He had been awarded the Cross of Cincinnatus for bravery, but he did not wear it. It was forbidden by His Majesty King Gustave of Sweden, but the latter had been impressed by its bestowal, for he had made Axel a colonel in his army.

‘now,” I said, ‘you will stay in France for a while I shall have to have a pretext for doing so.”

“And you have none?”

My heart has a reason; but I cannot declare that to the world. There must be two reasons. “

I understood. His family were pressing him to return to Sweden and settle down. He should marry . a fortune. He should consider his future. How could that be furthered in France?

He told me of these matters and we smiled at each other in a kind of enchanted hopelessness. Never from the beginning did we believe we could be lovers in truth. How could we? I was a very different woman from the woman portrayed in the pamphlets. I was fastidious; I was essentially roman tic. A sordid bedchamber interlude had no charms for me. I believed in love love that is service, devotion, unselfishness . idealised love. It seemed to me that Axel gave me that. In his Swedish Army uniform he looked magnificent apart from all other men.

I saw him like that, and that was how he would always be to me. I was not looking for transient sensations, the gratification of a momentary desire. I dreamed that I was a simple noblewoman, that we were married, that we lived our idealised lives in a little house somewhere like the Hameau, where the cows were all dean and the butter was made in Sevres bowls and the sheep were decorated with silver bells and ribbons. I wanted nothing sordid to enter my paradise.

Moreover I had my babies. To me they were perfect. And jAey were Louis’s children. I would not have them different in any way, and my little Madame Royale already had a look of her father.

There was no logic in my dreams; there was no practical reasoning. I wanted romance and romance is not built on the realities of life.

Nevertheless I wished to keep Axel in France. I was delighted when Louis showed me a letter he had received from Gustave of Sweden. It ran:

“Monsieur my brother and cousin, the Comte de Fersen having served with approbation in Your Majesty’s armies in America and having thereby made himself worthy of your benevolence, I do not believe I am being indiscreet in asking for a proprietary regiment for him. His birth, his fortune, the position he occupies about my person … lead me to believe he can be agreeable to Your Majesty, and as he will remain equally attached to my own, his time will be divided between his duties in France and in Sweden….”

It did not take long to persuade Louis that this was an excellent idea.

Axel now had the opportunity to be more often at Versailles without arousing comment. He could come in the uniform of a French soldier.

“My father is not pleased,” he told me.

“He feels I fritter away my time.”

“Alas,” I replied, “I fear it too.” I never frittered more happily. ”

“There is a concert tonight. I shall look for you.” And so it went on.

Fersen pere was an energetic man. If his son determined to waste his time in France he must marry. There was a very eligible young woman who would suit him admirably. She had a fortune, her father was a power in France, but what she needed was a husband with birth and title. Germaine Necker, daughter of the Comptroller, was the chosen bride.

When Axel told me this I was dismayed. If he married, our romance would be shattered. It was true that I was married, that there could never be a chance of my marrying Axel, but who ever heard of a married troubadour! How could he be in constant attendance on me if he had a wife, and such a wife as Germaine Necker, a democrat and reformer, a woman of strong ideals learned from her parents?

“It must not be,” I said.

Fersen agreed, but he was gloomy. The Neckers had already been informed of the proposition and they thought it an excellent one.

Mademoiselle Necker would be mortally offended if he failed to propose marriage to her.

We must find another suitor for her,” I declared.

“One whom she will like better.”

I was horror-stricken. How could any woman like any one better than Axell Germaine Necker was a very determined woman. She would marry whom she pleased, she announced; and oddly, it seemed to me, she did not propose to marry Axel. For some time she had been in love with the Baron de Stael;

she made up her mind to marry him, and being the forceful young woman she was, in a very short time Germaine Necker had become Madame de Stael.

Axel showed me a letter he had written to his sister Sophie, of whom he was very fond and with whom he was always outspoken. She would understand his true feelings, he assured me.

I will never assume the bond of matrimony. It is against my nature. Unable to give myself to the person to whom I wish to belong and who really loves me, I will give myself to nobody. ” Romance had been preserved.