Of Charles X he spoke kindly, giving him exactly a different character.
He thought him the most honest of the three brothers, though quite
unequal to the crisis in which he had been called to reign. He believed
him sincere in his religious professions, and thought the charge of his
being a professed Jesuit by no means improbable.

Marie Antoinette he thought an injured woman. On the subject of her
reputed gallantries he spoke cautiously, premising that, as an American,
I ought to make many allowances for a state of society, that was
altogether unknown in our country. Treating this matter with the
discrimination of a man of the world, and the delicacy of a gentleman,
he added that he entirely exonerated her from all of the coarse charges
that had proceeded from vulgar clamour, while he admitted that she had
betrayed a partiality for a young Swede[1] that was, at least,
indiscreet for one in her situation, though he had no reason to believe
her attachment had led her to the length of criminality.

[Footnote 1: A Count Koningsmarke.]

I asked his opinion concerning the legitimacy of the Duc de Bordeaux,
but he treated the rumour to the contrary, as one of those miserable
devices to which men resort to effect the ends of party, and as
altogether unworthy of serious attention.

I was amused with the simplicity with which he spoke of his own efforts
to produce a change of government, during the last reign. On this
subject he had been equally frank even before the recent revolution,
though there would have been a manifest impropriety in my repeating what
had then passed between us. This objection is now removed in part, and I
may recount one of his anecdotes, though I can never impart to it the