can never do her the justice that I would fain be able to do her if my incapacity and my want of eloquence did not take from me the means of doing it.
Therefore, what I now undertake is not with any fixed design of correcting their ignorance or their malice; that project would be too great for a lazy woman, and too bold for a person like me who dreads to show herself and would be unwilling to be thought an author. But I do it for my own satisfaction, out of gratitude to the queen, and to re- view once more (if I live), as in a picture, all that has come to my knowledge concerning the things of a Court, which is certainly very limited, for I do not like intrigue. But I shall add nothing. That which I put upon paper I have seen and I have heard, and during the whole Regency (which is the period of my attendance on the princess), I have written, without order, from time to time, and sometimes daily, what seemed to me most remarkable. In doing this I employed the time that ladies are accustomed to give to cards and promenades, because of the hatred I have always felt to the useless life of the people of the great world. I do not know if I have done better than others; but at least I know well that, to my thinking, one cannot do worse than to do nothing.
