The ministers who succeeded him thought their operations embarrassed by the care that M.
Necker and his partisans incessantly took to occupy the public with his plans; his friends were too ardent.

The Queen discerned a party spirit in these combinations, and sided wholly with his enemies.
After those inefficient comptrollers-general, Messieurs Joly de Fleury and d'Ormesson, it became necessary to resort to a man of more acknowledged talent, and the Queen's friends, at that time combining with the Comte d'Artois and with M.de Vergennes, got M.de Calonne appointed.

The Queen was highly displeased, and her close intimacy with the Duchesse de Polignac began to suffer for this.
Her Majesty, continuing to converse with me upon the difficulties she had met with in private life, told me that ambitious men without merit sometimes found means to gain their ends by dint of importunity, and that she had to blame herself for having procured M.d'Adhemar's appointment to the London embassy, merely because he teased her into it at the Duchess's house.

She added, however, that it was at a time of perfect peace with the English; that the Ministry knew the inefficiency of M.d'Adhemar as well as she did, and that he could do neither harm nor good.
Often in conversations of unreserved frankness the Queen owned that she had purchased rather dearly a piece of experience which would make her carefully watch over the conduct of her daughters-in-law, and that she would be particularly scrupulous about the qualifications of the ladies who might attend them; that no consideration of rank or favour should bias her in so important a choice.

She attributed several of her youthful mistakes to a lady of great levity, whom she found in her palace on her arrival in France.