After the departure from France of the duchess de Polignac and most of the other of the queen’s intimate circle of friends, Marie Antoinette warned Lamballe that she would now in her visible role attract much of the anger among the public toward the favorites of the queen, and that libels circulating openly in Paris would expose her to slander. Lamballe reportedly read one of these volumes, and was informed of the hostility voiced toward her in them. De Lamballe supported her sister-in-law the duchess of Orléans when she filed for divorce from the duke of Orléans, which has been viewed as a reason of discord between Lamballe and Orléans; though the duke had often used Lamballe as an intermediary to the queen, he reportedly never quite trusted her, since he expected Lamballe to blame him for encouraging the behavior which caused the death of Lamballe’s late spouse, and when he was informed that she had ill will toward him during this affair, he reportedly broke with her. She was not informed beforehand of the Flight to Varennes (King Louis XVI of France, his queen Marie Antoinette, and their immediate family attempted to escape from Paris). The night of the escape in June 1791, the queen said goodnight to her and advised her to spend some days in the country for the sake of her health before she retired; Lamballe found her behavior odd enough to remark about it to M. de Clermot, before leaving the Tuileries to retire to her villa in Passy. The day after, when the royal family had already departed during the night, she received a note from Marie Antoinette who told her about the flight and told her to meet in Brussels. She departed France from Boulogne to Dover in England, where she stayed for one night before continuing to Oosteende in the Austrian Netherlands, where she arrived on 26 June. She continued to Brussels, where she met Axel von Fersen and the count and countess de Provence, and then to Aix-la- Chapelle. She visited Gustav III of Sweden in Spa for a few days in September, and received him in Aix in October. In Paris, the Chronique de Paris reported of her departure and it was widely believed that she had gone to England for a diplomatic mission on behalf of the queen. During her stay abroad, she was in correspondence with Marie Antoinette, who repeatedly asked her not to return to France. However, in October 1791, the new provisions of the Constitution came into operation, and the queen was requested to set her household in order and dismissed all office holders not in service: she accordingly wrote to Lamballe and formally asked her to return to service or resign. This formal letter, though it was in contrast to the private letters Marie Antoinette had written her, reportedly convinced her that it was her duty to return, and she announced that the queen wished her to return and that “I must live and die with her.”