The incident was described by Henriette Campan:[2] "A little village boy, four or five years old, full of health, with a pleasing countenance, remarkably large blue eyes, and fine light hair, got under the feet of the Queen’s horses, when she was taking an airing in a calash, through the hamlet of St. Michel, near Louveciennes.
Its grandmother rushed out of the door of her cottage to take it; but the Queen, standing up in her calash and extending her arms, called out that the child was hers, and that destiny had given it to her, to console her, no doubt, until she should have the happiness of having one herself.
I hope he will stay with you!” The Queen, taking little Jacques upon her knee, said that she would make him used to her, and gave orders to proceed.
Henriette Campan commented that the boy was unhappy about the adoption from the start, because he missed his biological family: "The arrival of Her Majesty at her apartments at Versailles, holding the little rustic by the hand, astonished the whole household; he cried out with intolerable shrillness that he wanted his grandmother, his brother Louis, and his sister Marianne; nothing could calm him.
She liked to call him my child, and lavished caresses upon him, still maintaining a deep silence respecting the regrets which constantly occupied her heart."
According to the writings of Henriette Campan, the Queen no longer gave her adopted son as much attention after she had given birth to her first biological child, Marie-Thérèse, in 1778, noting that, "This child [Armand] remained with the Queen until the time when Madame [Marie Therese] was old enough to come home to her august mother.
Henriette Campan commented:[2] "This little unfortunate was nearly twenty in 1792; the fury of the people and the fear of being thought a favourite of the Queen’s had made him the most sanguinary terrorist of Versailles.