ed not enter into
its details; the denials, the admissions, the mutual recriminations of the
persons accused. In the fate of the La Mothes and Mademoiselle Oliva no
one professed to be concerned; but the friends of the cardinal were
numerous, rich, and powerful; and for months had been and still were
indefatigable in his cause. Some days before the trial, the attorney-
general had become aware that nearly the whole of the Parliament had been
gained by them; he even furnished the queen with a list of the names of
those judges who had promised their verdict beforehand, and of the means
by which they had been won over. And on the decisive morning the cardinal
and his friends made a theatrical display which was evidently intended to
overawe those members of the Parliament who were yet unconvinced, and to
enlist the sympathies of the public in general. He himself appeared at the
bar in a long violet cloak, the mourning robe of cardinals; and all the
passages leading to the hall of justice were lined by his partisans, also
in deep mourning; and they were not solely his own relations, the nobles
of the different branches of his family, the Soubises, the Rohans, the
Guimenees; but though, as princes of the blood, the Condes were nearly
allied to the king and queen, they also were not ashamed to swell the
company assembled, and to solicit the judges as they passed into the court
to disregard alike justice and their own oaths, and to acquit the
cardinal, whatever the evidence might be which had been, or was to be,
produced against him. They were only asking what they had already assured
themselves of obtaining. The queen's signature was indeed declared to be a
forgery, and the La Mothes, Mademoiselle Oliva, and a man named Retaux de
Villette, who had been the actual writer of the forged letters, were
convicted and sentenced to the punishment which the counsel for the crown
had demanded. But the cardinal was acquitted, as well as a notorious
juggler and impostor of the day, called Cagliostro, who had apparently
been so entirely unconnected with the transaction that it is not easy to
see how he became included in the prosecution; and permission was given to
the cardinal to make his acquittal public in any manner and to any extent
which he might desire.[9]

The subsequent history of the La Mothes was singular and characteristic.
The countess, who had been sentenced to be flogged, branded, and
imprisoned for life, after a time contriv