hem to add the value to their contribution. It sometimes
happened, too, that the Prince received more money than he had asked for,
in which case he restored the surplus."

All who were acquainted with the Queen's private qualities knew that she
equally deserved attachment and esteem. Kind and patient to excess in her
relations with her household, she indulgently considered all around her,
and interested herself in their fortunes and in their pleasures., She had,
among her women, young girls from the Maison de St. Cyr, all well born;
the Queen forbade them the play when the performances were not suitable;
sometimes, when old plays were to be represented, if she found she could
not with certainty trust to her memory, she would take the trouble to read
them in the morning, to enable her to decide whether the girls should or
should not go to see them,--rightly considering herself bound to watch
over their morals and conduct.

CHAPTER VI.

During the first few months of his reign Louis XVI. dwelt at La Muette,
Marly, and Compiegne. When settled at Versailles he occupied himself with
a general examination of his grandfather's papers. He had promised the
Queen to communicate to her all that he might discover relative to the
history of the man with the iron mask, who, he thought, had become so
inexhaustible a source of conjecture only in consequence of the interest
which the pen of a celebrated writer had excited respecting the detention
of a prisoner of State, who was merely a man of whimsical tastes and
habits.

I was with the Queen when the King, having finished his researches,
informed her that he had not found anything among the secret papers
elucidating the existence of this prisoner; that he had conversed on the
matter with M. de Maurepas, whose age made him contemporary with the epoch
during which the story must have been known to the ministers; and that M.
de Maurepas had assured him he was merely a prisoner of a very dangerous
character, in consequence of his disposition for intrigue. He was a
subject of the Duke of Mantua, and was enticed to the frontier, arrested
there, and kept prisoner, first at Pignerol, and afterwards in the
Bastille. This transfer took place in consequence of the appointment of
the governor of the former place to the government of the latter. It was
for fear the prisoner should profit by the inexperience of a new governor
that he was sent with the Governor of Pignerol to the Bas