n suspicion was beginning to stir. In all,
forty-one letters from the queen to Mme. de Lamballe have been in the
market, and not one of them was genuine. When it became worth while to
steal, it was still more profitable to forge, for then there was no
limit to the supply.

In her lifetime the queen was aware that hostile _emigres_ imitated
her hand. Three such letters were published in 1801 in a worthless
book called _Madame de Lamballe's Memoirs_. Such forgeries came into
the market from the year 1822. The art was carried to the point that
it defied detection, and the credulity of the public was insatiable.
In Germany a man imitated Schiller's writing so perfectly that
Schiller's daughter bought his letters as fast as they could be
produced. At Paris the nefarious trade became active about 1839.

On March 15, 1861, a facsimilist, Betbeder, issued a challenge,
undertaking to execute autographs that it would be impossible to
detect, by paper, ink, handwriting, or text. The trial came off in the
presence of experts, and in April 1864 they pronounced that his
imitations could not be distinguished from originals. In those days
there was a famous mathematician whose name was Chasles. He was
interested in the history of geometry, and also in the glory of
France, and a clever genealogist saw his opportunity. He produced
letters from which it appeared that some of Newton's discoveries had
been anticipated by Frenchmen who had been robbed of their due fame.
M. Chasles bought them, with a patriotic disregard for money; and he
continued to buy, from time to time, all that the impostor, Vrain
Lucas, offered him. He laid his documents before the Institute, and
the Institute declared them genuine. There were autograph letters from
Alexander to Aristotle, from Caesar to Vercingetorix, from Lazarus to
St. Peter, from Mary Magdalen to Lazarus. The fabricator's imagination
ran riot, and he produced a fragment in the handwriting of Pythagoras,
showing that Pythagoras wrote in bad French. At last other learned
men, who did not love Chasles, tried to make him understand that he
had been befooled. When the iniquity came to light, and the culprit
was sent to prison, he had flourished for seven years, had made
several thousand pounds, and had found a market for 27,000 unblushing
forgeries.

About the time when this mysterious manufacture was thriving, Count
Hunolstein bought one hundred and forty-eight letters from Marie
Antoinette, of a P