ion. The very slightest suspicion
rendered any one liable to severe imprisonment, and the establishment
of the innocence of a person tried for his life was often only a matter
of the merest chance. Besides, Regnie was repulsive to behold, and of
malicious disposition, so that he excited the hatred of those whose
avenger or protector he was called upon to be. When he asked the
Duchess de Bouillon if she had ever seen the devil, she answered, "I
think I see him at this moment."

Whilst now, on the Place de Greve, the blood of the guilty and of the
merely suspected was flowing in streams, and secret deaths by poison
were, at last, becoming more and more rare, a trouble of another
description showed itself, spreading abroad fresh consternation. It
seemed that a gang of robbers had made up their minds to possess
themselves of all the jewels in the city. Whenever a valuable set of
ornaments was bought, it disappeared in an inexplicable manner, however
carefully preserved and protected. And everybody who dared to wear
precious stones in the evening was certain to be robbed, either in the
public streets or in the dark passages of houses. Very often they were
not only robbed, but murdered. Such of them as escaped with their lives
said they had been felled by the blow of a clenched fist on the head,
which came on them like a thunderbolt. And when they recovered their
senses they found that they had been robbed, and were in a totally
different place from that where they had been knocked down. Those
who were murdered--and they were found nearly every morning lying
in the streets or in houses--had all the selfsame mortal wound--a
dagger-thrust, right through the heart, which the surgeons said must
have been delivered with such swiftness and certainty that the victim
must have fallen dead without the power of uttering a sound. Now who,
in all the luxurious Court of Louis Quatorze, was there who was not
implicated in some secret love-affair, and, consequently, often gliding
about the streets late at night with valuable presents in his pockets?
Just as if this robber-gang were in intercourse with spirits, they
always knew perfectly well when anything of this kind was going on.
Often the fortunate lover wouldn't reach the house where his lady was
expecting him; often he would fall at her threshold, at her very door,
where, to her horror, she would discover his bleeding body lying.

It was in vain that Argenson, the Minister of Police,