, Mme. de La Motte Valois. Trading
on his credulity and court ambitions, she persuaded him to purchase a
diamond necklace, which the Queen, so he was told, greatly wished but
could not afford. Marie Antoinette was personated in a secret
interview given to Rohan, and Mme. de La Motte got possession of the
diamonds. Presently the jewellers began to press Rohan for payment,
and the secret came out. The {40} King was furious, and sent Rohan to
the royal prison of the Bastille, while Mme. de La Motte was handed
over to the legal procedure of the Parlement of Paris.

This incident created great excitement, and was much distorted by
public report. It left two lasting impressions, one relating to Mme.
de La Motte, the other to the Queen. The adventuress was too obvious a
scapegoat to be spared. While Rohan was allowed to leave the Bastille
after a short imprisonment, the woman was brought to trial, and was
sentenced to public whipping and branding. Her execution was carried
out in bungling fashion, and at the foot of the steps leading to the
law courts, whence Danton's voice was to reverberate so loudly in his
struggle with so-called Justice ten years later, a disgraceful scene
occurred. The crowd saw La Motte struggling in the hands of the
executioners and rolling with them in the gutter, heard her uttering
loud shrieks as the branding iron was at last applied to her shoulders.
The impression produced by this revolting spectacle was profound, and
was heightened by the universal belief that Marie Antoinette was not
less guilty in one direction than Madame de La Motte had been in
another. The outbreak of slander and {41} of libel against the Queen
goes on accumulating from this moment with ever-increasing force until
her death, eight years later. A legend comes into existence, becomes
blacker and blacker, and culminates in the atrocious accusations made
against her by Hebert before the Revolutionary Tribunal; Messalina and
Semiramis are rolled into one to supply a fit basis of comparison. And
the population of Paris broods over this legend, and when revolution
comes, makes of Marie Antoinette the symbol of all that is monstrous,
infamous and cruel in the system of the Bourbons; makes of her the
marked victim of the vengeance of the people.

Meanwhile Calonne was struggling to keep his head above water, and in
the process had come into conflict with the Parlements, or corporations
of judges. At last, in 1786, he wen