d now it seems I have lost all but life. Take that, too, if it
be your pleasure. Heaven knows it has little value left for me! But
remember that in striking me you strike the mother of your children--the
legitimate children of France. Remember that!"

He remembered it. Indeed, he was never in danger of forgetting it; for
she might have added that he would be striking also at himself and at
that royal dignity which was his religion. And so that all scandalous
comment might be avoided she was actually allowed to remain at Court,
although no longer in her first-floor apartments; and it was not until
ten years later that she departed to withdraw to the community of Saint
Joseph.

But even in her disgrace this woman, secretly convicted among other
abominations of attempting to procure the poisoning of the King and of
her rival, enjoyed an annual pension of 1,200.000 livres; whilst none
dared proceed against those who shared her guilt--not even the infamous
Guibourg, the poisoners Romani and Bertrand, and La Filastre--nor yet
against some scores of associates of these, who were known to live by
sorcery and poisonings, and who might be privy to the part played by
Madame de Montespan in that horrible night of magic at the Chateau de
Villebousin.

The hot blast of revolution was needed to sweep France clean.

VII. THE NIGHT OF GEMS--The "Affairs" Of The Queen's Necklace

Under the stars of a tepid, scented night of August of 1784, Prince
Louis de Rohan, Cardinal of Strasbourg, Grand Almoner of France, made
his way with quickened pulses through the Park of Versailles to a
momentous assignation in the Grove of Venus.

This illustrious member of an illustrious House, that derived from both
the royal lines of Valois and Bourbon, was a man in the prime of life,
of a fine height, still retaining something of the willowy slenderness
that had been his in youth, and of a gentle, almost womanly beauty of
countenance.

In a grey cloak and a round, grey hat with gold cords, followed closely
by two shadowy attendant figures, he stepped briskly amain, eager to
open those gates across the path of his ambition, locked against him
hitherto by the very hands from which he now went to receive the key.

He deserves your sympathy, this elegant Cardinal-Prince, who had been
the victim of the malice and schemings of the relentless Austrian
Empress since the days when he represented the King of France at the
Court of Vienna.

The sta