nature. He looked up indignantly.

"How could a prince of your house and my grand almoner suppose that the
queen would sign, 'Marie Antoinette of France?'" he sternly demanded.
"Queens do not sign their names at such length. It is not even the
queen's writing. And what is the meaning of all these doings with
jewellers, and these notes shown to bankers?"

By this time the cardinal was so agitated that he was obliged to rest
himself against the table for support.

"Sir," he said, in a broken voice, "I am too much overcome to be able to
reply. What you say overwhelms me with surprise."

"Walk into the room, cardinal," said the king, with more kindness of
tone. "You may write your explanation of these occurrences."

The cardinal attempted to do so, but his written statement failed to
make clear the mystery. In the end an officer of the king's body-guard
was called in, and an order given him to convey Cardinal de Rohan to the
Bastille. He had barely time to give secret directions to his grand
vicar to burn all his papers, before he was carried off to that
frightful fortress, the scene of so much injustice, haunted by so many
woes.

The papers of De Rohan probably needed purging by fire, for the order to
burn them indicates that they contained evidence derogatory to his
position as a dignitary of the church. The prince cardinal was a vain
and profligate man, full of vicious inclinations, and credulous to a
degree that had made him the victim of the unscrupulous schemer, Madame
de La Motte Valois, a woman as adroit and unscrupulous as she was
daring. Of low birth, brought up by charity, married to a ruined
nobleman, she had ended her career by duping and ruining Cardinal de
Rohan, a man whose character exposed him to the machinations of an
adventuress so skilful, bold, and alluring as La Motte Valois.

So much for preliminary. Let us take up the story at its beginning. The
diamond necklace was an exceedingly handsome and highly valuable piece
of jewelry, containing about five hundred diamonds, and held at a price
equal to about four hundred thousand dollars of modern money. It had
been made by Boehmer, a jeweller of Paris, about the year 1774, and was
intended for Madame Dubarry, the favorite of Louis XV. But before the
necklace was finished Louis had died, and a new king had come to the
throne. With Louis XVI. virtue entered that profligate court, and Madame
Dubarry was excluded from its precincts. As for the necklace,