"How, sir," said the queen, "could you think, you to whom I have never spoken for eight years, that I should choose you for conducting this negotiation, and by the medium of such a woman ?" "I was mistaken, I see; the desire I felt to please your Majesty misled me, and he drew from his pocket the pretended letter from the queen to Madame de la Motte.

The king took it, and, casting his eye over the signature: "How could a prince of your house and my grand almoner suppose that the queen would sign Marie Antoinette de France?
Queens sign their names quite short.

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 ?" [Illustration: Cardinal Rohan's Discomfiture----470] The cardinal could scarcely stand; he leaned against the table.

"Sir," he stammered, "I am too much overcome to be able to reply." "Walk into this room, cardinal," rejoined the king kindly; "write what you have to say to me." The written explanations of M.de Rohan were no clearer than his words; an officer of the body-guard took him off to the Bastille; he had, just time to order his grand-vicar to burn all his papers.
The correspondence as well as the life of M.de Rohan was not worthy of a prince of the church: the vices and the credulity of the cardinal had given him over, bound hand and foot, to an intriguing woman as adroit as she was daring.