' Jeanne had her respectable friends, as Becky had the
Sedleys; like Becky, she imprudently married a heavy, unscrupulous
young officer; her expedients for living on nothing a year were
exactly those of Mrs. Rawdon Crawley; her personal charms, her fluent
tongue, her good nature, even, were those of that accomplished lady.
Finally she has her Marquis of Steyne in the wealthy, luxurious
Cardinal de Rohan; she robs him to a tune beyond the dreams of Becky,
and, incidentally, she drags to the dust the royal head of the fairest
and most unhappy of queens. Even now there seem to be people who
believe that Marie Antoinette was guilty, that she cajoled the
Cardinal, and robbed him of the diamonds, fateful as the jewels of
Eriphyle.
[Footnote 10: Hachette, Paris, 1903. The author has made valuable
additions and corrections.]
That theory is annihilated by M. Funck-Brentano. But the story is so
strangely complicated; the astuteness and the credulity of the
Cardinal are so oddly contrasted; a momentary folly of the Queen is so
astonishing and fatal; the general mismanagement of the Court is so
crazy, that, had we lived in Paris at the moment, perhaps we could
hardly have believed the Queen to be innocent.
Pages:
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127