On August 11, 1784, Jeanne dressed up
d'Oliva in the _chemise_ or _gaulle_, the very simple white blouse
which Marie Antoinette wears in the contemporary portrait by Madame
Vigee-Lebrun, a portrait exhibited at the Salon of 1783. The ladies,
with La Motte, then dined at the best restaurant in Versailles, and
went out into the park. The sky was heavy, without moon or starlight,
and they walked into the sombre mass of the Grove of Venus, so styled
from a statue of the goddess which was never actually placed there.
Nothing could be darker than the thicket below the sullen sky.
A shadow of a man appeared: _Vous voila!_ said the Count, and the
shadow departed. It was Villette, the forger of the Queen's letters,
the lover and accomplice of Jeanne de Valois.
Then the gravel of a path crackled under the feet of three men. One
approached, heavily cloaked. D'Oliva was left alone, a rose fell from
her hand, she had a letter in her pocket which she forgot to give to
the cloaked man, who knelt, and kissed the skirt of her dress. She
murmured something; the cloaked Cardinal heard, or thought he heard,
her say: 'You may hope that the past is forgotten.
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