nistration of the finances produced as powerful an effect as if he had still been at the head of them. Lawyers, magistrates, prelates, and even military men, studied that work to qualify themselves for rigid censors of the ruling government. From the introduction to this work, it was clear that Necker had intended it for a panegyric on himself and a satire on the then minister. Calonne affected unconcern, high spirits, magnanimity, though this work of his predecessor's had an important and frequently adverse effect on many of his proceedings. Calonne was hated by the parliament, but at the same time feared on account of his bad character, and this kept its members somewhat in check.

In the year 1785, however, the parliament opposed a new loan of eighty millions, as well as the borrowing of other sums upon pledge; and, when forced to register these measures, it annexed its formal protest to the act. It was summoned to Versailles to see this protest erased, and complied with a submission that was not expected. Calonne triumphed, but Louis became uneasy after holding a lit de justice; he fancied himself in the way to become a despot. He continually repeated to his ministers: "No new loans, no new taxes, and no opposition to the parliaments!"

The court, its different parties, and especially the nobility, now fell lower and lower in the public opinion, and to this result the above-mentioned edicts largely contributed. The nobility, on their part, were highly offended whenever the king merely afforded room to infer that he meant to reward merit only and not hereditary prerogatives. That commoners should have a voice in the king's council, and even influence its decisions, drove several old nobles nearly to despair, and caused it to be prophesied that the end of the world was at hand.

A circumstance, which is absolutely unparalleled in the annals of history, gave a last fatal stroke to the expiring popularity of the royal family, and extinguished the faint sparks of respect that still glimmered here and there for Marie Antoinette. We allude to the notorious affair of the necklace, by which, without any fault of hers, the name of the queen was mixed up before a court of justice with the names of the most contemptible creatures-those of a prostitute (Oliva), a swindler (Cagliostro), a procuress (Madame La Motte), and a forger (Villette).

Prince Louis de Rohan, whom we have seen as ambassador to the Austrian court, and who had since become cardinal and grand-almoner, had after his return to France fallen desperately in love with the queen, whom he had made his bitter enemy. He was in despair because he could not find means to approach Marie Antoinette, though, according to general rumour which he firmly believed, she favoured so many others far inferior in rank to himself. In this state he became acquainted with a countess La Motte, who gave herself out for a descendant of an illegitimate branch of the royal house of Valois. To this artful woman he communicated his secret passion, and on this information she founded the following plan.

She first intended to make the cardinal believe that she had succeeded in gaining the confidence of the queen; that she had expatiated so much on his rare qualities, that the princess had by degrees conceived a more favourable opinion of him, and meant to restore him to her favour, and even to enter into a private correspondence with him; but, till the moment when she could give him public demonstrations of her kindness, all communications between them were to pass through the hands of La Motte.

At this time, Böhmer, a jeweller in Paris, was in possession of a valuable diamond necklace, which he valued at eighteen hundred thousand livres. La Motte learned that the queen had seen and much admired it, but would not ask the king to buy it, because the money could not then be spared. La Motte, too, had seen and admired the diamonds at the jeweller's; and he had told her that he should be glad to make a handsome present to any one who would help him to a customer for the necklace. The crafty woman formed a bold plan for securing both. She told the cardinal that the queen, with whom she had never exchanged a single word, had expressed her anxious desire to possess this rare ornament, to buy it unknown to the king, and to pay for it by instalments out of the savings of her privy purse; that, in giving this commission to the cardinal, she conferred on him a signal token of her favourable disposition; that he should be furnished with a written authority to purchase the necklace in her name; but that, in his arrangement with the jeweller, his own name only was to appear, and the instalments were to be made payable quarterly; and that she asked this service of him as a proof of her unlimited confidence.

The cardinal fell into the snare. He was furnished with the promised authority, forged, of course; purchased the necklace, delivered it to the countess for the queen, was introduced by La Motte in a nightly interview in the gardens of Versailles to a prostitute named Oliva, whom she had trained to personate the queen, and was enraptured to receive from her a few words signifying her perfect satisfaction.

When the time for payment arrived, Rohan, who had not funds of his own, was obliged to disclose to the jeweller that it was for the queen that he had purchased the necklace. After waiting a considerable time in vain, Böhmer applied in August, 1785, to the king.

An explanation naturally ensued; the roguery was discovered, and the cardinal, La Motte, Villette, Oliva, Cagliostro, his wife, and some others were sent to the Bastille. The affair was referred to the decision of the parliament, which in May, 1786, acquitted Rohan and the prostitute, and sentenced La Motte to be whipped, branded, and imprisoned for life, and Villette and Cagliostro to be banished the kingdom. La Motte's husband, who had gone to England with the booty, was condemned to the galleys. In about nine months she escaped, or was suffered to escape, and rejoined her husband in London, where he had disposed of the necklace, and where they published a work filled with the most virulent abuse of the queen. In August, 1791, she put an end to her life by throwing herself from a window on the third floor in the house in which she lived.

At the express desire of the queen, Rohan, immediately after his release, was dismissed from the office of grand-almoner, and exiled to the abbey of La Chaise Dieu, in Auvergne, whence he was called by his election as deputy to the states-general.

The decision of the parliament overwhelmed the court with astonishment and mortification, and filled the nation with the wildest and most triumphant joy. The queen, who was perfectly innocent, was accused of being the sole author of this disgraceful transaction, which furnished occasion for the grossest scandal.

CHAPTER IV.

ASSEMBLY OF THE NOTABLES.

These unequivocal symptoms of general aversion and discontent, together with the wretched state of the finances, ought to have rendered Calonne extremely

cautious. The danger of such a situation, which must have been apparent to the most obtuse mind, could not possibly have escaped so sharpsighted a minister; but, the more he was convinced that a revolution was inevitable, the more honour he sought in directing it; and the embarrassments of the royal exchequer, instead of alarming him, only served to inflame still more his desire to remedy all the abuses of the administration, and to give the kingdom a new form by one grand stroke. To this end he proposed the convocation of an assembly of Notables, that is, of the most distinguished members of the clergy, the nobility, the magistracy, and the heads of the municipalities. He had long prepared the king for so extraordinary a measure, and conceived that, when he had once taken the first step, he must be hurried further by the stream of opinion. He was well aware that it was indeed dangerous to associate, as it were, by way of council, the élite of the nation with the king; but he expected by means of this convocation to gain the mass entirely for himself, and through such of the Notables as were devoted to him to direct the others at pleasure, and to counterbalance any unforeseen opposition from the princes, the ministers, or the councillors of state. "And if I fall," said Calonne to several of his intimate friends, "it will be an honourable fall; for all the plans that I propose are absolutely necessary for the welfare of France, and must sooner or later be ⚫adopted."

On the 29th of December, 1786, when the king was leaving the council of despatches, he declared that it was his intention to convoke an assembly of the principal persons of the kingdom, in order to consult with them how to afford relief to the people, to remedy abuses, and to restore order in the finances: he added that he had drawn up a list of the persons whom he had