[The Duke, together with certain other persons, made considerable purchases of spice, porcelain, and other merchandizes, for the purpose of realizing the hope of Law’s Banks.  As he was not held in estimation either by the public or by the Parliament, the Duke was accused of monopoly; and by a decree of the Parliament, in concert with the Peers, he was enjoined “to use more circumspection for the future, and to conduct himself irreproachably, in a manner as should be consistent with his birth and his dignity as a Peer of France.”]

The Queen Catherine (de Medicis) was a very wicked woman.  Her uncle, the Pope, had good reason for saying that he had made a bad present to France.  It is said that she poisoned her youngest son because he had discovered her in a common brothel whither she had gone privately.  Who can wonder that such a woman should drink out of a cup covered with designs from Aretino.  The Pope had an object in sending her to France.  Her son was the Duc d’Alencon; and as they both remained incog. the world did not know that they were mother and son, which occasioned frequent mistakes.

The young Count Horn, who has just been executed here (1720), was descended from a well-known Flemish family; he was distinguished at first for the amiable qualities of his head and for his wit.  At college he was a model for good conduct, application, and purity of morals; but the intimacy which he formed with some libertine young men during his stay at the Academy of Paris entirely changed him.  He contracted an insatiable desire for play, and even his own father said to him, “You will die by the hands of the executioner.”  Being destitute of money, the young Count took up the trade of a pickpocket, which he carried on in the pit of the theatres, and by which he made considerable gains in silver-hilted swords and watches.  At length, having lost a sum of five-and-twenty thousand crowns at the fair of Saint-Germain, he was led to commit that crime which he has just expiated on the scaffold.  For the purpose of discharging the debt he had contracted, he sent for a banker’s clerk to bring him certain bank bills, which he proposed to purchase.  Having connected himself with two other villains, he attacked the clerk as soon as he arrived, and stabbed him with poniards which he had bought three days before on the Pont Neuf.  Hoping to conceal the share which he had taken in this crime, he went immediately after its perpetration to the Commissaire du Quartier, and told him, with a cool and determined air, that he had been obliged, in his own defence, to kill the clerk, who had attacked him and put him in danger of his life.  The Commissaire looking at him steadfastly, said, “You are covered with blood, but you are not even wounded; I must retain you in custody until I can examine this affair more minutely.”  At this moment the accomplice entered the room.  “Here, sir,” said the Count to the Commissaire,