his house, his people formed a lane; he slipped this paper, unperceived, into the hand of a confidential valet de chambre, who waited for him at the door of his apartment.”  This story is scarcely credible; it is not at the moment of a prisoner’s arrest, when an inquisitive crowd surrounds and watches him, that he can stop and write secret messages.  However, the valet de chambre posts off to Paris.  He arrives at the palace of the Cardinal between twelve and one o’clock; and his horse falls dead in the stable.  “I was in my apartment,” said the Abbe Georgel, “the valet de chambre entered wildly, with a deadly paleness on his countenance, and exclaimed, ’All is lost; the Prince is arrested.’  He instantly fell, fainting, and dropped the note of which he was the bearer.”  The portfolio containing the papers which might compromise the Cardinal was immediately placed beyond the reach of all search.  Madame de Lamotte also was foolishly allowed sufficient time after she heard of the arrest of the Cardinal to burn all the letters she had received from him.  Assisted by Beugnot, she completed this at three the same morning that she was:  arrested at four.—­See “Memoirs of Comte de Beugnot,” vol i., p. 74.]

This commission was executed before M. de Crosne, lieutenant of police, had received an order from the Baron de Breteuil to put seals upon the Cardinal’s papers.  The destruction of all his Eminence’s correspondence, and particularly that with Madame de Lamotte, threw an impenetrable cloud over the whole affair.

From that moment all proofs of this intrigue disappeared.  Madame de Lamotte was apprehended at Bar-sur-Aube; her husband had already gone to England.  From the beginning of this fatal affair all the proceedings of the Court appear to have been prompted by imprudence and want of foresight; the obscurity resulting left free scope for the fables of which the voluminous memorials written on one side and the other consisted.  The Queen so little imagined what could have given rise to the intrigue, of which she was about to become the victim, that, at the moment when the King was interrogating the Cardinal, a terrific idea entered her mind.  With that rapidity of thought caused by personal interest and extreme agitation, she fancied that, if a design to ruin her in the eyes of the King and the French people were the concealed motive of this intrigue, the Cardinal would, perhaps, affirm that she had the necklace; that he had been honoured with her confidence for this purchase, made without the King’s knowledge; and point out some secret place in her apartment, where he might have got some villain to hide it.  Want of money and the meanest swindling were the sole motives for this criminal affair.  The necklace had already been taken to pieces and sold, partly in London, partly in Holland, and the rest in Paris.