s in wood; her _clientele_ are
no longer artists, philosophers, poets--they are the gods of lower
domains, mimics, buffoons, dancers, comedians." She was the lowest and
most common type of woman ever influential in France.

After the death of the king, she was ordered to leave Versailles and
live with her aunt. Later on, she was permitted to reside within ten
leagues of Paris; all her former friends and admirers then returned,
and she continued to live the life of old, buying everything for which
she had a fancy and living in the most sumptuous style, never worrying
about the payment of her debts. After a few years she was entirely
forgotten, living at Luciennes with but a few intimate friends and her
lover, the Duc de Brissac.

At the outbreak of the Revolution, she was living at Luciennes in
great luxury on the fortune left her by the duke. Probably she would
have escaped the guillotine had she not been so possessed with the
idea of retaining her wealth. Four trips to England were undertaken
by her, and on her return she found her estates usurped by a man
named Grieve, who, anxious to obtain possession of her riches, finally
succeeded in procuring her arrest while her enemies were in power.
From Sainte-Pelagie they took her to the Conciergerie, to the room
which Marie Antoinette had occupied.

Accused of being the instrument of Pitt, of being an accomplice in the
foreign war, of the insurrection in La Vendee, of the disorders in the
south, the jury, out one hour, brought in a verdict of guilty, fixing
the punishment at death within twenty-four hours, on the Place de la
Republique. Upon hearing her sentence, she broke down completely and
confessed everything she had hidden in the garden at Luciennes. On her
way to the scaffold, she was a most pitiable sight to behold--the only
prominent French woman, victim of the Revolution, to die a coward. The
last words of this once famous and popular mistress were: "Life, life,
leave me my life! I will give all my wealth to the nation. Another
minute, hangman! _A moi! A moi!_" and the heavy iron cut short her
pitiful screams, thus ending the life of the last royal mistress.

CHAPTER XII

MARIE ANTOINETTE AND THE REVOLUTION

The condition of France at the end of the reign of Louis XV. was most
deplorable--injustice, misery, bankruptcy, and instability everywhere.
The action of the law could be overridden by the use of arbitrary
warrants of arrest--_lettres de cachet_