have sat, though she probably did
not, for Becky Sharp. Her early poverty, her pride in the blood of
Valois, recall Becky's youth, and her boasts about 'the blood of the
Montmorencys.' Jeanne had her respectable friends, as Becky had the
Sedleys; like Becky, she imprudently married a heavy, unscrupulous
young officer; her expedients for living on nothing a year were
exactly those of Mrs. Rawdon Crawley; her personal charms, her fluent
tongue, her good nature, even, were those of that accomplished lady.
Finally she has her Marquis of Steyne in the wealthy, luxurious
Cardinal de Rohan; she robs him to a tune beyond the dreams of Becky,
and, incidentally, she drags to the dust the royal head of the fairest
and most unhappy of queens. Even now there seem to be people who
believe that Marie Antoinette was guilty, that she cajoled the
Cardinal, and robbed him of the diamonds, fateful as the jewels of
Eriphyle.

[Footnote 10: Hachette, Paris, 1903. The author has made valuable
additions and corrections.]

That theory is annihilated by M. Funck-Brentano. But the story is so
strangely complicated; the astuteness and the credulity of the
Cardinal are so oddly contrasted; a momentary folly of the Queen is so
astonishing and fatal; the general mismanagement of the Court is so
crazy, that, had we lived in Paris at the moment, perhaps we could
hardly have believed the Queen to be innocent. Even persons greatly
prejudiced in her favour might well have been deceived, and the people
'loveth to think the worst, and is hardly to be moved from that
opinion,' as was said of the Scottish public at the date of the Gowrie
conspiracy.

An infidelity of Henri II. of France to his wedded wife, Catherine de
Medicis, and the misplaced affection of Louis XV. for Madame du Barry,
were the remote but real causes that helped to ruin the House of
France. Without the amour of Henri II., there would have been no
Jeanne de Valois; without the hope that Louis XV. would stick at
nothing to please Madame du Barry, the diamond necklace would never
have been woven.

Henri II. loved, about 1550, a lady named Nicole de Savigny, and by
her had a son, Henri de Saint-Remy, whom he legitimated. Saint-Remy
was the great, great, great, great-grandfather of Jeanne de Valois,
the flower of minxes. Her father, a ruined man, dwelt in a corner of
the family _chateau_, a predacious, poaching, athletic, broken scion
of royalty, who drank and brawled with the peasants,