iousness. Her aim was merely to convince the
Cardinal that she could win for him the Queen's favour, and then to
work upon his gratitude. It was in July 1784 that Jeanne's husband
made the acquaintance of Marie Laguay, a pretty and good-humoured but
quite 'unfortunate' young woman--'the height of honesty and
dissoluteness'--who might be met in the public gardens, chaperoned
solely by a nice little boy. Jeanne de Valois was not of a jealous
temperament. Mademoiselle Laguay was the friend of her husband, the
tawdry Count. For Jeanne that was enough. She invited the young lady
to her house, and by her royal fantasy created her Baronne Gay d'Oliva
(_Valoi_, an easy anagram).

She presently assured the Baronne that the Queen desired her
collaboration in a practical joke, her Majesty would pay 600_l._ for
the freak. This is the Baronne's own version; her innocence, she
averred, readily believed that Marie Antoinette desired her
assistance.

'You are only asked to give, some evening, a note and a rose to a
great lord, in an alley of the gardens of Versailles. My husband will
bring you hither to-morrow evening.'

Jeanne later confessed that the Baronne really was stupid enough to be
quite satisfied that the whole affair was a jest.

Judged by their portraits, d'Oliva, who was to personate the Queen, in
an interview with the Cardinal, was not at all like Marie Antoinette.
Her short, round, buxom face bears no resemblance to the long and
noble outlines of the features of the Queen. But both women were fair,
and of figures not dissimilar. On August 11, 1784, Jeanne dressed up
d'Oliva in the _chemise_ or _gaulle_, the very simple white blouse
which Marie Antoinette wears in the contemporary portrait by Madame
Vigee-Lebrun, a portrait exhibited at the Salon of 1783. The ladies,
with La Motte, then dined at the best restaurant in Versailles, and
went out into the park. The sky was heavy, without moon or starlight,
and they walked into the sombre mass of the Grove of Venus, so styled
from a statue of the goddess which was never actually placed there.
Nothing could be darker than the thicket below the sullen sky.

A shadow of a man appeared: _Vous voila!_ said the Count, and the
shadow departed. It was Villette, the forger of the Queen's letters,
the lover and accomplice of Jeanne de Valois.

Then the gravel of a path crackled under the feet of three men. One
approached, heavily cloaked. D'Oliva was left alone, a rose fell from