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260 A FAMOUS NECKLACE.
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cal
purposes it suited the Duke of Orleans to spread them as much as
possible, for the great aim of his life was to discredit the Queen.
Madame
de la Motte died miserably in London from the effects of a jump from a
second story window which she took to escape from bailiffs who were
arresting her for debt. All the money she obtained from the diamond
necklace was not able to save her from want and misery. She was only
thirty-four years old at the time of her death. The Count de la Motte
lived on into the reign of Charles x. and begging to the last also died
in want. The Cardinal de Rohan became an emigre after his brief hour of
Parisian popularity and died in exile. The jewelers became bankrupt
and the firm sank into oblivion.
And Marie Antoinette ?
Ah
well, she had nothing to say to the direful necklace. She never
probably so much as touched it with a finger-tip during the whole
course of her life, but she was taxed with its theft on her way to the
scaffold, and a genera-
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