“Is it about religion?” enquired Beaumarchais.

“Or, perhaps, something not fit for ladies’ ears?” added M. de Calonne.

“It is about government,” replied the stranger.

“Go on, then,” said the Minister:  “Voltaire, Diderot, and Company, have tutored our ears to good purpose.”

“Whether it was that certain ideas rose involuntarily to my mind, or that I was acting under some irresistible impulse, I said to her—­’Ah, madame, you committed an enormous crime.’

“‘What crime?’ she asked me in a solemn voice.

“‘That of which the Palace clock gave the signal on the 24th of August.’

“She smiled disdainfully.  ‘You call that a crime?’ she said:  ’’twas nothing but a misfortune.  The enterprise failed, and has, therefore, not produced all the good we expected from it—­to France, to Europe, to Christianity itself.  The orders were ill executed, and posterity makes no allowance for the want of communication which hindered us from giving all the unity to our effort which is requisite in affairs of state;—­that was the misfortune.  If on the 26th of August there had not remained the shadow of a Huguenot in France, the latest posterity would have looked upon me with awe, as a Providence among men.  How often have the clear intellects of Sextus the Fifth, of Richelieu, and Bossuet, secretly accused me of having failed in the design, after having had the courage to conceive it; and therefore how my death was regretted!  Thirty years after the St Bartholomew, the malady existed still; and cost France ten times the quantity of noble blood that remained to be spilt on the 26th August 1572.  The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in honour of which medals were struck, cost more blood, more tears, and more treasure, and has been more injurious to France, than twenty St Bartholomews.  If on the 25th August 1572, that enormous execution was necessary, on the 25th August 1685 it was useless.  Under the second son of Henry de Valois heresy was almost barren; under the second son of Henry de Bourbon she had become a fruitful mother, and scattered her progeny over the globe.  You accuse me of a crime, and yet you raise statues to the son of Anne of Austria!’

“At these words—­slowly uttered—­I felt a shudder creep over me.  I seemed to inhale the smell of blood.”

“He dreamt that to a certainty,” whispered Beaumarchais; “he could not have invented it.”

“‘My reason is confounded,’ I said to the queen.  ’You plume yourself on an action which three generations have condemned and cursed, and’—­

“‘And,’ she interrupted, ’that history has been more unjust to me than my contemporaries were.  Nobody has taken up my defence.  I am accused of ambition—­I, rich and a queen—­I am accused of cruelty; and the most impartial judges consider me a riddle.  Do you think that I was actuated by feelings of hatred; that I breathed nothing but vengeance and fury?’ She smiled.  ’I