CHAPTER XV.

Scene Fourth by Destiny.

It is Assumption-day, the 15th of August. Don thy pontificalia, Grand-Almoner; crush down these hideous temporalities out of sight. In any case, smooth thy countenance into some sort of lofty-dissolute serene: thou hast a thing they call worshipping God to enact, thyself the first actor.

The Grand-Almoner has done it. He is in Versailles Eil-de-Bauf Gallery; where male and female Peerage, and all Noble France in gala various and glorious as the rainbow, waits only the signal to begin worshipping: on the serene of his lofty-dissolute countenance, there can nothing be read. By Heaven! he is sent for to the Royal Apartment!

He returns with the old lofty-dissolute look, inscrutably serene has his turn for favour actually come, then? Those fifteen long years of soul's travail are to be rewarded by a birth? - Monsieur le Baron de Breteuil issues; great in his pride of place, in this the crowning moment of his life. With one radiant glance, Breteuil summons the Officer on Guard; with another, fixes Monseigneur: "De par le Roi, Monseigneur: you are arrested! At your risk, Officer!” Curtains as of pitch-black whirlwind envelop Monseigneur ; whirl off with him, to outer darkness. Versailles Gallery explodes aghast; as if Guy Fawkes's Plot had burst under it. The Queen's Majesty was weeping," whisper some. There will be no Assumption-service; or such a one as was never celebrated since Assumption came in fashion.

Europe, then, shall ring with it from side to side! - But

1 This is Bette d'Etienville's description of him: A handsome man, of 'fifty; with high complexion; hair white-gray, and the front of the head bald: of high stature; carriage noble and easy, though burdened with a 'certain degree of corpulency; who, I never doubted, was Monsieur de 'Bohan.' (First Mémoire pour.)

why rides that Heyduc as if all the Devils drove him? It is Monseigneur's Heyduc: Monseigneur spoke three words in German to him, at the door of his Versailles Hotel; even handed him a slip of writing, which, with borrowed Pencil, in his red square cap,' he had managed to prepare on the way thither. To Paris! To the Palais-Cardinal! The horse dies on reaching the stable; the Heyduc swoons on reaching the cabinet: but his slip of writing fell from his hand; and I (says the Abbé Georgel) was there. The red Portfolio, containing all the gilt Autographs, is burnt utterly, with much else, before Breteuil can arrive for apposition of the seals! Whereby Europe, in ringing from side to side, must worry itself with guessing and at this hour, on this paper, sees the matter in such an interesting clearobscure.

Soon Count Cagliostro and his Seraphic Countess go to join Monseigneur, in State Prison. In few days, follows Dame de Lamotte, from Bar-sur-Aube; Demoiselle d'Oliva by-and-by, from Brussels; Villette-de-Rétaux, from his Swiss retirement, in the taverns of Geneva. The Bastille opens its iron bosom to them all.

CHAPTER LAST.

Missa est.

Thus, then, the Diamond Necklace having, on the one hand, vanished through the Horn Gate of Dreams, and so, under the pincers of Nisus Lamotte and Euryalus Villette, lost its sublunary individuality and being; and, on the other hand, all that trafficked in it, sitting now safe under lock and key, that justice may take cognisance of them, gagement in regard to the matter is on the point of terminating. That extraordinary Procès du Collier, Necklace Trial,' spinning itself through Nine other ever-memorable

1 Georgel.

our en

Months, to the astonishment of the hundred and eightyseven assembled Parlementiers, and of all Quidnuncs, Journalists, Anecdotists, Satirists, in both Hemispheres, is, in every sense, a' Celebrated Trial,' and belongs to Publishers of such. How, by innumerable confrontations and expiscatory questions, through entanglements, doublings and windings that fatigue eye and soul, this most involute of Lies is finally winded off to the scandalous-ridiculous cinder-heart of it, let others relate.

Meanwhile, during these Nine ever-memorable Months, till they terminate late at night precisely with the May of 1786,1 how many fugitive leaves, quizzical, imaginative, or at least mendacious, were flying about in Newspapers; or stitched together as Pamphlets; and what heaps of others were left creeping in Manuscript, we shall not say;- having, indeed, no complete Collection of them, and what is more to the purpose, little to do with such Collection. Nevertheless, searching for some fit Capital of the composite order, to adorn adequately the now finished singular Pillar of our Narrative, what can suit us better than the following, so far as we know, yet unedited,

Occasional Discourse, by Count Alessandro Cagliostro, Thaumaturgist, Prophet and Arch-Quack; delivered in the Bastille: Year of Lucifer, 5789; of the Mahometan Hegira from Mecca, 1201; of the Cagliostric Hegira from Palermo, 24; of the Vulgar Era, 1785.

6

Fellow Scoundrels, An unspeakable Intrigue, spun 'from the soul of that Circe-Megæra, by our voluntary or 'involuntary help, has assembled us all, if not under one 'roof-tree, yet within one grim iron-bound ring-wall. For 'an appointed number of months, in the ever-rolling flow of 'Time, we, being gathered from the four winds, did by Des

1 On the 31st of May 1786, sentence was pronounced: about ten at night, the Cardinal got out of the Bastille; large mobs hurrahing round him, — out of spleen to the Court. (See Georgel.)

tiny work together in body corporate; and, joint labourers ' in a Transaction already famed over the Globe, obtain unity of Name, like the Argonauts of old, as Conquerors of the 'Diamond Necklace. Erelong it is done (for ring-walls hold 'not captive the free Scoundrel forever); and we disperse ' again, over wide terrestrial Space; some of us, it may be, ' over the very marches of Space. Our Act hangs indisso'luble together; floats wondrous in the older and older 'memory of men while we the little band of Scoundrels, 'who saw each other, now hover so far asunder, to see each 'other no more, if not once more only on the universal Doomsday, the Last of the Days!

In such interesting moments, while we stand within the 'verge of parting, and have not yet parted, methinks it were 'well here, in these sequestered Spaces, to institute a few 'general reflections. Me, as a public speaker, the Spirit of Masonry, of Philosophy, and Philanthropy, and even of Prophecy, blowing mysterious from the Land of Dreams, 'impels to do it. Give ear, O Fellow Scoundrels, to what 'the Spirit utters; treasure it in your hearts, practise it in 'your lives.

'Sitting here, penned-up in this which, with a slight meta'phor, I call the Central Cloaca of Nature, where a tyran'nical De Launay can forbid the bodily eye free vision, you 'with the mental eye see but the better. This Central 'Cloaca, is it not rather a Heart, into which, from all regions, 'mysterious conduits introduce and forcibly inject whatsoever 'is choicest in the Scoundrelism of the Earth; there to be 'absorbed, or again (by the other auricle) ejected into new 'circulation? Let the eye of the mind run along this im'measurable venous-arterial system; and astound itself with 'the magnificent extent of Scoundreldom; the deep, I may 'say, unfathomable, significance of Scoundrelism.

"Yes, brethren, wide as the Sun's range is our Empire; 'wider than old Rome's in its palmiest era. I have in my 'time been far; in frozen Muscovy, in hot Calabria, east,

west, wheresoever the sky overarches civilised man: and 'never hitherto saw I myself an alien; out of Scoundreldom 'I never was. Is it not even said, from of old, by the oppo"site party: "All men are liars?" Do they not (and this 'nowise "in haste") whimperingly talk of "one just person" '(as they call him), and of the remaining thousand save one 'that take part with us? So decided is our majority.' — (Applause.)

"Of the Scarlet Woman,—yes, Monseigneur, without of 'fence, of the Scarlet Woman that sits on Seven Hills, and 'her Black Jesuit Militia, out foraging from Pole to Pole, I 'speak not; for the story is too trite: nay, the Militia itself, 'as I see, begins to be disbanded, and invalided, for a second 'treachery; treachery to herself! Nor yet of Governments; 'for a like reason. Ambassadors, said an English punster, 'lie abroad for their masters. Their masters, we answer, lie 'at home for themselves. Not of all this, nor of Courtship 'with its Lovers'-vows, nor Courtiership, nor Attorneyism, 'nor Public Oratory, and Selling by Auction, do I speak: I 'simply ask the gainsayer, Which is the particular trade, 'profession, mystery, calling, or pursuit of the Sons of Adam 'that they successfully manage in the other way? He can'not answer!No: Philosophy itself, both practical and 'even speculative, has at length, after shamefullest groping, 'stumbled on the plain conclusion that Sham is indispensable 'to Reality, as Lying to Living; that without Lying the 'whole business of the world, from swaying of senates to 'selling of tapes, must explode into anarchic discords, and so 'a speedy conclusion ensue.

'But the grand problem, Fellow Scoundrels, as you well 'know, is the marrying of Truth and Sham; so that they be'come one flesh, man and wife, and generate these three: 'Profit, Pudding, and Respectability that always keeps her 'Gig. Wonderously, indeed, do Truth and Delusion play 'into one another; Reality rests on Dream. Truth is but 'the skin of the bottomless Untrue: and ever, from time to