CHAPTER VI.

THE TRIAL.


For a whole year the preparation for the trial had lasted, and to-
day, the 31st of August, 1786, the matter would be decided. The
friends and relatives of the cardinal had had time to manipulate not
only public opinion, but also to win over the judges, the members of
Parliament, to the cause of the cardinal, and to prejudice them
against the queen. All the enemies of Marie Antoinette, the
legitimists even, who saw their old rights of nobility encroached
upon by the preference given to the Polignacs and other families
which had sprung from obscurity; the party of the royal princes and
princesses, whom Marie Antoinette had always offended, first because
she was an Austrian, and later because she had allowed herself to
win the love of the king; the men of the agitation and freedom
party, who thundered in their clubs against the realm, and held it
to be their sacred duty to destroy the nimbus which, had hitherto
enveloped the throne, and to show to the hungering people that the
queen who lived in luxury was nothing more than a light-minded,
voluptuous woman,--all these enemies of the queen had had time to
gain over public opinion and the judges. The trial had been a
welcome opportunity to all to give free play to their revenge, their
indignation, and their hate. The family of the cardinal, sorely
touched by the degradation which had come upon them all in their
head, would, at the least, see the queen compromised with the