In the days of her power and splendor she lived as the average woman of her period would have done under the same circumstances--not better, and not worse. But when the time came to try her soul and test her mettle, she evinced a strength and dignity and composure surpassing belief. If there had been any evidence of the truth of the story of the diamond necklace--a story which no doubt hastened the revolutionary crisis--it would certainly have been used at her trial; but it was not. It will be remembered that this necklace was one of the fatal legacies from the reign of Louis XV., who had ordered for du Barry this gift which was to cost a sum large enough for a king's ransom. The king died before it was completed, and the story became current that Marie Antoinette, the hated Austrian woman who was ruining France by her extravagance, was negotiating for the purchase of this necklace while the people were starving! A network of villainy is woven about the whole incident, in which the names of a cardinal and ladies high in rank are involved. The mystery may never be uncovered, but every effort to connect the queen's name with this historic scandal has failed. Probably of all the cruelties inflicted upon this unhappy woman, none caused her such anguish as the testimony of her son before the Revolutionary Tribunal, that he had heard his mother say she "hated the French people." Placed under the care of the brutal Simon after his father's removal from the Temple, the child had become a physical and mental wreck. The queen, in her last letter to her sister the Princess Elizabeth, makes pitiful allusion to the incident, begging her to remember what he must have suffered before he said this; also reminding her how children may be taught to utter words they do not comprehend. His lesson, no doubt, had been learned by cruel tortures; and, rendered half imbecile, it was recited when the time came. None but his keeper was ever permitted to see the boy. His condition, final illness, and death are shrouded in mystery. In June, 1794, eight months after his mother's execution, it was announced that he was dead. It would be difficult to prove this event before a court of justice. There were no witnesses whose testimony would have any weight. No one was permitted to see the child who was put into that obscure grave; and many circumstances give rise to a suspicion that the boy, who might have been a source of political embarrassment in the rehabilitation of France, was disposed of in another way--dropped into an obscurity which would serve as well as death.