At length, in Rome, he and the Countess fell into the clutches of the Holy Office; and both having been tried for their manifold offences against the Church, were found guilty, and, in spite of their contrition and eager confessions, immured for life; the Count within the walls of the Castle of Sante Leone, in the Duchy of Urbino, where, after eight years' imprisonment, he died in 1795, and the Countess in a suburban convent, where she died some time after. The portraits of Cagliostro, of which a number are extant, are pictures of a strong-built, bull-necked, fat, gross man, with a snub nose, a vulgar face, a look of sensuality and low hypocritical cunning. The celebrated story of "The Diamond Necklace," in which Cagliostro, Marie Antoinette, the Cardinal de Rohan, and others were mixed in such a hodge-podge of rascality and folly, must form a narrative by itself. CHAPTER XLI. THE DIAMOND NECKLACE. In my sketch of Joseph Balsamo, alias the Count Alessandro de Cagliostro, I referred to the affair of the diamond necklace, known in French history as the _Collier de la Reine_, or Queen's necklace, from the manner in which the name and reputation of Marie Antoinette, the consort of Louis XVI, became entangled in it. I shall now give a brief account of this celebrated imposition--perhaps the boldest and shrewdest ever known, and almost wholly the work of a woman. On the Quai de la Ferraille, not far from the Pont Neuf, stood the establishment, part shop, part manufactory, of Messrs. Boehmer & Bassange, the most celebrated jewelers of their day. After triumphs which had given them world-wide fame during the reign of Louis XV, and made them fabulously rich, they determined, with the advent of Louis XVI, to eclipse all their former efforts and crown the professional glory of their lives. Their correspondents in every chief jewel market of the world were summoned to aid their enterprise, and in the course of some two or three years they succeeded in collecting the finest and most remarkable diamonds that could be procured in the whole world of commerce. The next idea was to combine all these superb fragments in one grand ornament to grace the form of beauty. A necklace was the article fixed upon, and the best experience and most delicate taste that Europe could boast were expended on the design. Each and every diamond was specially set and faced in such manner as to reveal its excellence to the utmost advantage, and all were arranged together in the style best calculated to harmonize their united effect. Form, shape, and the minutest shades of color were studied, and the result, after many attempts and many failures, and the anxious labor of many months, was the most exquisite triumph that the genius of the lapidary and the goldsmith could conceive.