Note 35 — Chapter VI

One, de Soudak, in an interesting review of M. Funck-Brentano’s L’Affaire du Collier, in the Paris Temps, April 1, 1902, is the only modern writer who has ventured to question this verdict. The value of his opinion may be judged from an article by him in the Revue Bleue, 1899, in which he attempts to identify a mysterious Frenchwoman who died in the Crimea in 1825 with the Countess de Lamotte, who died in London 1791, after escaping from the Salpêtrière, to which she had been condemned for life. Her sentence—the judges were unanimous in finding her guilty—also included being “whipped naked by the executioner, branded on the shoulders with the letter V. (voleuse), and the confiscation of all her property.” The sentences of the others implicated in this affair need not concern us here.