Avon Modern Short Story Monthly #36 — page 42: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

u ahd Lhe vine ;. rt ¥, $ é ; “ ee = te be ee ote . Negttalte OR Ps ‘gt vat , pithy me Sa . a . ' hy = ; , , 3 "ah 2 - Bae a2. RAFAEL SABATINI driven to it by my love for you and the despair to which your heart- lessness and infidelity reduced me. To you,” she continued, gathering force at every word, “I sacrificed everything—my honour, a noble husband who loved me, all that a woman prizes. And what did you’ give me in exchange? Your cruel fickleness exposed me to the low mockery of the lick-spittles of your Court. Do you wonder that I went mad, and that in my madness I sacrificed what shreds of self- respect you had left me? And now it seems I have lost all but life. Take that, too, if it be your pleasure. Heaven knows it has little value left for me! But remember that in striking me you strike the motherof your children—the legitimate children of France. Remem- ber that!” — He remembered it. Indeed, he was never in danger of forgetting it; for she might "have added that he would be striking also at himself and at that royal dignity which was his religion. And so that all scandalous comment might be avoided she was actually allowed to remain at Court, although no longer in her first-floor apartments; and it was not until ten years later that she departed to withdraw to the community of Saint Joseph. But even in her disgrace this woman, secretly convicted among other abominations of attempting to procure the poisoning of the King and of her rival, enjoyed an annual pension of 1,200,000 livres; ~ whilst none dared proceed against those who shared her guilt—not even the infamous Guibourg, the poisoners Romani and Bertrand, and La Filastre—nor yet against some scores of associates of these, who were known to live by sorcery and poisonings, and who might _be privy to the part played by Madame de Montespan in that hor- rible night of magic at the Chateau de Villebousin. The hot blast of revolution was needed to sweep France clean, Comicbooks