Marie Antoinette's

In 1771 a court case caught the attention of the Parisians and they followed it every day like the Clinton trials. It all started with a noble, Jean-Francois de Molette, comte de Morangies, who was a field marshal in the royal army. The comte owned a bunch of land in the south of France and he wanted to invest in it and make it better - fix things up a bit.

He decided to borrow the money to do this, and he was recommended to go to Francois Liegaurd-Dujonquay. Dujonquay was a young man who worked both with his mother, Genevieve Gaillard-Romain and grandmother who was known as the widow Veron. The boy worked as a money broker and with his family agreed to meet with the comte about a business transaction.

Molette needed a lot of money to put into the land and the parties agreed on 300,000 livres. (This was in September) Shortly after the deal was struck, the comte was unhappy, claiming he was despaie, and had only received 1200 livres of the 300,000! He said that the young Dujonquay (his party referred to as the Verons) had in fact delivered part of the sum, the 1,200, but that had been all. Dujonquay protested and produced 4 receipts, billets a ordre, which showed he had made the full delivery.

Astonished and horrified, the comte took the case to the police lieutenant of Paris...

(Continued in Part 2)