I amuse myself, not by making people believe what I wish, but by letting them believe what they wish. These fools of Parisians declare that I am five… - Alessandro Cagliostro

Your highness is forgetting that I see as clearly in your heart what is going on now as I saw your carriage coming from the Carmelite convent, traversing the town and stopping under the trees fifty paces off from my house.

Is it fault of mine, I say, if this future, revealed to you as a holy woman, should be shown to me as a precursor; and if the dauphiness, alarmed at the fate personally threatening her, swooned when it loomed upon her? For her reign is doomed as the most fatal and unfortunate of the entire monarchy.

Do not try to irritate me. I am but the instrument of a higher Power, used to enlighten you. Insult fate and it will revenge itself, well knowing how. I merely interpret its moves. Do not fling at me the wrath which will recoil on yourself, for you can not visit on me the woes of which I am the sinister herald.