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Tough day for Miss little Piggy

CHARLENE Marshall is not accused of any crime. That is, unless you consider it a sin that she loves Anthony Marshall — the depraved, whipped, elderly slug who allegedly robbed and tormented his beautiful, sainted mother, Brooke Astor, just to keep the plain and stout Charlene in support hose and headbands.

But there it is, fans of greed, sloth and osteoporosis.

As Week 2 commences in Anthony Marshall’s sad and uproarious grand-larceny trial — a trial that pits the blue bloods of New York against a pair of bloodless sharks — Charlene has been depicted by lawyers as far more virulent than swine flu.

And those lawyers include her husband’s defense lawyers, who’ve had to acknowledge that Mrs. Astor detested the woman whom her maid once uncharitably dubbed “Miss Piggy.”

Yesterday, Charlene sat in the courtroom pop-eyed and fuming, with her daughter, Inness, who evidently is between jobs, like so many here.

She was called a whole lot worse than a farm animal by her mother-in-law’s audiologist, Dr. Kevin O’Flaherty.

The doc hated to say it. He even spelled out the word so as not to offend. Whoops, too late.

He made it perfectly clear that Charlene was someone who wanted to be wealthy, but only managed to rhyme with “rich.”

In fact, Mrs. Astor despised her so much, she told this doctor that she’d rather spend Christmas 2000 with her pet dachshunds, Boysie and Girlsie, than with that blasted woman.

Take that, Charlene. The words seemed to stab her in the prodigious gut.

Charlene was forced to endure more. John Dobkin, ex-president of Historic Hudson County, recalled that on her Maine estate, Mrs. Astor pointed from a deck.

“That’s where Charlene would walk back and forth, day after day, trying to get Tony’s attention,” he recalled Mrs. Astor saying. Eight years earlier, Charlene had left her minister husband and daughters to marry him, to Mrs. Astor’s dismay.

Charlene is the un-indicted co-conspirator in this horror show we call a trial. For years, Anthony Marshall was content to sponge off his mom, accepting an apartment, a car and driver. Dental care, for goodness’ sake.

Deep into his 70s, she even tried to get her useless son a job with the Bronx Botanical Society, her friend, Phillippe de Montebello — that’s “small ‘d’ small ‘e,’ ” he testified yesterday.

But Charlene is nothing if not impatient. She wanted to make sure she was well taken care of by her mother-in-law

Long after Mrs. Astor had lost her ability to hold a pen or even recognize her husband, Vincent Astor, from a photograph, Anthony Marshall claims she rewrote her will to leave him everything.

Charlene. I mean Miss Piggy. Was it worth it?

andrea.peyser@nypost.com