WHAT HAD REALLY HAPPENED? To give a credible account of the matter is far from easy, for the true story of the affair of the diamond necklace would be rejected as wildly improbable if, instead of having actually happened, it were merely the theme of a sensational novel. The old adage is a sound one. Truth is stranger than fiction. The imaginative writer cannot but feel sometimes that he would do well to make his bow to the public and retire gracefully, since life so easily outbids his fantasies. Even Goethe, who in Grosskophta tried to make a stage play out of the necklace affair, only consolidated into a heavy jest what was, in verity, one of the boldest, most stimulating, most scintillating farces in history. There is not a comedy of Molière’s in which we find so motley and so amusing a crowd of humbugs and humbugged, of deceivers and deceived, of clever fools, as in this lively hotch-potch in which a thievish magpie, a fox equipped with all the wiles of charlatanry and a clumsy and credulous bear are the leading characters in the craziest tragicomedy known to history. At the centre of every genuine comedy, there must be a woman. The figure round whom this affair of the diamond necklace circled had been a neglected child, daughter of an impoverished nobleman and a dissolute serving maid. A barefooted wench, this child had picked up a livelihood by stealing potatoes out of the fields or by minding cows for a pittance. When her father died and her mother became a street-walker, the girl took to begging as her only resource, and at seven, by a stroke of luck, she approached the Marquise de Boulainvilliers with what seemed the incredible patter: “Give alms to a poor orphan sprung from the blood of the Valois!” What! Was this lousy and affamished little creature in truth of royal blood? Could she, indeed, be a descendant of that famous line? Though incredulous, the Marchioness told her coachman to pull up, and she questioned the little beggar-girl exhaustively.
In the affair of the diamond necklace, we must throughout be prepared to accept preposterous improbabilities. The girl Jeanne was in very fact the legitimate daughter of Jacques-Rémy, who, though a poacher, a drunkard and a terror to the whole countryside, was unquestionably an offspring of the House of Valois, which was just as old and just as distinguished as the House of Bourbon. The Marquise de Boulainvilliers, profoundly touched by the sad fate of such royal spawn, took Jeanne and a smaller sister under her care and had them brought up at a seminary for young gentlewomen. When she was fourteen, Jeanne was taught various trades, such as those of tailoress and seamstress; she learnt to wash and iron clothes, and was finally admitted to a convent for daughters of the nobility. Soon, however, it became apparent that little Jeanne was unfitted for a cloistered existence. Her father’s vagrant blood was circulating in her veins, and at two-and-twenty she and her sister ran away from the nunnery. Penniless, but high-spirited and adventurous, they turned up in Bar-sur-Aube. There a sprig of the lesser nobility, Nicolas de Lamotte, an officer in the gendarmerie, fell in love with her, and married her, though rather late in the day, for the priestly blessing only forestalled by a month the birth of twins. The husband was neither exacting nor jealous, and under his aegis Madame Lamotte, or ‘Madame Lamotte-Valois’, was able to give free rein to her tastes while ostensibly leading a respectable petty-bourgeois life. However, ‘the blood of the Valois’ demanded its rights, and from the first Jeanne had had but one thought—to climb, no matter how. She importuned her benefactress the Marquise de Boulainvilliers until the latter secured for her the entry to Cardinal de Rohan’s palace at Zabern. Being clever as well as pretty, she was able to play upon the weaknesses of the Cardinal. Through her intermediation (presumably at the cost of wearing an invisible pair of horns) her husband was appointed captain in a regiment of dragoons and had his debts paid.
Might not Jeanne have now been satisfied? By no means! This was but one step in an ascending career. Her spouse Lamotte had received his commission as captain from the King, but thereafter, on his own responsibility, he dubbed himself count. Now that she had so fine a name as ‘Comtesse de Lamotte-Valois’, was she to rest content with vegetating in the provinces upon a modest pension paid to herself, supplemented by her husband’s pay as cavalry officer? It would have been absurd! To a pretty and unscrupulous woman, determined to plunder the vain and the foolish, such a name was worth a hundred thousand livres a year. In order to open their campaign, this precious pair rented a mansion in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Gilles, prattled to money-lenders about the huge estate to which the countess was rightfully entitled as a descendant of the Valois, and kept open house with the funds thus obtained—although the plate was only hired for each occasion from neighbouring silversmiths. When their creditors began to press for payment, the Comtesse de Lamotte-Valois fobbed them off by telling them she was going to Versailles to push her claim at court.
It need hardly be said that she did not know a soul in these exalted circles, and that she might well have wearied her pretty legs week after week standing to demand admission without ever finding her way into the Queen’s anteroom. But, being a skilled adventuress, she had already planned her great coup. While among other petitioners in Madame Elisabeth’s waiting room, she suddenly fell into a faint. Everyone crowded around her, her husband disclosed her exalted name, and, with tears in his eyes, explained that weakness resulting from years of semi-starvation could alone account for the fainting fit. Amid general sympathy this thoroughly healthy invalid was carried home upon a stretcher; two hundred livres were sent to her forthwith, and her pension was increased from eight hundred livres to fifteen hundred.
But this was no more than a beggarly allowance for a Valois! Since the first trick had been successful, she would repeat it a second and a third time, so she fainted in the Countess of Artois’s anteroom, then again in the Gallery of Mirrors through which the Queen was about to pass. Unfortunately Marie Antoinette, upon whose generosity this prize beggar had especially counted, heard nothing of the lady’s syncope, and since a fourth attack of the kind at Versailles would have raised suspicions, the precious pair returned to Paris without having made much by their trouble. They were, in fact, far from having achieved the object of their desires. Of course they were extremely careful to avoid giving themselves away, and made a great to-do about the gracious fashion in which the Queen had welcomed them as her dear relatives. Since there was no lack of nincompoops eager to scrape acquaintance with the Comtesse de Lamotte-Valois who had been so highly honoured by the Queen, plenty of fat sheep soon presented themselves for the shearing, and their credit was temporarily re-established.
The two deeply indebted mendicants were speedily surrounded by a regular court, presided over by a certain Rétaux de Villette who had the title of first secretary, and who not only shared in the rogueries of the distinguished countess, but also had a place in her bed. The ‘second secretary’, Loth, was a priest. Coachmen, lackeys and maidservants were hired, so that ere long all went merry as a marriage bell in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Gilles. There were many amusing card parties, which were not indeed lucrative for the pigeons who came to be plucked, but the presence of ladies of easy virtue made up for that. Still, the earnings at faro and similar games did not suffice to make income balance expenditure; creditors were ever more urgent in their demands for payment, and after a few months came threats to put the bailiffs in. Once again our worthy couple had reached the end of the tether, and, if they were to save themselves from prison, they must widen the scope of their operations.
For a swindle in the grand style at least two things are needed, a great swindler and a great fool. The fool was not far to seek, being no other than that illustrious member of the Académie Française, His Eminence the Bishop of Strasbourg, the Grand Almoner of France, Cardinal de Rohan. Wholly a man of his own epoch, neither shrewder nor stupider than others, this charming prince of the Church suffered like so many of his contemporaries from the malady of his century—credulity. Few people seem able to live for any considerable time without faith, and since Voltaire had put religious belief out of fashion, superstition had taken its place in the salons of eighteenth-century society. A golden age thus dawned for alchemists, cabalists, rosicrucians, charlatans, necromancers and miraculous healers. No gentleman or lady of rank or fashion could refrain from consulting Cagliostro, from dining with the Comte de Saint-Germain, and from sitting among the convulsives beside Mesmer’s magnetic tub. Precisely because they were so clear-sighted, so wittily frivolous; for the very reason that the generals no longer took their duties, the queens their dignity, the priests their God, seriously—‘enlightened’ men and women of the world found their only way of escape from an intolerable sense of vacancy in sporting with the metaphysical, the mystical, the supra-sensual and the incomprehensible, and, however wide awake they might seem, they fell a ready prey to every variety of humbug and adventurer.
Among these spiritually impoverished persons, the most credulous of all was His Eminence the Cardinal de Rohan, who was in the toils of the most skilful of humbugs, a pope among the swindlers of his day, the ‘divine’ Cagliostro. Giuseppe Balsamo had made a nest for himself in the Zabern episcopal palace, and displayed marvellous skill in conjuring his patron’s money into his own purse. Since augurs and cheats recognise one another at the first glance, Cagliostro and the Comtesse de Lamotte-Valois were soon as thick as thieves. Informed by Cagliostro (who was thoroughly acquainted with the Cardinal’s secret desires), the Valois knew that Rohan’s supreme ambition was to become first minister of France, and she knew likewise what he dreaded as the only serious obstacle in his path, Marie Antoinette’s inexplicable dislike. For an artful woman, to know a man’s weaknesses means to have him in tow, and our dainty swindler promptly twisted a rope at the end of which she would be able to make the episcopal bear dance for so long as he could still sweat money.
In April 1784 the Comtesse de Lamotte-Valois began to drop casual remarks to the effect of how much confidence her “dear friend”, the Queen, reposed in her, and more and more the unsuspicious Cardinal came to believe that this pretty little woman would be an ideal advocate with Marie Antoinette. He frankly admitted how profoundly he had been mortified because, for years past, Her Majesty had not vouchsafed him so much as a glance, and that he knew of no greater happiness than the possibility of serving her reverently. If only someone could at length convince the Queen of his devotion and loyalty!
Appearing to be much moved, this ‘intimate friend’ promised to plead his cause with Marie Antoinette, and already in May, to Rohan’s astonishment, she told him something which convinced him that her influence was powerfully at work. The Queen, she said, was no longer adversely inclined, and, to show her change of mood (though it would be inexpedient to do anything too pronounced for the moment), Marie Antoinette would, at the next formal reception, privately nod to the Cardinal in a particular way. We are all apt to believe what we want to believe, and to see what we want to see. Rohan actually imagined that at the next reception he had noticed a certain ‘nuance’ in the Queen’s response to his salutation, and paid hard cash to the go-between as a reward.
But the Valois wanted to use the golden touch far more effectively than this. In order to get the Cardinal more firmly in her snare, she felt it necessary to show him a more tangible sign of the royal favour. What about some letters? Was not forgery one of the arts to be expected from an unscrupulous secretary who shared her house and her bed? Unhesitatingly Rétaux drafted, ostensibly in Marie Antoinette’s handwriting, letters from the Queen to her friend Valois. Since their pigeon gulped these down as genuine, the obvious cue was to follow up the lucrative path. Why not rig out an interchange of letters between Rohan and the Queen, so that the plunderers could dip their fingers more deeply into the Cardinal’s pouch? Acting on the Valois’s advice, the besotted Cardinal composed a detailed justification of his previous behaviour, spent days correcting the manuscript, and finally handed over a fair copy of the document to this woman who was priceless in more senses of the term than one. Surely she must be a sorceress as well as the Queen’s intimate? Within a few days the Comtesse de Lamotte-Valois brought a little note penned upon gilt-edged rep notepaper, adorned in one of the corners with the fleur-de-lis. The proud Queen sprung from the House of Habsburg, the woman who had hitherto cold-shouldered him, now wrote to the Cardinal as follows: “I am delighted that I need no longer regard you as blameworthy. It is not yet possible to grant you the audience you desire. I will let you know as soon as circumstances permit of this. Meanwhile be discreet.” The bamboozled victim could not contain himself for joy. Acting on the Valois’s advice, he wrote letter after letter to thank Her Majesty, and the more he was filled with pride at the thought of standing high in Marie Antoinette’s good graces, the more successful was the Comtesse de Lamotte-Valois in emptying his pocket. The bold scheme was making good headway.
The only trouble was that the other person in the comedy, Queen Marie Antoinette, did not really form part of the cast. How could the dangerous game be continued on its present lines? Rohan might be the most credulous idiot in the world, but he would not for ever go on believing that the Queen was greeting him when in reality she was giving him the cut direct and would never address a word to him. Before long the Cardinal would certainly smell a rat. It was necessary for the conspirators to play a bolder move in their game of chess. Since it was certain that the Queen would never speak to him, could not someone be found to impersonate Marie Antoinette, someone with sufficient histrionic ability to make the fool believe that he had had an interview with the Queen? Darkness has always been a great aid in the rogue’s armamentarium. Would it not be feasible to arrange for a tryst after nightfall, to utilize some well-shaded alley in Versailles park? Then Rohan could meet somebody drilled to act as the Queen’s double who would say a few words conned beforehand. In the night, all cats are black, and, being in the mood to be humbugged, the worthy Cardinal would be led by the nose just as easily as he had been by Cagliostro’s hocus-pocus and by the forged letters on gilt-edged notepaper. But where, at short notice, could a young woman be found to ‘double’ the part, as the modern film producers say? Where but in the region frequented by ‘ladies’ of all sorts and sizes, tall and short, fat and thin, brunette and blond, walking to and fro for professional purposes; in the gardens of the Palais Royal, the paradise of Parisian harlots? ‘Count’ de Lamotte set out in search of what was wanted, and he soon put his hand upon the needed impersonator, a young lady named Nicole, known afterwards as the Demoiselle d’Oliva, or the Baronne d’Oliva. Ostensibly a modiste, her main concern in life was to serve gentlemen rather than ladies. Lamotte easily persuaded her to the undertaking, for, as the gentleman’s wife explained to the judges, the girl was “exceedingly stupid”. On 11th August this servant of the pandemian Venus was conveyed to lodgings at Versailles, and with her own hands the Comtesse de Lamotte-Valois dressed the young woman in a white muslin gown, a skilful imitation of the one which the Queen is seen wearing in the portrait painted by Madame Vigée le Brun. On with a wide-brimmed hat to shade her face as much as possible and to cover her carefully powdered hair, and then out and away with the rather alarmed little woman who was for a few minutes to represent the Queen of France in conversation with the grand almoner of the monarchy. The most audacious piece of knavery in all history was under way.
Swiftly, silently, the pair of rogues with their pseudo-queen sped across the terrace at Versailles. Heaven was kind to them on this moonless night. They mounted to the grove of Venus, where, since it is so thickly shaded by pines, cedars and fig trees, barely more than the outline of a face and figure could be discerned. The place formed an admirable setting for the trick that was to be played. But the poor little cocotte began to tremble. Into what sort of an adventure had she allowed these strangers to inveigle her? She would have liked to run away. Her teeth chattered with anxiety as she held the rose and the letter which, as arranged, she was to hand to a distinguished gentleman who was coming to speak to her at the appointed spot. Hark, there was the sound of footsteps on the gravel. A man loomed in the darkness, Rétaux the secretary, who, in the livery of one of the royal servants, was conducting Rohan to the meeting place. Nicole felt herself vigorously thrust forwards, and her two companions vanished as if they had been swallowed up by the night. She stood alone. No, not alone, for, tall and slender, a stranger approached—the Cardinal.
How foolishly this stranger behaved. Making a profound obeisance, almost to the ground, he kissed the hem of the little prostitute’s garment. Now it was Nicole’s business to hand him the rose and the letter. But in her confusion she dropped the rose and forgot the letter. The utmost she could do was, in stifled tones, to stammer out the few words she had learnt by heart: “You may hope that the past will be forgotten.” This brief utterance seemed to delight the unknown gentleman beyond measure. Again and again he bowed, and, in broken words, murmured his subservient thanks—although the poor little modiste could not understand why. All that she knew was that a deadly fear overcame her lest she should say something that was not in the programme, and thus give the game away. Thanks be, at this juncture, there sounded another footstep on the gravel, a hasty one this time, and an excited whisper: “Come away quickly, quickly, Madame and the Countess of Artois are close at hand.” The warning (it was part of the plot) sufficed. The Cardinal took alarm, and departed swiftly with Lamotte, whose wife led away little Nicole. With palpitating heart the pseudo-queen of this comedy slunk past the palace where, behind the closed shutters, the real Queen was sound asleep, heedless of the drama that had been played outside.
The trick proved gloriously successful. The Cardinal was bereft of his senses. Hitherto his suspicions had from time to time been aroused, so that again and again he had had to be reassured. The alleged significant nod was but a half-proof, and even the letters were dubious. But now, when, as he believed, he had spoken to the Queen in person, and had learnt from her own lips that she had forgiven him, he regarded the Valois’s every word as gospel truth. He was ready to follow her lead through thick and thin. That evening there was no happier man in the fair realm of France. He looked forward confidently to becoming first minister and the Queen’s favourite.
A few days later the Valois announced to the Cardinal another signal proof of Marie Antoinette’s favour. Her Majesty—of course Rohan knew the kindliness of her heart—wanted to bestow fifty thousand livres upon a noble family that had fallen upon evil days—but at the moment she was short of cash. Would the Cardinal be good enough to undertake this gracious service on her behalf? Rohan, in his exuberance, never stopped to wonder that the Queen, whose revenues were enormous, should be stinted in funds. Indeed, all Paris knew that she was heavily burdened with debt. Sending for an Alsatian Jew named Cerf-Beer, a money-lender, he borrowed the requisite sum, and handed it over to the Valois. She and her husband had found the string which could make their puppet work. Three months later they tugged it still more vigorously, telling him that the Queen was again in want of money, and the Cardinal subserviently pawned his furniture and his plate that he might satisfy his patroness without delay.
These were heavenly days for Count and Countess de Lamotte. The Cardinal was away in Alsace, but his money jingled in their pockets. They need no longer trouble about the future since they had found so fine a pigeon to pluck. It would be enough, from time to time, to write a letter to Rohan in the Queen’s name, and he would hand over as many ducats as they wanted. They would have a gay time of it, and take no thought for the morrow. In those days it was not only noblemen, sovereign princes and cardinals who were credulous and light-minded, for the infection had spread to the very cheats who practised on the credulity of their wealthy patrons. A country house at Bar-sur-Aube with beautiful gardens and a well-stocked farm was purchased; the owners of the easily acquired property took their meals off golden platters, and drank from crystal goblets; the best society was eager to enjoy the honour of associating with the Comtesse de Lamotte-Valois. A jolly world, in which fools and dupes abounded!
One who, at the gaming table, has thrice drawn the highest card will be ready to stake his all on the fourth chance. Hazard thrust the ace of trumps into the Valois’s hand. At one of her parties a guest told her that the court jewellers Boehmer and Bassenge were in trouble. The poor fellows had sunk their capital and a good deal of their credit in the most wonderful diamond necklace human eyes had ever seen. It had been intended for Madame Dubarry, who would certainly have bought it had not the smallpox so suddenly made an end of Louis XV. Then it was offered to the Spanish court, but without success. Queen Marie Antoinette, who was crazy about such trinkets, and was not wont to boggle at a high price, besought her husband to purchase the gems, but the skinflint would not disburse sixteen hundred thousand livres. The jewellers were up to the neck; interest charges were gnawing away at the lovely diamonds; probably they would have to break up the splendid necklace, and sell the stones—at a great loss—one by one. Would it not be possible for the Comtesse de Lamotte-Valois, who was on such intimate terms with Marie Antoinette, to persuade her royal friend to buy this beautiful piece of workmanship after all? By instalments, of course, and on the most favourable terms. No doubt a liberal commission would be paid to the intermediary! The Valois, wishing to foster the legend of her influence with the Queen, was graciously pleased to say she would do her best in the matter, and on 29th December 1784, the two jewellers brought the precious necklace for inspection to the Rue Neuve-Saint-Gilles.
What a wonderful sight! The Valois’s heart almost stopped beating. Just as these diamonds sparkled in the sunlight, so did glittering thoughts course through her shrewd and impudent brain. Would she not be able to persuade that jackass of a cardinal to buy the diamond necklace secretly for the Queen? Very soon he was back in Paris from Alsace, and the Comtesse de Lamotte-Valois had her tale ready for him. There was to be a new sign of royal favour. The Queen wanted (of course without her husband’s knowledge) to buy a costly trinket. A go-between whose discretion could be relied upon would be needed, and Her Majesty, to show her confidence in Rohan, had chosen him to fill this honourable position. A few days later, the Comtesse was able to tell the delighted Boehmer that a purchaser had been found—the Cardinal de Rohan. On 29th January, in the Hôtel de Strasbourg, terms of purchase were arranged. The price was to be sixteen hundred thousand livres, payable within two years in four six-monthly instalments. The necklace was to be handed over on 1st February, the first instalment becoming payable on 1st August 1785. The Cardinal wrote the conditions with his own hand, and gave the agreement to the Valois, who was to submit it to ‘her friend’, the Queen. Next day, 30th January, she came back with Her Majesty’s answer. The Queen was perfectly satisfied with the conditions.
However, the donkey who had hitherto been so tractable jibbed just outside the stable. Sixteen hundred thousand livres was a large sum of money, was no trifle even to this spendthrift prince of the Church. If he were to disburse so vast an amount, he must be safeguarded in some way, must at least have a document signed by the Queen authorising him to make the purchase. Something written and signed? Of course! (What did one keep a secretary for?) Next day the Comtesse de Lamotte-Valois brought back the contract which Rohan had so carefully penned, and, lo and behold! in the margin beside each clause was inscribed the word, manu propria, “Approved!” while at the end of the document was the ‘holograph’ signature, “Marie Antoinette de France”.
Now, had he had any gumption, this grand almoner of the court, member of the Academy, ex-diplomat and in his dreams future first minister, would assuredly have been aware that the Queen of France never signed any documents except by her Christian name without any addition. The signature “Marie Antoinette de France” was enough at the first glance to betray the handiwork of an extremely incompetent forger. But how could Rohan doubt, since the Queen had secretly accorded him a personal interview in the grove of Venus? He pledged his honour that he would never let this momentous document out of his hands and would never show it to anyone. The following morning, on 1st February, the jeweller brought the necklace to the Cardinal, who himself took it to the Valois the same evening, wishing to convince himself that it would be conveyed to the Queen by trusty hands. He was not kept waiting long in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Gilles. Soon a manly footstep was heard on the staircase. The Comtesse begged the Cardinal to withdraw into an adjoining room, from which, through a glass door, he would be able to watch the transfer of the valuable purchase. He was in fact able to observe the entry of a young man, dressed in black (of course it was once more Rétaux, the redoubtable secretary), who presented himself with the words: “By order of the Queen.” Thoroughly reassured by this magic phrase, Rohan handed over the casket to the Valois, who, in turn, gave it to the mysterious emissary. The latter disappeared as swiftly as he had come, and with him the necklace vanished until the last trump. Much moved, Rohan bade farewell and departed. He could not be kept waiting long for a due return for his friendly offices. The Queen’s secret helper would soon become the King’s chief servant, the first minister of France!
A few days later a Hebraic jeweller called at the headquarters of the Paris police to complain, as representative of his outraged colleagues, that a certain Rétaux de Villette was offering remarkably fine diamonds for sale at such low prices as to arouse strong suspicion that they must have been stolen. The minister of police sent for Rétaux. The latter explained that the diamonds had been entrusted to him for sale by one of the King’s relatives, the Comtesse de Lamotte-Valois. “Countess”—“Valois”—these fine-sounding appellations worked like a charm upon the official, and made him dismiss Rétaux, who had suffered nothing worse than a fright. Still, the incident was enough to impose caution. The Countess, who had promptly broken up the necklace into its component parts, realised that the risk of hawking the separate brilliants in Paris would be too great, so she packed her husband off to London, his pockets stuffed with diamonds—greatly to the advantage of the jewellers of Bond Street and Piccadilly, who were able to purchase precious stones at figures far below their market value. Hurrah! Now there was plenty of money, far more money than even this accomplished female swindler had ever dreamt of making. Intoxicated by her success, she did not hesitate to flaunt her newly acquired wealth. She had a carriage drawn by four English mares; lackeys with magnificent liveries; a Negro servant whose clothes were trimmed with silver lace; carpets, tapestries, bronzes, plumed hats; a bed with appointments of scarlet velvet. When the worthy couple removed to their distinguished residence at Bar-sur-Aube, no less than four-and-twenty carts were needed to convey the articles of luxury which had hastily been got together. To the inhabitants of this little provincial town, the arrival must have seemed like a tale from the Arabian Nights’ Entertainment. Richly caparisoned horsemen led the train of the new Grand Mogul. Then came the English berline—carriage—pearl-grey, upholstered in white. On the satin wrap which the occupants of this splendid vehicle used to keep warm the legs which would have been better employed in escaping across the frontier, were embroidered the arms of the House of Valois, with the motto: “Rege ab avo sanguinem, nomen et lilia”—From the King, my ancestor, I derive my blood, my name and the lilies. The sometime officer in the gendarmerie was gloriously decked out. He had rings on all his fingers, a huge diamond buckle on his shoes; three or four watch-chains glittered on his heroic breast, and his wardrobe, as we learn from the inventory made public during the trial, contained no less than eighteen new silk or brocade suits, trimmed with Mechlin lace, and having buttons of chased gold. His wife was equally resplendent, for she glittered with jewels like a Hindu idol. Never before had the burgesses of Bar-sur-Aube seen such a display of wealth, which exercised its customary magnetic attraction. The titled folk of the neighbourhood flocked to the Valois mansion, to guzzle and swill at the banquets that were given. Troops of lackeys served the most delicate food upon costly plate; musicians discoursed sweet music; a modern Croesus, the Count strode through his princely mansion, scattering money with both hands.
Here, once more, the story of the diamond necklace is so fantastically absurd as to become incredible. Surely the fraud should have been discovered within a few weeks? How was it possible for the two rogues to make so lavish a display of their plunder? Were there no police in France? But the Valois had not reckoned without her host. If matters should take an ill turn, at any rate she had a fine front-rank man. Should the bubble burst, the Cardinal de Rohan would see to it that no harm came. It would not suit the grand almoner of France to become involved in a scandal, and still less in an affair that would make him intolerably ridiculous. Rather than that should happen, he would, without a grimace, pay for the necklace out of his own pocket. Why worry, then? With such a partner in the business, they could sleep soundly in their damask bed. In actual fact they seem to have been quite free from anxiety, the Valois herself, her excellent husband and the secretary who was so skilful with his pen. They gave themselves up to the unalloyed enjoyment of the revenues they were so adroitly extracting from the inexhaustible coffers of human stupidity.
There was, however, a trifle which disturbed the good Cardinal. He had fully expected, at the next official reception at court, to see the Queen wearing the precious diamond necklace, and he had perhaps hoped for a word from her or a confidential nod, for some kind of recognition which would be intelligible to him though its meaning would be hidden from others. But there was nothing of the sort! Marie Antoinette coolly ignored him, and there were no diamonds flashing upon her white neck. At length, in his bewilderment he asked the Valois: “Why does not the Queen wear the necklace?” The gay deceiver was never at a loss for an answer, and replied: “Her Majesty is reluctant to wear her necklace until it has been fully paid for. Then she will give King Louis a surprise.”
Again the patient jackass buried his nose in the hay and was well contented. April passed into May, and May into June. Nearer and nearer drew the first of August, the day fixed for the payment of the opening instalment of four hundred thousand livres. To secure a respite, the tricksters hit upon a new expedient. The Queen, said the Comtesse de Lamotte-Valois, had been thinking matters over, and had come to the conclusion that the price was excessive. Unless the jewellers would agree to a rebate of two hundred thousand livres, Her Majesty had decided to send the trinket back to them. The artful dodger counted upon a lengthy period of chaffering. She was mistaken. The jewellers, who had asked a fancy price and who were in a tight corner, declared, without parley, that they would agree to the proposed reduction in price. Bassenge wrote a letter announcing the firm’s consent, and, with Rohan’s approval, Boehmer delivered it to Marie Antoinette on 12th July, when he was taking the Queen some other jewels which she had really ordered. The letter ran as follows:
“Your Majesty, it is with the utmost gratification we venture to think that the last arrangement proposed to us, to which we have agreed with zeal and respect, affords a new proof of our submission and devotion to Your Majesty’s orders, and it gives us great satisfaction that the most beautiful diamond necklace in the world is at the disposal of the greatest and best of queens.”
To one not ‘in the know’, this involved epistle is, at the first sight, incomprehensible. Still, if the Queen had read it attentively and had given careful thought to its twisted phraseology, surely she would have asked herself in surprise: “What arrangement? What diamond necklace?” But on this occasion as upon a hundred others, Marie Antoinette failed to read the document attentively to the end; she found such a labour too tedious, and she was never a woman given to serious reflection. She opened the letter and glanced at it as Boehmer had asked her to do. Then, since she had no inside knowledge of what had been going on, the purport of the involved verbiage eluded her, so she sent her maid to call Boehmer back that he might furnish an explanation. Unfortunately the jeweller had already left the palace. Oh, well, she would find out in due time what the fool meant! She would see him again by and by. Meanwhile, she cast the letter into the fire.
This destruction of the letter, this renouncement of further enquiry into a matter she did not understand, seems—like nearly all the incidents in the affair of the diamond necklace—almost incredible. Even so careful and competent and trustworthy a historian as Louis Blanc considered the Queen’s prompt refusal to face the issues thus opened before her a sign that she must have known something about the shady affair. In reality, however, her hasty destruction of the document was characteristic. Afraid of her own heedlessness and dreading the espionage to which she was subjected at court, she had made it a practice never to keep any letters (those from her relatives excepted). When the palace of the Tuileries was stormed by the mob in 1792, not a scrap of writing addressed to her was found in her writing desk. The pity of it was that what in most respects was a useful precaution proved in this particular instance to have been a rash action.
Thus, by a concatenation of circumstances, the disclosure of the fraud was delayed until the last moment. But no sleight-of-hand could postpone the coming of the first of August, and Boehmer wanted his money. The Valois made one last frantic wriggle in the attempt to defend herself—a bold one, for she threw her cards face upwards on the table and bluntly informed the jewellers: “You have been cheated. The signature to the guarantee in the hand of the Cardinal is forged, but he is rich enough to pay you, and will pay you.” Her hope was that this would avert the blow. Her reasoning was logical enough. She believed that Boehmer and Bassenge would go to Rohan in a fine rage, would thrash the whole story out with him, and that he, afraid of making himself an object of scorn in the eyes of the court and of the country at large, would keep a still tongue in his head and would quietly pay over the fourteen hundred thousand livres. The jewellers, however, were guided, not by logic but by fear; they were afraid of losing their money! Knowing that the Cardinal was up to the eyes in debt, they refused to have any further dealings with him. Boehmer and Bassenge were both assured, in spite of what the Valois had told them, that Marie Antoinette was privy to the affair. If otherwise, would she not have replied to the above-quoted letter? She was much more able to pay their bill than the windbag of a Cardinal. Besides, in the worst event (so they falsely believed), she still had the necklace, and that was pledge enough.
The rope that was being used to lead a fool by the nose was now stretched to breaking point. The huge edifice of falsehood and reciprocal misunderstanding fell with a crash when Boehmer came to Versailles and begged audience of the Queen. Within a minute of their encounter both he and Marie Antoinette knew that a gross fraud had been perpetrated, but not until the trial took place would it transpire who had been the arch-cheat.
From a study of the multifarious official documents and other utterances concerning this most complicated of all trials, the irrefutable fact emerges that Marie Antoinette had absolutely no inkling of the scandalous way in which her name and her honour were being misused. As far as legal responsibility was concerned, she was guiltless, a victim of and not a confederate in the most audacious piece of roguery known to history. She had never received the Cardinal at a private interview, had never become acquainted with the fraudulent Comtesse de Lamotte-Valois, had never handled a single one of the brilliants belonging to the necklace. Nothing but deliberate malice, nothing but intentional calumny, can involve Marie Antoinette in any way with the doings of this prize adventuress and this feeble-minded Cardinal. It cannot be too often reiterated that the Queen was unwittingly and innocently entangled in the dishonourable affair by a gang of swindlers, forgers, thieves and fools.
All the same, Marie Antoinette cannot be “discharged from court without a stain upon her character”. The fraud was so successfully staged because the tarnish upon her reputation gave courage to the cheats, and because those that were gulled were predisposed towards unhesitating belief in any act of heedlessness upon the Queen’s part. Had it not been for the levities and follies of Trianon, continued year after year, this comedy of lies would have been inconceivable. No one in his senses would ever have ventured to suspect Maria Theresa, for instance, of carrying on such a clandestine correspondence as that relating to the diamond necklace, or that she would have given such a man as the Cardinal an assignation after nightfall in Versailles park. Rohan and the jewellers would never have swallowed the tale that the Queen was short of money and wanted, on the quiet, through a go-between, to buy an expensive diamond necklace and pay for it by instalments—unless Versailles had for years been buzzing with evil-tongued whispers about nocturnal adventures in the park, about jiggery-pokery with the royal jewels and about unpaid debts. Neither would the Valois have been able to build up such an imposing edifice of lies, had not the foundation stone been laid by the Queen’s frivolous and unseemly behaviour, and had not Her Majesty’s dubious reputation constituted the scaffolding. Though in all the preposterous intricacies of the necklace affair Marie Antoinette was, in a sense, blameless, she remains blameworthy that so gross a swindle could have been attempted and victoriously achieved under cover of her name.