The Queen's Necklace

Chapter Nine. The Necklace Explodes

NOW PAY ATTENTION, Reader! “Dramatic scenes, in plenty,” promises Carlyle, “will follow of themselves, especially that fourth and final scene, spoken of above as by another author — by Destiny itself.”

We recall that Jeanne had told Rohan that the Queen wanted to have the necklace by Candlemas. On the following day, 2nd February 1785, Rohan dispatched a footman, accompanied by an Alsatian officer, to attend the King’s public breakfast and note what the Queen was wearing. It seems that Boehmer and Bassenge must also have sent someone, because the day after that they paid an anxious visit to Rohan to ask him what was the matter, that she had not been wearing it. Rohan reassured them, and told them they should rather write and thank the Queen for ridding them of their burdensome treasure. But by this stage the jewellers had irritated her so much that they did not dare go anywhere near her, and preferred to wait for a suitable opportunity. None came, and the months passed. The Queen had of course no idea that Rohan and Boehmer believed that the necklace was in her possession. Jeanne had reassured the interested parties that she would wear it only when she went to Paris. Another time she said it would be worn only when it was fully paid for. Then Rohan had a letter from ‘the Queen’, saying that he should go back to Saverne for a little while.

At the end of May Jeanne turned up at Saverne, in disguise and dressed as a man (for greater effect), to tell the Cardinal that on his return he would be granted an audience. Once again, Rohan could sleep soundly. “Oh unhappy man!” Carlyle shouts at him at this point. “This is not a world which was made in sleep; which it is safe to sleep and somnambulate in.” But Rohan did not wake.

July. The first payment was due on 1st August. Now growing anxious, Rohan asked Jeanne why the Queen was still not wearing the necklace. Because, Jeanne replied, she thought it too expensive. Unless the jewellers dropped their price by 200,000 livres she was going to return it. Boehmer and Bassenge pulled a face, but agreed the discount. This ‘real-world’ business operation reassured Rohan once again: he felt his feet once more on terra firma. All the same, the jewellers used the occasion, at Rohan’s prompting, to write that letter of thanks, which the Cardinal himself polished up into a little masterpiece of decorum.

On 12th July Boehmer went to Paris to give the Queen some jewels she had ordered for the christening of the Duc d’Angoulême, the son of the Comte d’Artois. This was the opportunity he had been waiting for. He handed her the letter, but as fate would have it, at just that moment in came the Finance Minister, Calonne, the most important man at Court. Boehmer made his exit, bowing deeply all the way, to give her time to read the letter and ask for an explanation.

Some while later she did read it, then gave it to Mme Campan to decode, since she was a clever woman and good at solving mysteries. But Mme Campan could make neither head nor tail of a single word. So the Queen burned the letter over a candle, and told Mme Campan that if ever the lunatic returned she should throw him out.

Thus fate spins its web. Since Marie-Antoinette had accepted the letter and said nothing more about it, the jewellers were convinced she did know about the necklace, and nothing would ever drive this notion out of their heads. Unwittingly, but none the less directly, Marie-Antoinette had become involved: she had contributed to deluding the victims.

We are now in the middle of July, and Jeanne is still her calmly superior self. Someone will eventually pay — after all, there are so many rich people in the world. For example that parvenu, the fabulously wealthy financier and Naval Treasurer Baudard de Sainte-James. Sainte-James was a close friend of the Cardinal, a devotee of Cagliostro, and a pillar of his lodge.

“The Queen is experiencing a short-term financial difficulty regarding the first payment,” she confided to Rohan. “Perhaps you should turn to Sainte-James—400,000 livres is nothing to him.”

The trouble was that others too were thinking of Sainte-James: Boehmer and Bassenge had also asked him to lend them the sum for which they were selling the diamond jewel. Sainte-James scratched his head: he was supposed to lend 400,000 livres so that Boehmer & Co could pay for what they already owned? What sort of business was that? But perhaps he should agree, for the sake of the Queen — he was just the sort of parvenu who doted on titles: it would delight him to do her a favour, in the hope of getting some little medal. So he asked Rohan to bring him a letter, written in the Queen’s own hand, asking him, by name, for the money. Rohan went back to Jeanne. But the letter never came.

According to the Abbé Georgel, this was because Réteaux de Villette was not in Paris at the time to forge one. Funck-Brentano prefers to think that Jeanne was unwilling to place a false document in Sainte-James’s hand. Aristocrats and Cardinals were one thing, but she could not assume the same credulity in a man of business. So this was not the answer.

Meanwhile time was passing, and now even she began to worry. After all, she too was human. In the inspiration of the very last moment she found a provisional solution: she pawned some of the remaining diamonds and gave the 30,000 livres they raised, together with an appropriate letter, to the Cardinal. Rohan passed the sum on to the jewellers, and asked, in the Queen’s name, if he could delay the payment of arrears until 1st October. But that was too much for the jewellers. Sainte-James had told them, they said, that they absolutely had to have the full amount that was due. Only now, it seems, did Jeanne, that glorious mayfly and mistress of the art of living from one day to the next, begin to realise just what danger she was in. Her husband, who had been pottering about in Bar without a care in the world, was summoned to Paris forthwith. And then a great new, and extremely bold, idea occurred to her.

On 3rd August she suddenly informed the jewellers: “You’ve been taken in. The documents in the Cardinal’s possession are forged. But don’t worry — he’s rich enough. He’ll pay.”

She made this statement out of conviction. She had very sensibly calculated that that was what must happen. Rohan, as she well knew, had become involved in such a ghastly and complicated intrigue that he would be afraid of the consequences of having presumed that the Queen would enter into an intimate correspondence and arrange a private rendezvous with him in the Versailles Park, and, last but not least, he would dread the general mockery that his appearance in the Venus Bower, and his credulity, would incur. He would surely pay up, and his entire family would pay up, even if it brought the combined Rohans, Guéménées and Soubises crashing down.

But once again fate made a little move of its own. The jewellers did not dare tell the grandee that the signature had been forged. Instead they turned to Marie-Antoinette, and Boehmer scuttled off to Versailles that very day.

Here the story becomes somewhat less clear. Funck-Brentano does not explain why Boehmer should be less afraid of the Queen than he was of the Cardinal. And what business was it of hers at all, if the letter really had been forged? Let us be silent while Mme Campan, who was one of the principal actors, tells us herself:

At Versailles, Boehmer failed to gain access to the Queen, so he rushed off to Mme Campan’s summer lodging, where the lady had retired for a few days. She happened to have guests with her, and could see him privately only that evening, in the garden.

“I believe I can recall the dialogue that passed between us word for word. From the moment he began to lay bare his extraordinarily base and dangerous intrigue he was so agitated that his every word is deeply engraved on my memory. And the more clearly I began to see the danger, the more distressing it was, so that I did not even notice when thunder and lightning erupted in the middle of our conversation.

“As soon as we were alone, I asked him:

“‘What was the meaning of that letter you gave the Queen last Sunday?’

“‘The Queen must know that perfectly well, Madame.’

“‘Pardon me; she has instructed me to ask you.’

“‘She must have been joking.’

“‘I can’t see why the Queen would want to joke with you! Even you must be aware that she very rarely wears formal dress nowadays; you yourself have remarked how much the austerity here at the Court is affecting trade. The Queen rather fears you’ve concocted another of your schemes, and her message is, most decidedly, that she won’t be buying any diamonds from you, not even one for twenty louis.’

“‘I’m sure she has less need of them than she used to, but then why did she make no mention of the money?’

“‘Because you had it some time ago.’

“‘Ah, Madame, you are very much mistaken. I am still owed a very great deal.’

“‘What do you mean?’

“‘I shall have to tell you everything. It seems the Queen has been keeping this a secret from you. She has purchased that large necklace.’

“‘The Queen? But she refused it. When the King wanted to give it to her she refused it!’

“‘And so? Since then she has had second thoughts.’

“‘In that case she would have spoken to the King. Besides, I have never seen that necklace among her jewellery.’

“‘The fact is, she bought it at Whitsun. I was most surprised to see that she wasn’t wearing it.’

“‘When did the Queen tell you she had finally decided to buy it?’

“‘She has never spoken to me about it in person.’

“‘Then who was the go-between?’

“‘Cardinal Rohan.’

“‘The Queen hasn’t spoken a word to him these ten years! I can’t see what lies behind your little plot, but one thing seems very clear, my dear Boehmer. Someone has robbed you.’

“‘The Queen is simply acting as if His Eminence is in her bad books, but they are getting along all the better for it.’

“‘What do you mean? The Queen is only pretending to dislike someone who is such a laughing stock at Court? Royals are more used to treating people as if they approve of them. For four years now she has made it clear she does not want to buy your necklace, or even to have it as a present! And yet she bought it all the same, and is pretending she has forgotten, because she hasn’t worn it! You must have gone mad, my poor little Boehmer, and got yourself tangled up in some little scheme. I really tremble for you, and am most displeased with you, on Her Majesty’s behalf. Six months ago I asked you what had become of the necklace, and you told me that you had sold it to the Sultan’s favourite.’

“‘My reply was made according to the Queen’s wishes; she left a message by way of the Cardinal that that was what I should say.’

“‘So is that how you got your instructions from the Queen?’

“‘By letters, bearing her signature. And for some time now my creditors have been demanding to see them.’

“‘So you’ve not received any payment?’

“‘Excuse me; I received 30,000 livres, in banknotes when I reduced the price of the necklace. That was the amount the Queen sent to My Lord Cardinal, and they must certainly have met in secret, because when His Eminence gave it to me he told me that he was present when she took it from the portfolio in the Sèvres Porcelain secretaire in her little boudoir.’

“‘This is all lies. But you have made a very grave error. When you accepted your appointment you took an oath of loyalty to the King and Queen, and yet you failed to make the King aware of this very serious matter, even though you were acting without the direct instructions of the Queen.’

“This last expression really shocked the dangerous lunatic—ce dangereux imbécile—and he asked me what he should do. I advised him to go to Baron Breteuil in his capacity of Royal Jeweller, to tell him everything quite candidly, and trust to his guidance. He replied that he would rather I undertook to tell the Queen what had happened. This I refused to do. It seemed wiser not to get involved in that sort of intrigue.”

But a truly brave and loyal soul would have done just that.

If this conversation between Mme Campan and Boehmer really did take place, there are two possibilities. One is that for once Funck-Brentano is wrong, and that Jeanne had not told Boehmer that the letter was forged, so he still believed absolutely that he was dealing with the Queen. The other is that Jeanne did indeed tell him, but that Boehmer took this to mean that the Queen had quite deliberately signed it under a wrong name in case she was found out, calculating that she could then disclaim it. This is a very dark suspicion, though at the time Marie-Antoinette was suspected of even darker things. What gave strength to Boehmer’s suspicions was that Marie-Antoinette had not responded to his letter with a single word of acknowledgement or asked to discuss it, so that he had only a tacit understanding that she had received the necklace at all. We have to consider the appalling climate of suspicion that surrounded the Queen. Besides, Boehmer was just another Figaro, and what he assumed about his royal masters was not so very dire.

Meanwhile Jeanne did not remain idle. She gave Réteaux de Villette four thousand livres to make his escape. She did not want him appearing before the police a second time and saying something stupid. Then she urgently summoned the Cardinal. She told him that her enemies were accusing her of committing an indiscretion and bragging about it (which sounds probable enough), so she no longer felt safe in her home, and needed to hide. She begged him to give her refuge in his palace. At eleven that night, accompanied by a chambermaid, she crept through his gates. With this particular chess move she achieved two of her intended aims: first, to reassure the Cardinal once again — would she have gone there if her conscience were not crystal clear? Second, to link her own fate even more closely with his, so that she could hide behind him in case of danger, and to compromise him even more profoundly.

The next day Rohan sent for Boehmer. His partner Bassenge came instead. Bassenge dared venture only one question:

“Does Your Eminence have complete confidence in the person who went between you and the Queen?”

Rohan replied that he had never spoken directly with the Queen, but said he had every bit as much confidence in her as if he had. Finally he agreed to ask Sainte-James to give the jewellers more time. A few days later he actually did meet Sainte-James at a social gathering, and asked him to be patient for a little longer.

After this, on 6th August, Jeanne went back home to Bar. Why did she not make her escape? Why not flee to England? Was the reason, as we rather suspect, her wonderful mayfly insouciance, or was this deliberate cunning? Running away would amount to a full confession, but while she stayed she testified to her innocence and shifted responsibility onto Rohan. Besides, she continued to assume that Rohan and his family would quietly put everything right behind the scenes. Perhaps too she comforted herself with the thought that tomorrow everything would be just the same as it had been the day before.

Meanwhile Rohan must have been living through the greatest crisis of his life. The jewellers’ doubts must surely have been driving nails into his head. He turned for advice to his master, Cagliostro. Cagliostro knew nothing of the necklace business, as will become clear beyond all doubt in the course of other things. Jeanne obviously had not wanted a second fraudster involved, and had succeeded in persuading Rohan to keep him in the dark. Cagliostro, as we have mentioned, had prophesied a triumphant outcome to the whole undertaking, of whose real nature he was unaware. Which was somewhat careless, for a prophet.

But now Rohan kept it a secret from him no longer. He told him everything, with perfect candour, and showed him the letters. And then something very surprising happened. Cagliostro thought the matter through, and gave Rohan the wisest and most sensible advice anyone could have given in the circumstances. No Apis ram, no Dove, no candles, no Zobiachel. The magician who posed as a man possessed was secretly a shrewd and circumspect individual. It was as if, between two lines of iambic pentameter, a Shakespearean actor were to pull off his wig and declare: “If you please, we will now continue in plain English!” Perhaps Cagliostro actually liked Rohan. He certainly had good reason to.

“The Queen could never have signed this letter ‘Marie-Antoinette de France’,” he told him. “You have been duped, without question. You have been the victim of a fraud, and there is only one thing you can do. Throw yourself at the King’s feet without delay and confess everything.”

There was no doubt that that was what he should have done. The kindly Louis XVI, seeing Rohan’s sincere remorse and distress, would clearly make sure the matter was settled quietly and without fuss — and he would do so in his own interest. Once again we find ourselves at a moment in time when everything might still have turned out for the good — and didn’t.

It was Rohan’s good-heartedness — his eighteenth-century sentimentality and gallantry — that stopped him taking the only appropriate step.

“If I did that,” he told Cagliostro, “that woman would be destroyed.”

“If you don’t want to do it yourself, then a friend could do it for you,” the magus replied, discreetly offering his services.

(The scene he proposed was grotesque — Cagliostro before the King, recounting the story of the necklace to the full accompaniment of oriental mumbo-jumbo!)

“No, no, let me think about it a bit longer,” said the Cardinal.

This vacillation was his undoing. But how could anyone who had lived such a sheltered life, whose every choice had been made for him by fairy godmothers, come to a quick decision? On the other hand, like Milton’s Adam, he was also destroyed by an act of gallantry, protecting the sinful Eve.

This naturally raises the question of whether there was a rather more intimate relationship between Jeanne and the Cardinal. Funck-Brentano, as befits a Frenchman, devotes an entire chapter to the debate. Jeanne did later testify before the court that she had been Rohan’s mistress (though he rejected the allegation with considerable dignity). According to Funck-Brentano this ‘confession’ was meaningless — it was entirely in her interest to appear closely identified with the Cardinal, the better to take advantage of his privileged position. Her confidant Beugnot claimed to have seen some passionate love letters Rohan had written her, but according to Funck-Brentano that too signified nothing, since we know how much she enjoyed composing fictitious billets-doux. Besides, it was part of her nature to be forever making up romantic stories about herself. Against this is the fact that until almost the last minute the Cardinal had been supplying her with pocket money, but this was in the sort of petty amounts that a grandee might casually dole out to a passing beggar, hardly to a mistress. Jeanne asked for and accepted these small sums so that he would not realise that she had meanwhile made herself rich at his expense.

In the last analysis we can never be completely sure what there was between them, but this much is clear: no one could have behaved with greater gallantry or selflessness than Rohan did at the critical moment. If we are to weigh his character in the balance, there is certainly much good to be said of him.

Now to return to Mme Campan. She was a quiet, modest woman, a little grey sparrow among the peacocks, falcons and brilliantly coloured parrots of the Court. She is famous for her memoirs. Everyone who has written about the period and about Marie-Antoinette, including of course ourselves, has gone to her first and foremost for the more intimate details. She is rather like the ‘I’ in old-fashioned novels who narrates the story but does not directly play a part in it. But now, at this critical juncture, the modest little ‘I’ detonates the bomb. True, there was nothing else she could have done. So perhaps we might briefly introduce her, as she steps onto the stage.

Jeanne-Louise-Henriette Genet was born in 1752, and went to Versailles at the age of fifteen to become reader to Mesdames, the daughters of Louis XV. She was a remarkably cultivated young lady. Louis XV once stopped and asked her:

“Is it true that you speak four or five languages?”

“Only two, Your Highness,” the girl replied modestly.

“Quite enough to annoy any husband.”

In due course he married her off to the young M Campan, whose extremely learned father was secretary to the Royal Cabinet. She received five thousand livres and was appointed Première Femme de Chambre.

Marie-Antoinette had invited Mme Campan to her house in the mock village at Le Petit Trianon, to try out her part as Rosina on her. During the proceedings she casually asked what “this Boehmer” wanted: she knew Mme Campan had sent him but she had refused to see him. So Mme Campan related the full story. Marie-Antoinette became extremely agitated, and immediately sent a message to the man summoning him on some pretext connected with his trade. He duly appeared the next day, 9th August. The Queen questioned him in detail and told him to put everything he knew in writing. According to Mme Campan, the “shameless and dangerous jeweller” simply kept repeating, to whatever was said:

“Madame, this is not the time for play-acting. Would you be so kind as to admit that you have my necklace and to provide me with some assistance, or I shall be utterly bankrupt.”

According to Mme Campan, Marie-Antoinette discussed the matter with the Abbé Vermond and Baron Breteuil, both of them sworn enemies of the Cardinal. She also wrote to Joseph II suggesting that he and the King should decide between them what should be done. Mme Campan saw yet another little twist of fate in the fact that Vergennes, that superb diplomat who had saved the country from the danger of so many wars, was not then at Court. He, surely, would have been the person to find a compromise.

In what happened next we see the more passionate side of Marie-Antoinette. She had always hated Rohan, and now the man had made her an object of suspicion and offended her deepest womanly pride by the assumptions he had made. That she might have met him in secret! That she could have asked him for money! No, such things would have been intolerable even to a bourgeoise, and as for this proud daughter of the Habsburgs, the first lady of the age … No, nothing could be allowed to bring Marie-Antoinette into disrepute. Here she could not be calm and considered: of course she insisted on a punishment that would be exemplary, resounding and spectacular. And, for once, even Louis XVI was moved to anger. He too had been wounded in his most sensitive point: in his capacity as a husband, where his feelings of inferiority were at their strongest.

It is now 15th August, Assumption Day, and Versailles has gathered to celebrate.

For centuries the day has been used to commemorate the moment when Louis XIII placed his crown and the monarchy under the protection of the Virgin. A huge crowd has come from Paris, some on horseback, some by carriage, some in those communal coaches known because of their rounded shape as pots de chambre.

In the morning a council of ministers meets in the King’s Cabinet Room. Present are the royal couple, Baron Breteuil and the Keeper of the Seal (that is to say, Minister for Justice) Miromesnil. Breteuil reads out the jewellers’ memorandum. Miromesnil, his voice quavering with echoes of the fairy godmothers, advises restraint and caution — they should think of the Rohan family. But Breteuil insists on the need to make an example. Hot-blooded and violent by nature, he is the sort of man who sees something in everyone that requires to be disciplined and brought to heel. His moral indignation provides a fine cover for his long-standing resentment of Rohan: he too has been insulted by the man, in Vienna. But Louis XVI leans towards Miromesnil’s view. He tells Breteuil to call the Cardinal in.

Rohan is present in the Palace, along with the rest of the aristocracy. As Grand Almoner he is waiting to take the celebratory mass. Summoned, he enters in full priestly regalia, a scarlet silk cassock with white English-lace sleeves.

“Mon cousin,” the King begins. “So what is all this about a diamond necklace you bought for the Queen?”

Rohan turns pale.

“Sire, I know now that I was duped, but I have deceived no one.”

“If that is the case, mon cousin, then you have nothing to fear. Nonetheless you must explain what happened.”

The King’s voice is gentle enough, but what is the King to Rohan? There sits Marie-Antoinette — to him nothing less than the embodiment of pride, anger and loathing. His knees start to shake; he is on the verge of fainting. The King notices this, and tells him to make a full statement in writing. He is left to himself.

In such a state of mind he finds it difficult to find the right words. Nonetheless he puts a few lines together: there is nothing for it now but to point the finger at the one who really is guilty, Jeanne de la Motte. The royal couple and the Ministers return. They want to know where are the documents signed in the Queen’s name. And they repeat what Cagliostro said: how could a prominent member of the Court possibly think that the Queen would sign herself ‘Marie-Antoinette de France’? Only a flunkey would have believed that. Rohan replies that he will hand the letters over to the King and pay for the necklace. The King declares that, considering the circumstances, he will have to order his arrest and detention.

“I consider it necessary for the Queen’s good name,” he adds.

Rohan implores the King not to shame him before such a large number of people, and bring such disgrace on his family.

The King appears to be swayed by these words, but at this moment the Queen erupts. Her voice is loud and agitated, and as she is speaking she bursts into tears. She rounds on Rohan:

“How could you possibly imagine that I would write you a letter, when for nine years I haven’t been on speaking terms with you?”

Her words decide the matter.

Meanwhile, packed into the rooms outside, the magnificent courtiers are growing restless. The Mass should have begun long ago. People sense that something is in the air: there is an anxious murmuring — the crowd is breaking up into little groups — a sense of gathering storm. Finally Rohan emerges through the glass door, deathly pale. He is followed by Breteuil, whose face is flushed with pleasure at his great and unexpected revenge. In loud tones he calls out to the Captain of the Guard, the Duc de Villeroi:

“Arrest the Cardinal!”

Rohan now has to make his way along the endless succession of halls — to left and right, behind him and in front of him, the astonished French aristocracy, their individual features dissolving into one enormous face before his blurred eyes, the endless rows of mirrors seeming to spin as the sunlight crashes and roars down on him through the huge windows. And underfoot, grinding and crackling like shattered glass, the Ancien Régime itself.

The formal reception is due to be held further on, in the Hall of Mirrors, where a hundred years later the names of Teutonic Caesars will be loudly proclaimed and the sacred gloire of France humbled in the dust; there too, another fifty years on, will be signed the Treaty of Versailles, bringing peace with the Germans. Anyone can enter the Hall of Mirrors, and now it is crammed with people who have come at dawn for the celebrations. They look on in shocked amazement as the Duc de Villeroi hands the Cardinal — the illustrious prince of the Church, in his radiant ceremonial finery — over to Second Lieutenant of the Guard Jouffroy. In the long peaceful years of the previous two Louis such sights were seldom seen in Paris, Now even these superficial, garrulous and generally irreligious people are silenced by the nameless horror of it.

By some miracle Rohan has so far remained calm. In fact he is the only calm and controlled person in the whole vast multitude. In these moments of crisis and disaster, the resounding footsteps of his countless noble forebears are entering his soul, while those with no thousand-year legacy to speak of have lost their heads. Now, very calmly, he asks Jouffroy for permission to scribble a few words on a bit of paper which he rests on the scarlet rectangle of his Cardinal’s hat. He gives it to his attendant, says something to him in German, and the man rushes off. Then he is led away to a suite of apartments.

The following day he is taken to the Hôtel de Strasbourg where his papers are confiscated in his presence and the building closed off. But the red portfolio in which the “Queen’s letters” once lay amongst his private papers has vanished. The day before, the same attendant had galloped at breakneck speed back to Paris, to announce: “All is lost; they have arrested the Cardinal!”—before handing the slip of paper to the Abbé Georgel, and promptly collapsing. Georgel, however, did not collapse. He carried out the instruction he had received in the note and destroyed the correspondence.

On 17th August, chaperoned by Beugnot, Jeanne was a guest at Clairvaux, the famous convent named in memory of St Bernát. She was given a most gracious welcome by the Abbot, who knew that she was on particularly good terms with the Grand Almoner. They were just sitting down to dinner, having waited patiently for the Abbé Maury to arrive. (Maury was a famous pulpit orator who became Mirabeau’s great rival. It was after one of his sermon’s that Louis XVI remarked: “What a pity he didn’t say something about religion; then he really would have covered everything.”) Maury was due to give the special sermon in honour of St Bernát, but as he had not appeared, they sat down to eat without him.

At that moment he burst in, in great excitement.

“What? Haven’t you heard? Where have you been living? Prince Rohan, the Cardinal, has been arrested. Something to do with diamonds, apparently …”

Suddenly Jeanne felt unwell.

She went out, ordered her carriage to be made ready, and she and Beugnot left the abbey. By the time they were sitting in the coach she had regained her composure.

“This whole business is Cagliostro’s doing,” she told her astonished companion.

Then she lapsed into a deep silence. His advice that she fly to England before it was too late was met with scorn. She had already worked out her battle plan: how to shift the blame for the whole affair onto Cagliostro.

She was arrested at four the next morning. The amiable police made no objection when the Comte de la Motte, who had otherwise conducted himself very calmly, tore the glittering jewels off his wife and thoughtfully put them aside against better times.

Rivarol, that witty and whimsical commentator, wrote: “M de Breteuil plucked the Cardinal out of Mme de la Motte’s clutches and dashed him against the Queen’s brow, where he certainly left his mark.” It is a grotesque image, but an expressive one.