be visiting it upon me. When next
you see him, pray convince him how little I care for diamonds."

And there the matter was dismissed.

Days passed, and then a week before the instalment of 350,000 livres
was due, the Cardinal received a visit from Madame de la Motte on the
Queen's behalf.

"Her Majesty," madame announced, "seems embarrassed about the
instalment. She does not wish to trouble you by writing about it. But
I have thought of a way by which you could render yourself agreeable to
her and, at the same time, set her mind at rest. Could you not raise a
loan for the amount?"

Had not the Cardinal himself dictated to Bohmer a letter which Bohmer
himself had delivered to the Queen, he must inevitably have suspected by
now that all was not as it should be. But, satisfied as he was by that
circumstance, he addressed himself to the matter which Madame de la
Motte proposed. But, although Rohan was extraordinarily wealthy, he had
ever been correspondingly lavish.

Moreover, to complicate matters, there had been the bankruptcy of his
nephew, the Prince de Guimenee, whose debts had amounted to some three
million livres. Characteristically, and for the sake of the family
honour, Rohan had taken the whole of this burden upon his own shoulders.
Hence his resources were in a crippled condition, and it was beyond his
power to advance so considerable a sum at such short notice. Nor did he
succeed in obtaining a loan within the little time at his disposal.

His anxieties on this score were increased by a letter from the Queen
which Madame de la Motte brought him on July 30th, in which Her Majesty
wrote that the first instalment could not be paid until October 1st; but
that on that date a payment of seven hundred thousand livres--half of
the revised price--would unfailingly be made. Together with this letter,
Madame de la Motte handed him thirty thousand livres, interest on the
instalment due, with which to pacify the jewellers.

But the jewellers were not so easily to be pacified. Bohmer, at the
end of his patience, definitely refused to grant the postponement or
to receive the thirty thousand livres other than as on account of the
instalment due.

The Cardinal departed in vexation. Something must be done at once,
or his secret relations with the Queen would be disclosed, thus
precipitating a catastrophe and a scandal. He summoned Madame de la
Motte, flung her into a panic with his news and sent her away to see
what sh