enturess, Jeanne de Saint-Remy de Valois, Comtesse de la Motte. The
latter was aware that the crown-jewelers, MM. Boehmer and Bassenge, had
offered the queen a necklace of diamonds for the price of one million
six hundred thousand livres, but that she had declined it, saying that
the money would be better applied in the purchase of a vessel of war.
Madame de la Motte proceeded to open fictitious negotiations with the
jewelers in the name of the queen, pretending that the latter had
changed her mind but did not wish the affair to become public, that the
purchase would be made by instalments and through the hands of a great
seigneur of the court. This was the Cardinal Rohan, upon whom she
imposed, by means of forged letters from the queen, skilfully prepared
by her secretary, one Sieur Retaux de Villette. She even arranged a
brief nocturnal interview in the gardens of Versailles for him, as
related in the last chapter, with a demoiselle from the Palais-Royal
disguised as Marie-Antoinette. A few days later, the cardinal remitted
to the comtesse the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand livres on a
pretended letter; but when she proposed to him, later, to purchase the
necklace himself on the strength of the queen's promise to indemnify
him, he had so many doubts that he went to consult the adventurer
Cagliostro, then in great favor in Paris. The magician pronounced
favorably upon the enterprise; in January, 1785, the cardinal received
the jewels from the merchants in return for a paper signed and sealed by
him but bearing on the margin the words: "_Approuve_, MARIE-ANTOINETTE
_de France_" in which it was agreed that they were to be paid for in
four instalments of four hundred thousand livres each, the first payment
to be made on the 1st of August following. The queens of France were
never in the habit of adding anything to the signature of their
Christian names. On the first of February the cardinal delivered the
necklace in a casket, in the apartments of Madame de la Motte at
Versailles, to an assumed valet in the royal livery, whom he thought he
recognized, but who was no other than the crafty Retaux de Villette. The
stones were immediately separated, the comtesse kept the small ones for
herself and sold the larger ones in England. Naturally, the affair came
to light a few months later, and on the 15th of August the cardinal was
lodged in the Bastille.

Great was the excitement; the Papacy even interfered to prevent the
t