* * *

She paid a visit to the Cardinal.

‘I have news, Excellency, of Her Majesty.’

The Cardinal’s handsome eyes gleamed with excitement.

‘The Queen needs your help. She says that if you will help her in this matter she will know you are truly her friend. She wishes to buy a diamond necklace. The King will not buy it for her, so she must do it herself; and this means doing it secretly.’

‘I will do all in my power …’ murmured the Cardinal.

‘These are the Queen’s instructions. You are to visit the jeweller and tell him that you have the Queen’s order to purchase the necklace for her. The price is 1,600,000 livres, and the Queen finds it difficult to raise this large sum; so she wants you to arrange that it shall be paid in four parts … the first of these to be payable on August 1st. The necklace should be handed to you on February 1st. Would you agree to make this transaction for the Queen?’

‘There is nothing on earth I would not do for the Queen.’

‘Then if you will write out the agreement I will submit it to Her Majesty for her approval.’

The Cardinal sat down at once and drew up the document. Jeanne took this, and a few days later returned to the Cardinal.

‘Her Majesty is satisfied with this document and agrees to abide by the terms,’ she said. ‘She asks that you take it to the jeweller, who will give you the necklace. Then she wishes you to hand it to me that I may take it to her at once.’

The Cardinal hesitated.

‘You do not wish to undertake this transaction for the Queen?’ asked Jeanne quickly.

‘I wish to please Her Majesty in every way. But this is a very big undertaking. It involves a great deal of money. I feel that the jeweller will wish to see Her Majesty’s signature on the agreement.’

Jeanne could hardly suppress a sigh of relief. Her Majesty’s signature – what could be easier than that? She took the document home and Rétaux signed each clause: ‘Approved, Marie Antoinette de France.’

It was so simple that it was almost unbelievable that it could have worked out so easily.

Rohan took the document to the jeweller, and the next day the necklace was in Jeanne’s hands.


* * *

How they gloated over it – she, her husband and Rétaux. Their fortunes were made. The most magnificent diamonds in the world were in their hands. They immediately set about breaking up the necklace. They disposed of some of the diamonds in Paris but, as they were so startlingly magnificent, this caused a little questioning; Rétaux was able to tell the police that he had been charged to sell them by the lady whom he served. She was the Comtesse de Lamotte-Valois. The royal name allayed the suspicions of the police; but after that it was decided that it was too dangerous to sell the remainder of the jewels in Paris, so the Comte de Lamotte-Valois took them to London to dispose of them there.

Now the Comtesse began to live up to her royal name. She had a carriage and four English mares to draw it; she had her servants dressed in royal livery. On her berline she had engraved the royal arms of Valois, not forgetting the lilies of France and the inscription ‘From the King, my ancestor, I derive my blood, my name and the lilies.’

Meanwhile the Cardinal was restive.

There was no message from the Queen to say she had received the necklace and that she was delighted with it; she never wore it at any state ceremonies at which, as Grand Almoner, the Cardinal was present. It seemed strange that she who had been so eager to possess the necklace should never wear it. When he questioned her Jeanne’s answer was: ‘The Queen has told me that she will not wear the necklace until it is paid for. She hesitates to let the King know she has bought it, until she can say that she has made the last payment.’

This sounded reasonable, but the Cardinal was still impatient; it seemed to him that the Queen should show some sign of gratitude to a man who had arranged such an unusual transaction for her; yet at all functions she was as haughty as ever.

But even the carefree Jeanne could not hold back time, and the 1st of August was near. The jeweller would demand payment on that date and, since he had been told to put about the rumour that he had sold the necklace to the Sultan of Constantinople (Jeanne had told him the same story as she had told Rohan, of the Queen’s not wishing it to be known that she possessed the necklace until it was paid for) he might begin to grow suspicious if he were not paid, and go to the Queen.

‘We must hold out a little longer,’ said Jeanne to her accomplice. ‘I will tell them that the Queen thinks the price too high and demands a reduction of, say, 400,000 livres. They will not want to agree to that, and I shall then tell them that the Queen will return the necklace if they do not. That will involve a great deal of argument and put off the day of payment.’

Rétaux was worried. ‘But can you put off the day of payment indefinitely, and what if they refuse to make the reduction?’

‘They are bound to argue. Then if necessary I shall explain the whole thing to the Cardinal. He will find some means of paying the jewellers because he will not dare do otherwise.’

‘He will denounce us.’

‘Not he! He is too deeply involved. To denounce us would be to show the world what a fool he is to have been so duped. Don’t be afraid. We are safe enough.’

But Jeanne’s good luck was beginning to desert her. When she visited the Cardinal’s palace she saw Cagliostro in the distance; he did not seek her out; she fancied that he was smiling in a satisfied way, as though something he had desired had fallen straight into his lap.

She thought then: Did he plan the whole thing? Why? Is it because he likes to make us dance to his piping? Is he really a sort of god?

The jewellers, in desperate need of the money, immediately agreed to reduce the price of the necklace, so that there was no delay on account of the argument which Jeanne had hoped for.

She then went to the Cardinal and told him that the Queen could not raise the money, but wished him to arrange with the jewellers that there should be a double payment on the 1st October instead of the first being paid on the 1st August.

The Cardinal was alarmed. Jeanne began to see great cracks in her scheme. She had planned from move to move; and now she saw only one left to her.

She went to the jewellers.

‘Monsieur Boehmer,’ she said, ‘I am worried. I have reason to believe that the Queen’s signature on the contract may have been forged.’

Boehmer was pale with terror; he began to tremble.

‘What shall I do?’ wailed the jeweller. ‘What can I do?’

Jeanne said almost blithely: ‘You must go to the Cardinal. He will look into this matter, and if he finds there has been fraud … well, the Cardinal will never allow it to be said that he has been the victim of such a disgraceful fraud. Have no fear, Monsieur Boehmer. The Cardinal will pay you your money.’

Jeanne thought that she had slipped gracefully out of the difficulty. She had the château she had bought at Bar-sur-Aube; so she retired to the country.

There she would stay for a while; then perhaps she would join her husband in London where he was disposing of the diamonds.

But the jeweller did not go to the Cardinal. Instead he went to Madame de Campan and through her reached the Queen.

Jeanne was dining in state in her country home when a messenger arrived at her château.

‘Madame,’ he cried, ‘Monsieur le Cardinal de Rohan was arrested at Versailles this day.’

Jeanne was alarmed. It seemed to her that for the first time luck had gone against her.

She retired hastily to her bedroom where she burned all the letters which the Cardinal had sent to her regarding the transaction.

She felt better after that.

She went to bed and tried to compose herself; she was already making plans to join her husband in London. It would be safer to be out of the country for a spell.

At five o’clock in the morning there was a disturbance in the courtyard. She rose and threw a robe about herself. Her maid came hurrying to her.

‘They come from Paris,’ she stammered.

‘Who?’ demanded Jeanne.

But they were already on the staircase. They marched straight to her bedroom.

‘Jeanne de Lamotte,’ they cried, ‘you are under arrest.’

‘By whose orders, and on what charge?’

‘On the order of the King, and for being concerned in the theft of a diamond necklace.’

In the Queen’s theatre was played that delightful comedy, Le Barbier de Seville – the Queen playing Rosine enchantingly, looking exquisite, tripping daintily across the stage in a delightful gown made for the occasion by Madame Bertin at great cost. Vaudreuil played Almaviva with great verve; and Artois strutted across the stage, an amusing Figaro: ‘Ah, who knows if the world is going to last three weeks!’

The glittering audience applauded, but between the acts they were saying to one another: ‘What does this mean – this matter of the necklace? Is it true that the Cardinal was the Queen’s lover? There must be a trial, must there not? Then who knows what we shall hear!’

They were certain that what they heard would be of greater interest than the play they had come to Trianon to watch.

In Bellevue where, under Adelaide, those older disgruntled members of the nobility gathered, they talked of the latest scandal. ‘What this matter will reveal I would not like to prophesy,’ declared Adelaide, looking sternly at Victoire. (Sophie had died some years before.) Victoire knew what she was prophesying and that she would be greatly disappointed if it did not come to pass.

In the Luxembourg, Provence’s friends gathered about him. They confessed themselves astonished with this newest scandal, and they asked one another how the children of such a woman could possibly become good Kings of France. For one thing, how could it be certain that they had any right to be Kings of France?

In the cafés of the Palais Royal, men and women were thronging in greater numbers than ever before. A diamond necklace, they murmured. 1,600,000 livres spent on one ornament while many in France starved. Their hero, Duc d’Orléans (Chartres had assumed the title on the recent death of his father) went among them, his eyes gleaming with ambition. ‘This cannot go on,’ murmured the people. ‘It cannot go on,’ echoed Orléans. ‘And when it is stopped … what then?’

And throughout the Rohan family and its connections there were many hurried conferences. A member of their family was in danger. They must all rally to his side. Connected with the Rohans were the houses of Guémenée, Soubise, Condé and Conti, some of whom declared they had already been slighted by the Queen.

They would all stand together; and they determined that all blame should be shifted from the shoulders of their relative. And the best way of doing this was to place it on those of a more eminent person.

So, as the affair of the necklace became the topic of the times, the Queen’s enemies began to mass on all sides.


* * *

Antoinette lay on her bed. She was pregnant and in two months’ time was expecting the birth of a child. She had had the curtains drawn about her bed because she wanted to shut out reminders of that tension which she sensed all about her.

Everyone in the Palace, everyone in Versailles and Paris was eagerly awaiting the verdict in the necklace trial.

She had heard that all day the people had been crowding into Paris, that every important member of the Rohan family and its connexions had come to the Capital. They paraded the streets of the city dressed in deep mourning, all their servants similarly clad; they were clad in mourning on account of their innocent relative. It was preposterous, they implied, that a noble Prince, a Rohan, should be made a prisoner merely because he had been selected as a shield behind which the lascivious, acquisitive and wicked Austrian woman might cower.

‘Why must they go on and on about this matter?’ Antoinette had asked Louis wearily. ‘The necklace is stolen, the stones have been broken up and sold. That should be an end to the matter. Why not let it rest?’

‘Your honour is at stake,’ said the King sadly. ‘We must defend it.’

‘Do they think that I stole the necklace?’

‘They will think anything until we convince them to the contrary.’