The Diamond Necklace
Paris, that city of sensations, was shaken to its centre by tidings of a
new and startling event. The Cardinal de Rohan, grand almoner of France,
at mass-time, and when dressed in his pontifical robes, had been
suddenly arrested in the palace of Versailles and taken to the Bastille.
Why? No one knew; though many had their opinions and beliefs. Rumors of
some mysterious and disgraceful secret beneath this arrest, a mystery in
had got afloat, and were whispered from end to end of the city, in which
"the Austrian," as the queen was contemptuously designated, was by no
means a favorite.
The truth gradually came out,--the story of a disgraceful and
extraordinary intrigue, of which the prince cardinal was a victim rather
than an accessory, and of which the queen was utterly ignorant, though
the odium of the transaction clung to her until her death. When, eight
years afterwards, she was borne through a raging mob to the guillotine,
insulting references to this affair of the diamond necklace were among
the terms of opprobrium heaped upon her by the dregs of the Parisian
populace.
What was this disgraceful business? It is partly revealed in the graphic
account of an interview with the king which preceded the arrest of the
prince cardinal. On the 15th of August, 1785, Louis XVI. sent for M. de
Rohan to his cabinet. He entered smilingly, not dreaming of the
thunderbolt that was about to burst upon his head. He found there the
king and queen, the former with indignant countenance, the latter grave
and severe in expression.
"Cardinal," broke out the king, in an abrupt tone, "you bought some
diamonds of Boehmer?"
"Yes, sir," rejoined the cardinal, disturbed by the stern severity of
the king's looks and tone.
"What have you done with them?"
"I thought they had been sent to the queen."
"Who gave you the commission to buy them?"
"A lady, the Countess de La Motte Valois," answered the cardinal,
growing more uneasy. "She gave me a letter from the queen; I thought I
was obliging her Majesty."
The queen sharply interrupted him. She was no friend of the cardinal; he
had maligned her years before, when her husband was but dauphin of
France. Now was the opportunity to repay him for those malevolent
letters.
"How, sir," she broke out severely; "how could you think--you to whom I
have never spoken for eight years--that I should choose you for
conducting such a negotiation, and by the medium of such a woman?"
"I was mistaken, I perceive," said the cardinal, humbly. "The desire I
felt to please your Majesty misled me. Here is the letter which I was
told was from you."
He drew a letter from his pocket and handed it to the king. Louis took
it, and cast his eyes over the signature. He looked up indignantly.
"How could a prince of your house and my grand almoner suppose that the
queen would sign, 'Marie Antoinette of France?'" he sternly demanded.
"Queens do not sign their names at such length. It is not even the
queen's writing. And what is the meaning of all these doings with
jewellers, and these notes shown to bankers?"
By this time the cardinal was so agitated that he was obliged to rest
himself against the table for support.
"Sir," he said, in a broken voice, "I am too much overcome to be able to
reply. What you say overwhelms me with surprise."
"Walk into the room, cardinal," said the king, with more kindness of
tone. "You may write your explanation of these occurrences."
The cardinal attempted to do so, but his written statement failed to
make clear the mystery. In the end an officer of the king's body-guard
was called in, and an order given him to convey Cardinal de Rohan to the
Bastille. He had barely time to give secret directions to his grand
vicar to burn all his papers, before he was carried off to that
frightful fortress, the scene of so much injustice, haunted by so many
woes.
The papers of De Rohan probably needed purging by fire, for the order to
burn them indicates that they contained evidence derogatory to his
position as a dignitary of the church. The prince cardinal was a vain
and profligate man, full of vicious inclinations, and credulous to a
degree that had made him the victim of the unscrupulous schemer, Madame
de La Motte Valois, a woman as adroit and unscrupulous as she was
daring. Of low birth, brought up by charity, married to a ruined
nobleman, she had ended her career by duping and ruining Cardinal de
Rohan, a man whose character exposed him to the machinations of an
adventuress so skilful, bold, and alluring as La Motte Valois.
So much for preliminary. Let us take up the story at its beginning. The
diamond necklace was an exceedingly handsome and highly valuable piece
of jewelry, containing about five hundred diamonds, and held at a price
equal to about four hundred thousand dollars of modern money. It had
been made by Boehmer, a jeweller of Paris, about the year 1774, and was
intended for Madame Dubarry, the favorite of Louis XV. But before the
necklace was finished Louis had died, and a new king had come to the
throne. With Louis XVI. virtue entered that profligate court, and Madame
Dubarry was excluded from its precincts. As for the necklace, it
remained without a purchaser. It was too costly for a subject, and was
not craved by the queen. The jeweller had not failed to offer it to
Marie Antoinette, but found her disinclined to buy. The American
Revolution was going on, France was involved in the war, and money was
needed for other purposes than diamond necklaces.
"That is the price of two frigates," said the king, on hearing of the
estimated value of the famous trinket.
"We want ships, and not diamonds," said the queen, and ended the
audience with the jeweller.
A few months afterwards, M. Boehmer openly declared that he had found a
purchaser for the necklace. It had gone to Constantinople, he said, for
the adornment of the favorite sultana.
"This was a real pleasure to the queen," says Madame Campan. "She,
however, expressed some astonishment that a necklace made for the
adornment of French women should be worn in the seraglio, and,
thereupon, she talked to me a long time about the total change which
took place in the tastes and desires of women in the period between
twenty and thirty years of age. She told me that when she was ten years
younger she loved diamonds madly, but that she had no longer any taste
for anything but private society, the country, the work and the
attentions required by the education of her children. From that moment
until the fatal crisis there was nothing more said about the necklace."
The necklace had not been sold. It remained in the jeweller's hands
until nearly ten years had passed. Then the vicious De La Motte laid an
adroit plan for getting it into her possession, through the aid of the
Cardinal de Rohan, who had come to admire her. She was a hanger-on of
the court, and began her work by persuading the cardinal that the queen
regarded him with favor. The credulous dupe was completely infatuated
with the idea. One night, in August, 1784, he was given a brief
interview in the groves around Versailles with a woman whom he supposed
to be the queen, but who was really a girl resembling her, and taught by
La Motte to play this part.
Filled with the idea that the queen loved him, the duped cardinal was
ready for any folly. De La Motte played her next card by persuading him
that the queen had a secret desire to possess this wonderful necklace,
but had not the necessary money at that time. She would, however, sign
an agreement to purchase it if the cardinal would become her security.
De Rohan eagerly assented. This secret understanding seemed but another
proof of the queen's predilection for him. An agreement was produced,
signed with the queen's name, to which the cardinal added his own, and
on February 1, 1785, the jeweller surrendered the necklace to De Rohan,
receiving this agreement as his security. The cardinal carried the
costly prize to Versailles, where he was told the queen would send for
it. It was given by him to La Motte, who was commissioned to deliver it
to her royal patroness. In a few days afterwards this lady's husband
disappeared from Paris, and the diamond necklace with him.
The whole affair had been a trick. All the messages from the queen had
been false ones, the written documents being prepared by a seeming
valet, who was skilful in the imitation of handwriting. Throughout the
whole business the cardinal had been readily deceived, infatuation
closing his eyes to truth.
Such was the first act in the drama. The second opened when the jeweller
began to press for payment. M. de La Motte sold some of the diamonds in
England, and transmitted the money to his wife, who is said to have
quieted the jeweller for a time by paying him some instalments on the
price. But he quickly grew impatient and suspicious that all was not
right, and went to court, where he earnestly inquired if the necklace
had been delivered to the queen. For a time she could not understand
what he meant. The diamond necklace? What diamond necklace? What did
this mean? The Cardinal de Rohan her security for payment!--it was all
false, all base, some dark intrigue behind it all.
Burning with indignation, she sent for Abbe de Vermond and Baron de
Breteuil, the minister of the king's household, and told them of the
affair. It was a shameful business, they said. They hated the cardinal,
and did not spare him. The queen, growing momentarily more angry, at
length decided to reveal the whole transaction to the king, and roused
in his mind an indignation equal to her own. The result we have already
seen. De Rohan and La Motte were consigned to the Bastille. M. de La
Motte was in England, and thus out of reach of justice. Another
celebrated individual who was concerned in the affair, and had aided in
duping the cardinal, the famous, or infamous, Count Cagliostro, was
also consigned to the Bastille for his share in the dark and deep
intrigue.
The trial came on, as the closing act in this mysterious drama, in which
all Paris had now become intensely interested. The cardinal had
renounced all the privileges of his rank and condition, and accepted the
jurisdiction of Parliament,--perhaps counting on the open enmity between
that body and the court.
The trial revealed a disgraceful business, in which a high dignitary of
the church had permitted himself to be completely gulled by a shameless
woman and the equally shameless Cagliostro, and into which not only the
name but even the virtue of the queen had been dragged. Public opinion
became intense. The hostility to the queen which had long smouldered now
openly declared itself. "It was for her and by her orders that the
necklace was bought," said the respectable Parisians. Those who were not
respectable said much worse things. The queen was being made a victim of
these shameless and criminal adventurers.
The trial went on, political feeling being openly displayed in it. The
great houses of Conde and Rohan took sides with the cardinal. Their
representatives might be seen, dressed in mourning, interviewing the
magistrates on their way to the tribunal, pleading with them on behalf
of their relative. The magistrates needed little persuasion. The
Parliament of Paris had long been at sword's point with the crown; now
was its time for revenge; political prejudice blinded the members to
the pure questions of law and justice; the cardinal was acquitted.
Cagliostro was similarly acquitted. He had conducted his own case, and
with a skill that deceived the magistrates and the public alike. Madame
de La Motte alone was convicted. She was sentenced to be whipped,
branded on each shoulder with the letter V (for voleuse, "thief"), and
to be imprisoned for life. Her husband, who was in England, was
sentenced in his absence to the galleys for life. A minor participant in
this business, the girl who had personated the queen, escaped
unpunished.
So ended this disgraceful affair. The queen was greatly cast down by the
result. "Condole with me," she said, in a broken voice, to Madame
Campan; "the intriguer who wanted to ruin me, or procure money by using
my name and forging my signature, has just been fully acquitted." But it
was due, she declared, to bribery on the part of some and to political
passion on that of others, with an audacity towards authority which such
people loved to display. The king entered as she was speaking.
"You find the queen in great affliction," he said to Madame Campan; "she
has much reason to be. But what then? They would not see in this
business anything save a prince of the Church and the Prince of Rohan,
whereas it is only the case of a man in want of money, and a mere trick
for raising cash, wherein the cardinal has been swindled in his turn.
Nothing is easier to understand, and it needs no Alexander to cut this
Gordian knot."
Cardinal Rohan was exiled to his abbey of Chaise-Dieu, guilty in the
king's opinion, a dupe in the judgment of history, evidently a credulous
profligate who had mistaken his vocation. The queen was the true victim
of the whole affair. It doubled the hostility of the people to her, and
had its share in that final sentence which brought her head to the
block.
More
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