The Queen's Necklace (17 page)

But in 1783 he was back.

Did Rohan know of the love that the Queen felt for the Nordic Count? Perhaps not. Fersen was not French. He did not brag about his conquest, and, as a wealthy, independent foreigner, he wanted nothing from her. He was seldom at Court. Probably they met in secret in Le Petit Trianon, or the rustic village. But if Rohan did know about it, it was all the more French of him not to have understood it. He would not have been capable of grasping that, given the nature of their relationship, he could not possibly draw hope from it that the Queen, having given her love to one man, would then bestow it on another; but that, on the contrary, such a love would be truly moral—and the full force of the marriage vow, as well as the Queen’s sense of honour, would set a wide gulf between her and any man who was not Axel Fersen.

So far we have spoken of an ‘external morality’; there is also the ‘inner’ morality that Rohan would have been able to understand, and which may well have supported him in his belief.

Appearances certainly suggest that Marie-Antoinette shared the frivolous tastes of her age, including its love of refined and not-so-refined scandal. The eighteenth century had discovered Pompeii and made much use of the motifs of Pompeian art. This was not a chance thing—since the time of Pompeii there had been no period in European culture in which the erotic played such a central role as in the rococo. The novels, plays and paintings of the period are often, by our notions, quite shocking, especially the plays, such as those by Charles Collé, which were performed in the private theatres of the aristocratic houses for the delectation of the noble ladies. It is even possible that Marie-Antoinette acted in these herself. Certainly the conversation in her little circle would not have differed from that in the other salons. People quickly realised that they could say whatever they liked in front of the Queen, and that it delighted her when they did. And perhaps it was no secret to Rohan how much she loved reading dubious literature. In her boudoir were the beautifully bound adventures of
Les amours du Chevalier Faublas
and other such works, which in the prudish centuries that followed could not even be mentioned And perhaps he also knew that the beautifully-bound prayer book she was so busy reading at Mass contained nothing more than a titillating novel.

Above all, people in the eighteenth century thought it rather odd, even vulgar, for married people actually to love each other. Married love had not yet become associated with bourgeois values but with the lower orders. Should it occur in ‘good’ society, it would be something to hide. Husbands connived at their wives’ affairs. In aristocratic circles, according to Mornet, these ‘open marriages’ were the necessary compromise between arrangements forced on young women and the need to attend to the ‘words of the heart’.

There is a well-known story of the Count who opened the door to his wife’s room and discovered her in a surprising situation, with a man.

“For God’s sake, Madam!” he cried. “How could you be so thoughtless, as to leave your door unlocked! … Imagine if anyone other than myself came in!”

Chamfort’s anecdotes show a constant preoccupation with the extent to which jealousy had fallen out of fashion. Someone says to a jealous husband:

“You are jealous? You are very conceited, sir.
N’est pas cocu qui veut
—it is not enough to want to be cuckolded—you have to know how to do it. You need to understand the running of a great house, and be very polite and kind. Who would want to cuckold the sort of person you are at the moment?”

“What a pity that people nowadays have so little respect for cuckolded husbands,” says another of his examples. “It used to be an honourable title, now it’s just a game—it means nothing.”

“One day,” Chamfort adds, “Monsieur de Nesle, whose wife was the mistress of the Duc de Soubise, said to her in his presence:

“‘Madame, I hear that you’ve been having an affair with your wig-maker. That sort of thing is extremely bad form.’

“And with the air of a man who has done the right thing, he left the room and Soubise slapped her face.”

Another husband said to his wife:

“Madame, I realise that this man has his claims on you, and I have no wish to stop whatever it is that he does with you when I am not here, but I cannot tolerate his demeaning you in my presence. It’s an insult to me.”

Another man knew that his wife was having affairs left, right and centre, and for that reason exercised his conjugal rights from time to time. One day the lady repelled him with some violence:

“I can’t, now. I love Monsieur X.”

“What’s this? I thought you loved Messieurs Y and Z?”

“That was just a phase. This is true passion.”

“Ah, that’s different,” the husband said, and turned away.

Marmontel, one of the most popular writers of the time, in one of his novellas—
Heartwarming Legends
—makes the following remark:

“Freedom is the soul of love. Without freedom the object of one’s choice is no better than a husband.” (That is to say, nothing.)

Marmontel also writes:

“You should realise, my friend, that when women transfer their affections elsewhere, they do so out of delicacy and the desire for novelty.”

Was the young Queen, the most fashionable woman in France, really any different from the rest of her kind? And would she at some point transfer her affections “out of delicacy and the desire for novelty” to Prince Louis de Rohan?
Qui vivra, verra
—What will be will be—he told himself.

T
HE AUTHOR
, dear reader, experiences an onset of emotion as he comes to the most important moment in our tale. He has done his best to put it off, talking about other things at great length and hoping all the while that some miracle will turn up, that someone else will write it for him. The writer dislikes responsibility, and finds himself on the point of collapse as the great scene approaches. But he can prevaricate no longer. Taking a deep breath, he will try to get it over with as quickly as possible.

A frequent visitor to Jeanne’s house, a Monsieur Laporte, happened to know that Boehmer still had the wonderful bauble that no one wanted to buy. One day he remarked casually to Jeanne:

“If you really are on such good terms with the Queen, you should tell her to buy that necklace.”

“Have you seen it?” she replied.

“I have. It’s a real miracle. The stones alone are worth a fortune, not to mention the work that went into it.”

Negotiations began. Monsieur Achet, Laporte’s father-in-law and the Public Prosecutor, called on Boehmer and Bassenge to reveal the prospect that lay before them. The jewellers replied that they would gladly give one thousand louis to anyone who could get rid of it for them. Laporte was up to his ears in debt.

On 29th December 1784 Achet and Bassenge took the jewel to Jeanne’s house at St Gilles in the Rue Neuve. The box was opened. There, before her eyes, glittering with the lights of a thousand diamonds, lay the long-awaited miracle—the Valois miracle. There lay the accursed treasure of the Nibelungs,
finally raised from the depths into the light of day, and now radiating its sinister charm. For a moment she felt quite faint: this was the moment which she had lived for, and relived: the moment that meant that her birth had not been in vain. The inspiration that had so long heaved incoherently inside her soul had found a form. The great plan was born: it brought together two great
idées fixes
, those of Boehmer and the Cardinal, and in so doing fulfilled a third—her own.

The Cardinal, following her instructions, remained at Saverne. But in January he returned to Paris. Baron Planta had brought him a letter from the Queen. “Come quickly,” it read. “I wish to entrust you with a secret commission, one that concerns me personally. The Comtesse de la Motte will explain this riddle to you.”

At the end of January Jeanne met with the jewellers again, and told them there was a chance they might sell the necklace in the next few days. The purchaser would be a certain nobleman; they would have to be on their guard, because the aristocracy were poor payers. She mentioned no name. The jewellers, intimidated by her high social rank, said they would be presenting her with a rather special gift; they dared not offer her money.

“Thank you, but I shall not accept it,” the Valois blood replied. “I’m only doing this to help you.”

It was, after all, the age of charitable giving.

On 24th January Jeanne and her husband rose early, and by seven in the morning were at Boehmer’s premises in the Rue Vendôme.

“Today will you receive a visit from Cardinal Rohan. He is your buyer. You must not mention me by name.”

Soon afterwards Rohan arrived in the shop. He saw the jewel, and did not like it. His refined rococo taste found it gross, barbaric, dated. For a moment he was filled with disappointment.

“But will the Queen like it?” he wondered. “I don’t understand this. I thought she liked dainty, airy,
joli
little things. But perhaps not. After all, she isn’t French.”

Still, the Queen’s wish was his command.

The groundwork leading up to this had been as follows: Jeanne, using her tried and trusted method, had told Rohan that the Queen wanted to buy the jewel but was temporarily short of cash. So she wanted to have it on credit, against a bill of exchange, to be paid off by instalments and in secret, without the King knowing. That was why she needed Rohan. She asked that he should not act officially on her behalf but rather pose as the buyer himself. Rohan would be in good standing with the jewellers because of his wealth and good name; she, in turn, would then send him the money. She would explain what she wanted through Jeanne, and by letter if he so wished.

To us the most astonishing thing in all this is that Rohan believed this story. Even considering his habitual naivety, it is surprising. He obviously did not take the Queen’s unwillingness to be directly involved in the purchase too seriously, since he actually told the jewellers that he was buying it on her behalf. And when the jewellers questioned his ability to pay, since he was offering her name as security, he showed them the Queen’s well-known signature on the letter of agreement. (We shall return to this signature later.) But if there was no reason to conceal her name, then why did she need him in the first place? Perhaps as a guarantor? But that made no sense either. Even he must have seen that, as a third party to the transaction, the Queen would always command far greater credit than he could.

Perhaps he thought that her talk of a ‘loan’ was simply a matter of courtesy, when really she wanted the jewel as a present from him. But there can be no doubt that Rohan did not feel quite so gallant as to propose buying the jewel himself. He was depending on her to pay for it. That was the one thing he did show any concern about. He had only let himself become involved once she committed herself to payment in writing.

So, however you look at it, his role in the whole business was quite superfluous. If the Queen wanted to purchase the jewellery in secret she did not need him as security, either for
his name or his wealth. He was perfectly clear about that. Then why did he think the Queen had turned to him?

Because he was Rohan. We should think back to all that was said about his credulity in Chapter Three, the relevance of which now becomes clear.

And then again, Rohan was not a man of business. In our more financially aware times it is impossible to imagine just how unbusinesslike he was. He must have been thinking something along these lines: “I really don’t understand why she needs me to buy this necklace. But then I generally don’t understand what happens with money because I have never been without it, as my income is so vast, and I just have to accept that this is precisely the sort of money matter I don’t understand, and which it is below a person of my rank to understand.”

On 29th January the jewellers called on Rohan at the Hôtel de Strasbourg. They agreed terms: Rohan, acting for the Queen, would pay the 600,000 livres in four half-yearly instalments, the first becoming due on 1st August 1785. Delivery was stipulated for 1st February, as the Queen wanted to have the item by Candlemas.

Rohan put these conditions in writing himself, and passed them on to Jeanne so that she could inform the Queen. Jeanne returned his submission with the reply that the Queen fully understood the terms, sent her gracious thanks, but did not wish to sign her name. At this point, Rohan dug his heels in. It is really rather strange: he was prepared to believe everything in the world, but he absolutely insisted on the Queen’s signature. This would be, gentle reader, like having someone send to you, quite out of the blue, to say that the Prime Minister, whom you have never met, has asked you to lend him your winter coat. To which you reply, “But of course, most willingly, only I must have his signature.”

Rohan clearly did not do this because he had immediately become suspicious. Not for a moment did he have the slightest doubt that he really was buying the necklace for the Queen.
But it suddenly occurred to him that this was a business matter, so he should act in a businesslike way. He wanted to show that he really was a good businessman, who understood how things were done according to the traditional forms, which must surely be as important in business life as they were in the life of the Court. A document needed a signature—that was the form.

Jeanne was somewhat taken aback. She had provided the fraudulent letters with an easy mind since he was so blinded, but this agreement would pass through the hands of serious men of commerce … But in the end she made the decision that had been forced upon her. She went back to him with the document. Beside every paragraph the Queen had written the word ‘
approuvé
’—agreed—and, at the end, the name: ‘Marie-Antoinette
de France
’.

“Don’t show this to anyone,” she told the Cardinal.

Then, at the very last moment, something happened which should have saved Rohan, which might have saved Marie-Antoinette, and indeed the French monarchy: Cagliostro returned from Lyons. If he had merely said “take care”, the scales might have fallen from the Cardinal’s eyes.

On this point, the Abbé Georgel tells us that the night before the jewel arrived there was a great throng in the Cardinal’s palace, at which a host of heavenly beings appeared, and advised Rohan that the business he had become involved in would bring him great success, and that he would at last win the Queen’s favour, to his own great glory and the inexpressible good of France and all mankind. But the Cardinal—some instinct must have whispered to him that something wasn’t quite right—did not enlighten Cagliostro as to what the great business was about, and Cagliostro was unable to warn him.

The next morning Rohan wrote to the jewellers asking for immediate delivery of the necklace. The two men arrived soon afterwards. Rohan took the occasion to remind them that it was the Queen who had purchased the jewel, and he showed them her signature.

Not long afterwards Jeanne also appeared.

“So, what is the problem with the necklace?” she demanded. “The Queen has been waiting for it.”

Rohan reassured her—it was there. And at this very last moment, a healthy misgiving crossed his mind. True, it was only a very tiny morsel of misgiving compared to the huge absurdity of the whole. How much, he asked, would the first part-payment be, including interest? Jeanne replied rather grandly that the Queen would take care of that. They agreed that the Cardinal would take the jewel to Versailles that evening.

That evening, the Cardinal’s carriage stopped in the Place Dauphine in Versailles, where Jeanne lodged. She was alone. He was received in an ill-lit room with an alcove leading off. In his hands lay the treasure.

Footsteps were heard.

“
De par la Reine!
—In the name of the Queen!” someone cried out in the next room. The Cardinal discreetly withdrew into the alcove. A tall, pale man in black entered. Rohan had seen him somewhere before. Where could that have been? Ah, yes, it was the man he had seen in the Bower of Venus, the one who hissed the warning that Madame and the Comtesse d’Artois were approaching. The man gave Jeanne a sheet of paper. She dismissed him, and showed Rohan the letter. The Queen had written to say he should hand over the necklace to the bearer.

We do not know whether Rohan now had a moment’s hesitation as he let the cursed Nibelung treasure out of his hand. But he let it go, and it set out on its fateful journey. The pale man in black (Réteaux de Villette) and the jewel disappeared into the night. Shortly afterwards, the Cardinal returned home.

That was how it happened.

A few days later he received a letter edged with blue. Its illustrious writer requested him to take himself off to Saverne and, in the interests of the business just transacted, not to show his face for
while. With his usual passivity he obeyed this instruction too. We find him reposing “deep inside” his wonderful mansion, “dozing on down cushions, far inwards,” in Carlyle’s words, “with soft ministering Hebes, and luxurious appliances, with ranked heyducs, and a
valetaille
innumerable, that shut out the prose world and its discord; thus lies Monseigneur, in enchanted dream.” Let us leave him to dream; he still has a little time left for that.

The La Mottes spent rather less time dreaming. They had to solve the difficult question: how could you secretly realise an asset of which there was only one example in the world—an item of jewellery as conspicuous as the sun?

The wisest course would of course have been to hide it in some safe place, and, after a long, long wait, when the storm had blown over, start turning it into cash, very circumspectly, in some completely different part of the world.

But that was not what Jeanne did. She couldn’t, because she needed money urgently and she did not have a long, long time. Creditors were pressing her, as, with equal urgency, was the life of greatness, the Valois destiny. Besides, just two days earlier she had not given it a moment’s thought—so much is clear from the whole story. If you spent time thinking about the future, you wouldn’t be a true adventurer. An adventure is something that happens from one moment to the next; in which there is no yesterday and no tomorrow. Everything else is just petty bourgeois.

So she did the next best thing—she broke the necklace up into its constituent parts to sell individually. Naturally, this reduced their value. The diamonds were separated by a nervous, unskilled hand and suffered extensive scratching; the mounting was lost, and so was the value of the craftsmanship; all that remained was the raw value of the stones.

Then she eagerly set about selling them.

A few days later Réteaux de Villette was reported by a jeweller whose suspicions were aroused by his having a pocket full of
diamonds. Réteaux declared that the stones did not belong to him but had been entrusted to him by a lady of noble birth, and he actually named Jeanne de la Motte. Thus the great project almost foundered at the outset.

However, because of the nature of her profession, Jeanne had been subject to police surveillance for some time. That now proved her good fortune. Thinking she had the diamonds merely in her protection, the police disregarded the report and took no further interest in the matter.

But it taught Jeanne that she would have to be a lot more careful. She gave a large number of the stones to her husband to take to England for sale there. A second lot she kept herself, and a third was entrusted to Réteaux.