XLIV. 1786–1866. THE CROWN JEWELLERS.—THE END OF THE NECKLACE CASE.—HISTORY AGAIN REPEATS ITSELF.

To render our narrative complete, it is necessary we should inform the reader how it fared with the crown jewellers—Böhmer and Bassenge, “Au Grand Balcon,” Rue Vendôme—and what was the final upshot of the famous Necklace case. In the first place the jewellers never received a single sou of the rich revenues of the abbey of Saint Waast—computed to produce 300,000 livres a year, and really yielding 225,000 livres, which had been assigned to them. Among their many creditors was M. Nicolas Deville, the king’s secretary, to whom they owed 900,602 livres, and to whom they re-assigned the aforesaid revenues for the liquidation of their debt; but unfortunately the Revolution came, and with it the sale of the property of the church for the benefit of the nation, so M. Nicolas Deville in his turn did not receive a sou. Meanwhile, Böhmer and Bassenge became bankrupt. The Cardinal de Rohan at his death left behind him a will by which he appointed the Princess Charlotte de Rohan-Rochefort his residuary legatee, and she accepted administration of the estate on condition that she should not be held responsible to the creditors for any deficiency that might exist.

At the time of the cardinal’s decease he possessed considerable landed property in Baden, and personal property to a large amount, consisting in part of money lent to his relatives, the Prince and Princess de Guéménée, and the Duke de Montbazon, which the princess neglected to recover, and which was consequently lost. The princess sold the lands in Baden, and divided the proceeds among a few favoured creditors, but Deville obtained little or nothing. After the Restoration—when all the property remaining unsold was returned to its former owners or their heirs, and an indemnity was granted for what had been sold—the princess, it is said, neglected the interests of the creditors by omitting to recover the sums due to the cardinal’s estate, and especially those owing by the Guéménée family.

For this evident neglect of her duty as executrix, it was maintained that the princess was responsible in the persons of her heirs, notwithstanding the conditions under which she had undertaken to administer the cardinal’s will. In accordance with this view, so recently as the year 1864 an action was brought before the Civil Tribunal of the Seine by the heirs of M. Deville against the Princes de Rohan-Rochefort, as representatives of the Princess Charlotte de Rohan-Rochefort, to recover the principal sum for which the assignment of the Saint Waast revenues had been given, together with cumulative interest, amounting in the whole to upwards of 2,000,000 francs; but it was argued for the defence that the cardinal’s estate had been properly administered by the princess, that the plaintiffs had received the same share as the other creditors, and that they had no legal claim on the defendants. The tribunal took this view of the case, and accordingly rejected the plaintiff’s demand with costs. Such was the end, after the lapse of nearly four score years, of perhaps the most famous cause célèbre of all time, known in the annals of French jurisprudence as the Affaire du Collier.

Just as the Countess de la Motte was, to some extent, the imitator of certain female swindlers of her own era, so has she found imitators in this our own time. Almost at the moment we are writing⁠[465] Paris is talking about an act of swindling which bears a certain resemblance to the Diamond Necklace fraud. It seems that, in the month of February, 1866, a jeweller in Paris, M. Cramer, received a letter sealed with the Prussian arms, and signed “Comte de Schaffgotsch,” chamberlain of her majesty the Queen of Prussia, in which he was asked if he was willing to undertake the execution of some models, in brilliants, of a new order which the Queen of Prussia intended to create. The jeweller immediately accepted the commission, and several days afterwards there arrived some drawings understood to have been executed by the queen herself. The jeweller set to work forthwith, and in the course of a few weeks he transmitted to Berlin a magnificent cross surrounded with diamonds. In reply, he received a letter of congratulation accompanied by an order for a dozen more diamond crosses, with a further promise of an order for the crown of the Prince of Hohenzollern as sovereign of the Danubian Principalities. The jeweller was the happiest of men. His fortune was evidently made; but when and how was he to forward the crosses? The count replied that he was just then charged with a diplomatic mission, and would be at Cologne on a particular day, when the decorations could be awaiting him at the chief banker’s in that town.

The jeweller accordingly sends the crosses to the house of Oppenheim and Co., informing them that they were to be delivered to the chamberlain of the Queen of Prussia. Some days afterwards the count informed the bankers by letter that he would pass through the town at a certain hour, and begged of them to forward to him the jeweller’s parcel by the hands of one of their clerks. This was accordingly done, and the jeweller is subsequently informed by letter that the Queen of Prussia is delighted with the crosses, some more of which her majesty requires.

But nothing was said as to payment, and the jeweller, uneasy in mind, did at last what he should have done at first. He called upon the Prussian ambassador at Paris, who informed him that he had been dealing with a knave, and that the letters were all forged. The jeweller, in a state of great consternation, sets out, under the advice of the ambassador, for Baden, where the Queen of Prussia then is, and obtains an audience of her majesty, by whom he is assured that she is an entire stranger to the whole story of the diamond crosses.

On his return to Paris M. Cramer receives another letter from the pretended count, who insinuates this time that he might himself be decorated with the order of the Red Eagle. The jeweller, however, was now on his guard. The police were communicated with, and they managed to draw the fox into the trap. He was found to be a man of good family, the son of an old general, and holding rank and title at the Prussian court, but whom a passion for gambling had ruined. The police seized, at the hotel where he put up in Paris, all the jeweller’s letters, some diamonds detached from the crosses, with several visiting cards, having the name of the Count von Schaffgotsch on them, together with a blank stamp bearing the arms of the Queen of Prussia. Owing possibly to the high connections of the culprit, the case would appear to have been compromised, for nothing more was heard of this last Diamond swindle.