XVI. Dec. 1784–Jan. 1785. THE DIAMOND NECKLACE IS SOLD AT LAST.

The countess and her husband, the steward and the four tall footmen, the led horses and the baggage waggon, the outriders and the elegant berline, returned to Paris at the close of November, 1784, when the De la Mottes proceeded, after all their desperate struggles towards this end, to enter at last into the coveted gaieties of the rank and fashion of the most brilliant capital in Europe. At the outset they did not share their good fortune with their sister, who was still passing a dull time of it at the Abbey of Jarcy. All they seem to have done was to resign to her the right of petitioning in the name of Valois, for on the 30th of November in this same year we find her making one of those stereotyped appeals for assistance, for which the family had now become notorious, to the Abbé Bourbon, natural son of Louis XV.⁠[111] Irritated no doubt at her having refused to part with her pension, husband and wife determined to leave her to herself to enjoy in retirement its extremely slender benefits.

Suddenly grown rich in the queen’s name, after having successfully established a very general belief in her pretended intimacy with royalty, the countess’s instinctive tact led her to perceive that a new style of living was indispensable on her part to maintain the delusion, and keep alive that credit which she intended employing as the basis of still larger operations. The very extravagance to which she was naturally inclined became consequently one of the chief elements in her system of deceit. It was no longer “alms” that she contemplated asking from a carriage, since she had made the discovery that credulity was a mine which, properly worked, would furnish a far richer yield than charity was ever likely to do.

Beugnot tells us that on his return to Paris he was confirmed in his opinion that the opulence of Madame de la Motte was due to her intimate connection with the Cardinal de Rohan, and that he regulated his conduct towards her accordingly. “I presented myself,” remarks he, “at her door with discretion: I went to dine at her house only when she did me the honour of inviting me; and I took care to put her at her ease by affecting respect towards her. On her part she made me acquainted with her various projects, setting them out before me with that negligence which presupposes the certainty of success. She intended, for instance, to withdraw her brother from the navy—an ungrateful and stupid service in times of peace; a regiment had been promised her for him. As for her husband, she had purchased him a step which would at once give him captain’s rank, and she would by-and-by see if she could not get him named second colonel. With regard to her sister, she would not hear of her doing as she herself had done—in other words, contracting some stupid marriage. If agreeable to her, she should be canoness at Douxières or Poulangy, as all the places at Remiremont were bespoken for ten years to come. ‘If,’ remarked she, ‘I had espoused a man of name, and one who frequented the court, that would have been of some use to me. I should then have got on much quicker; as it is, my husband is to me rather an obstacle than a means. It is necessary that I should do something to make my name rank before his, which is, you know, contrary to all decorum.’

“When I visited Madame de la Motte, she never failed to introduce me to the company as a young magistrate, and always placed me immediately after the titled people. The tone of the house was, at least in those days, that of good company. I met there the Marquis de Saisseval, then a great gambler, rich, and currying favour with the court; the Abbé de Cabres, councillor in the Paris Parliament; Rouillé d’Orfeuil, intendant of the Champagne; the Count d’Estaing, one of the heroes of the American war, and subsequently in command of the National Guards of Versailles, when the château was stormed by the mob; the Baron de Villeroy, an officer of the king’s body-guard; the receiver-general Dorcy; and Lecoulteux de la Noraye, who, while aspiring to the post of director of the countess’s affairs and finances, dreamed of being one day appointed contrôleur-général of the finances of the nation, and who considered himself altogether ‘a most important personage, though he had only just wit enough to be nothing worse than a fool.’” La Noraye was no favourite with Beugnot, who in after years knocked him down on a particular occasion for playing him some shabby trick when they were fellow-prisoners in La Force during the days of the Terror.⁠[112]⁠

All the while that madame and her husband were showing off at Bar-sur-Aube, the cardinal was moping at Saverne, fretfully pacing up and down a favourite walk in the episcopal pleasure-grounds, which he had named the “Promenade de la Rose,” in honour of the gracious gift of counterfeit royalty at the midnight interview in the park of Versailles. This walk, which led from the palace to the neighbouring woods, had gone by the name of the “Route de Bonheur” (road of happiness), until the cardinal, to whom happiness still seemed hovering in the future, gave it its new designation.⁠[113] He had been banished to Saverne in remote Alsace by one of those billets bordered with vignettes bleues, penned by the forger Villette, so that he might be out of the way while the De la Mottes were enjoying themselves in their country retreat.

On the countess’s return to Paris, the correspondence between the cardinal and the phantom queen is speedily resumed. The letters that are now interchanged are more familiar and are even tender. The amatory prelate, we may be certain, complained that the last meeting was too brief, implored permission to return to the capital, and begged for another interview. Replies were doubtless sent, exhorting him to be discreet, and promising to comply with his request at some future period. One thing, however, is quite certain: it was at this time that madame applied for and obtained in the queen’s name from the cardinal the 100,000 livres, of which we have already spoken, for of the 50,000 livres received in August last every sou of course was spent.

All this while plans are being perfected for the successful carrying out of that grand scheme of fraud, which not only caused the greatest commotion throughout France, but may be said to have startled the entire civilized world by its audacity. The first incidents of the new intrigue appear to have been congenial. Some hanger-on of the countess’s would seem to have sought out an emissary of the crown jewellers, employed to find a purchaser for the famed Diamond Necklace with the prospect of a commission for himself, and whispered in his ear that the Countess de la Motte was privately received by the queen, with whom she had both credit and influence, but that unusual reasons existed for not speaking publicly of this intimacy. He thought, however, that the countess, if she could only be induced to undertake the negotiation, was a very likely person to prevail upon the queen to buy the Necklace. This suggestion was duly reported to Böhmer and Bassenge, after which it appears the former waited on Madame de la Motte at her own house and exhibited the matchless jewel. Everything else followed in due course.

Though evidently interwoven with those strange fabrications in which the countess delighted to indulge, her own relation of this first stage in the great fraud has a certain air of probability about it, and furnishes us with the ends of some of the threads in this entangled web. After citing the name of a speculator and schemer named Laporte, who was always hatching new projects for making money, and whom she had been the means of introducing to the cardinal with the view of drawing him into some of Laporte’s grand undertakings, she observes: “This Laporte was a very active person, and constantly at my house; I had stood godmother to one of his children. Achette, his father-in-law, was an intimate friend of Böhmer’s. One day, when the two latter were at Versailles, Achette said to Böhmer, ‘Are you still saddled with your Necklace?’ ‘Unfortunately I am,’ answered Böhmer; ‘it is a heavy burden to me—I would gladly give a thousand louis to any one who could find me a purchaser for it.’ It is most probable that from the date of this conversation my name was mentioned, Achette explaining to Böhmer how his son-in-law, Laporte, had access to me, and through me to the cardinal.

“One day Laporte having dined at my house, mentioned to me, for the first time, the fatal Necklace, observing that he rested all his hopes on me; that if I would only say a word to the queen, he was convinced her majesty would make the purchase, and that the jewellers were ready to enter into any arrangements that might be agreeable to her.”

On this occasion, as well as on a subsequent one, the countess informs us that she declined to interfere, and though urgently pressed, would not listen to the suggestion. A third attempt to induce her to undertake the negotiation was afterwards made, she tells us, when Böhmer came to her house with Achette, bringing the Necklace along with him.

“‘Is it not a pity,’ said Achette to me, ‘that so magnificent a jewel should leave the kingdom whilst we have a queen whom it would so well become, and whom, I am sure, must at heart long to possess it?’

“‘I don’t know that,’ answered I; ‘nor can I understand why you have applied to me to transmit your proposals to her majesty. I protest to you I have no opportunity of submitting them to her, not having the honour of approaching her.’

“‘Madame,’ replied Achette, with a look full of meaning, ‘we are not come hither to pry into your secrets, still less to evince any doubt respecting what you do us the honour to tell us; but believe me I am well acquainted with Versailles; I know what is going on there; and when I took the liberty of introducing my friend to you, it was because I felt convinced that if you would honour him with your support, nobody at court is better able to render him the service we make bold to solicit.’

“Böhmer’s mouth was open: I saw he was going to speak to me of his gratitude; so, to get rid of them both, I told them I would see if, by means of my connections, I could contrive indirectly to render them some service.”⁠[114]⁠

These visits took place at the end of December. In January, 1785, the countess contrives to insinuate to the crown jewellers, through some of her high-class connections, that the queen really does desire to have the Necklace. She openly states as much to the cardinal, whom, in the very depth of a bitterly-cold winter, she has summoned to Paris by the aid of a courier armed with one of those well-known and highly-prized billets, gilt-edged, or bordered with vignettes bleues, in which the queen is made to say: “The wished-for moment has not yet arrived, but I desire to hasten your return on account of a secret negotiation which interests me personally, and which I am unwilling to confide to any one but yourself. The Countess de la Motte will explain the meaning of this enigma.”

After reading this letter the cardinal longed for wings; still he was obliged to content himself with such fleet coursers as the maîtres de poste along the line of road to the capital could provide him with. So, well wrapped up in furs, and snugly ensconced in the corner of a comfortable close travelling carriage, he is soon rolling rapidly over the two hundred and eighty miles of frost-bound road that intervene between the episcopal palace of Saverne and the Rue Neuve-Saint-Gilles; and, no sooner has he learned the solution of the enigma, and procured from the countess the address of the crown jewellers—at the sign of the “Grand Balcony,” Rue Vendôme—than, puffed up with the importance of the commission intrusted to him, he hies to Böhmer and Bassenge to open negotiations with them for the purchase of the costly gem. The cardinal had not far to go, for the Rue Vendôme (now the Rue Béranger) was only some ten minutes’ walk from his hôtel, being situated but a single street from the junction of the Rue Vieille-du-Temple with the Rue St. Louis (now the Rue Turenne). At the present day many of the houses have been rebuilt, and of those which were in existence at the time of our narrative⁠[115] only a couple in any way answer to the sign “Au Grand Balcon,” adopted by the crown jewellers. These are Nos. 11 and 22; the former—for the time being the Mairie of the 3rd Arrondissement—is a handsome building with an ornamental ironwork balcony in front, and having before it an open court, which one has no difficulty in picturing filled with the grand equipages and liveried lacqueys of the customers of our friends Böhmer and Bassenge.

In the excitement of conversation the grand almoner indiscreetly blurted out what he believed to be the fact, although he had been strictly enjoined to keep it secret, namely, that the queen was the actual purchaser of the jewel, but her name was on no account to transpire in the business. The price eventually agreed upon for the Necklace was 1,600,000 livres (£64,000), to be paid in four instalments of equal amount at intervals of six months: the first instalment of 400,000 livres to fall due in August. But the crown jewellers, who had been advised to be cautious in dealing with the cardinal, required that the contract should be authorized by the royal signature. To account for this demand, they explained to the cardinal that they had heavy debts and liabilities which prevented them from parting with an asset of so much value without replacing it with adequate vouchers to satisfy their creditors—notably M. Baudard de Saint-James, treasurer-general of the navy, to whom they were indebted in no less a sum than 800,000 livres,⁠[116] and who had waited so long and so patiently.

Strange to say, the person who had cautioned the jewellers to act so guardedly was the great intrigante herself. Accompanied by her husband she had called upon Böhmer and Bassenge at seven o’clock on a raw January morning, a couple of hours or so before the cardinal, to announce his coming, when, after having reminded them that she had been no party to the transaction, she proceeded to recommend them not to come to terms without binding down the cardinal in such a manner as to make themselves secure.⁠[117] That she took this step, so likely to frustrate her own object, was afterwards proved at the trial. Most persons would have thought that the probability of such a proceeding being fatal to her plans would have prevented her, if she meditated a fraud, acting in the way she did; but does not the reader perceive that this most subtle of impostors had thereby secured, by anticipation, a strong plea in her favour to disprove her guilt?

The obtaining the queen’s signature to the contract necessarily gave rise to some delay. The cardinal sent the deed as he believed to Marie-Antoinette through Madame de la Motte, with the intimation that it was only a form, and would be merely shown to the jewellers, and not delivered up to them. The countess, however, returns with the deed unsigned. Royalty is in dudgeon at its sacred name having been made use of. The grand almoner was greatly distressed at this new obstacle, which he thought her majesty was inclined to aggravate; but what was to be done?

Madame de la Motte returns a second time from Versailles, and pretends to have had a second audience with Marie-Antoinette. The queen, she says, was very angry with the cardinal for having introduced her name into the transaction, but had insinuated:

“If inspiring confidence is all that is requisite, could not the cardinal have devised some other mode? The cardinal is perhaps not aware of it, but I may tell you that I have bound myself by a formal engagement with the king not to sign any deed without his knowledge. So the thing you see is impossible. Contrive between you what you can do, or else renounce the purchase altogether.... It seems to me that, as this document is only a formality, and as these people do not know my handwriting.... But you will reflect upon it; still, once for all, I cannot sign it. At all events, tell the cardinal that the first time I shall see him I will communicate to him the arrangements I intend to make with him.”⁠[118]⁠

The countess then explains that, returning home after this interview, and not reflecting on the serious consequences of using the queen’s name in the manner suggested, she resolves to counterfeit the royal signature, and for that purpose applies to Rétaux de Villette, the forger of the letters which to the last the countess always maintained to be genuine.

“I explained to M. de Villette,” she says, “the new aspect which this affair had assumed, the cardinal’s perplexity, the queen’s dissatisfaction, the interview I had had with her majesty, and the meaning I attached to her expression that the jewellers were unacquainted with her handwriting.

“Villette said, if I was certain that the queen had made use of the express words I had just repeated, it would appear to him, as it had appeared to me, that she wished me to understand it did not much signify whose hand inscribed the attestation, since the jewellers did not know her handwriting. ‘But,’ added he, ‘neither the queen nor yourself suspect the risk a person runs by counterfeiting writings. That is an act which the law has included in the list of crimes under the name of forgery. We can however do this. Taking for granted the statement of the queen, that these people do not know her handwriting, it may be fairly supposed that they are equally ignorant of her form of signature. To sign Marie-Antoinette alone, according to your idea, would be a positive forgery; but the metamorphosis of an Austrian princess into a French one—to say, for instance, Marie-Antoinette de France—would really be unmeaning. If our object was to obtain this Necklace by a swindle, when the imposture came to be exposed such a signature would serve as a proof of it; but as we have no reasonable doubt but that the jewellers will be paid, since they will have the cardinal’s guarantee privately supported by that of the queen, I think we may, without much fear of committing ourselves, submit to the necessity; I will therefore do what I now explain to you.

“‘First, I shall not disguise my own writing; and, secondly, I will give the queen the incorrect title of Marie-Antoinette de France. The contract being exhibited by the cardinal to Böhmer and Bassenge, they will not examine it too minutely, I’ll be bound; and you must promise me to burn it in my presence when the jewellers have been paid and the matter is at end.’

“I gave him my word of honour that I would do this, and he signed the deed according to our covenant. I left him directly afterwards and drove at once to the cardinal. At first I intended to give him the contract approved and signed, without telling him how I had settled matters; but I reflected that Villette and I were not the safest judges; that the affair might be more serious than we imagined, and that if such were the case the cardinal might be placed in an embarrassing position. So I resolved to tell him all.”

Thereupon, according to Madame de la Motte’s version, the cardinal was informed of the forgery, and of the incorrectness of the signature, after he had seen the contract without detecting either. He acquiesced, we are told by the countess, in the fraud, merely observing that “since he had been deceived by it, it would be the same with the jewellers.”⁠[119]⁠

Such is the specious explanation given by Madame de la Motte of the forgery of the queen’s signature to the contract. But amidst this farrago of falsehood—for there can be no doubt the queen’s signature was appended in the absurd form described, owing to the ignorance of this pair of sharpers⁠[120] the simple truth remains that the deluded cardinal, hoping thereby to please the queen, had bought the Necklace of the jewellers on his own guarantee for one million six hundred thousand francs, backed with this fraudulent signature of Marie-Antoinette’s. The contract had been drawn up with great care by the cardinal himself, and was written with his own hand, since the matter was of course of too secret a nature to be intrusted to a professional engrosser; and, after having been exhibited to Böhmer and Bassenge for their private satisfaction, it was left in the cardinal’s keeping. The unfortunate dupe of course believed he still held possession of the royal guarantee, the grotesque inventions to the contrary of Madame de la Motte, which we have just laid before the reader, being of no further moment than to expose her own duplicity. The confidence and mental satisfaction of the jewellers when they read the contract, ratified by majesty itself, was equal to that felt by the cardinal. “They read it,” says the Rohan memorial, “and appeared full of joy; they then returned it, but the cardinal requested them to take a copy of it, which they had not thought of doing. This copy they made themselves without the slightest doubt being raised in their minds by the strangeness of the signature.”

We may instance as another proof of the countess’s prompt mode of action, that by the end of January, 1785, the whole affair was settled—in fact within six weeks after she had promised “to see if she could not contrive indirectly to render the jewellers some service;” the famous Diamond Necklace which had been to them a source of grave anxiety for years was off their hands.