How to Ruin a Queen: Marie Antoinette and the Diamond Necklace Affair (22 page)

Cagliostro, hoping to save Rohan from himself, suggested that ‘if you don’t want to do it, one of your friends will do it for you’.

Again, Rohan demurred.

Nonetheless, the cardinal was not entirely inactive. Jeanne was ordered to Rohan’s
hôtel
to explain herself. With amazing forcefulness, she dismantled the evidence of Rohan’s own eyes:

‘Monseigneur, you affront me at the moment when I have just persuaded the queen to tear the veil that she believed ought to be maintained between her feelings and her conduct! Soon you will be ashamed
of your suspicions.’

The necklace was with the queen, Jeanne insisted, and the signature on the document was genuine (due to her belated education, Marie Antoinette retained a childishly formed hand throughout her life, which might have enabled Jeanne to defend the lack of consistency in the penmanship).

Marie Antoinette would be in a position to pay the first instalment in September or October, Jeanne assured the cardinal. In the interim, she would hand over 30,000 livres, the amount of interest owed. Faith in Jeanne was reaffirmed at least partly because Rohan still believed that she lived in straitened circumstances, reliant on his intermittent charity, and could not raise such a large sum of money herself.

Jeanne’s excuses bred their own difficulties. She had thrown out the figure of 30,000 livres, like gravel in the face of an assailant, but she did not have anywhere near that amount at home. Nicolas, who had more cash to hand, was in Bar.
Jeanne scrabbled round her acquaintances, trying – and failing – to raise the requisite funds. In a bind, she stuffed the diamonds still lying around her house into her jewellery case, pawned the lot for 35,000 livres, and delivered the money to Rohan. Villette immediately rode to Bar to summon Nicolas back to Paris to redeem their nest eggs.

Rohan had known for nearly a month that the queen would be unable to pay the first instalment on 1 August, but it was only on 31 July that he told Boehmer all she would pay was the interest. Boehmer, atypically phlegmatic, accepted the queen’s new proposal but insisted that the sum offset the capital owed. It appeared that the matter would not come to a head for at least another two months.

The cardinal’s confrontation of Jeanne with the forged agreement had alerted the La Mottes. They realised it would serve their ends best if the ultimate revelation of their deceit – which would inevitably emerge when either the Boehmers’ patience abraded entirely, or the cardinal’s concerns grew insupportably heavy – occurred on their own terms. They almost certainly had not begun their heist with the endgame planned: they were opportunists, and Jeanne was more comfortable extemporising than calibrating a strategy. Certain preparations, however, had been made. As early as 15 June, the La Mottes had begun to transport their furniture to their house in Bar. Jeanne spread rumours that Rohan had been seen making large gifts of diamonds to the Cagliostros. At the beginning of August her apartment swarmed with activity; Jeanne and her servants were spotted entering and leaving with their heads burrowed furtively in their cloaks. Then, silence: the house had been stripped of its contents, its lights extinguished. The time for reckoning had arrived.

Jeanne asked Bassenge to call upon her on 3 August. He agreed to drop by at ten o’clock. Beforehand, he visited the cardinal. Rohan asked whether Marie Antoinette had yet mentioned the necklace to him or his partner. No, replied Bassenge. The cardinal expressed his astonishment that the queen was so unwilling to break her silence. He promised to write to her himself, explaining the difficulties in which the Boehmers had been placed by the postponement of the first instalment, and begging her to allay their worries.

Bassenge then went directly to Jeanne’s house and found her rooms bare apart from a solitary bed in the bedroom. Jeanne asked if he had seen Rohan recently. I’ve just come from him, said Bassenge. Did he have anything important to declare? asked Jeanne. No, said Bassenge. Jeanne now revealed that Rohan was in a position of exquisite embarrassment. People, she insinuated, were bent on destroying the cardinal (who these were remained unspecified). It
transpired that the signature on the sale agreement was forged, though Jeanne insisted – gratuitously – this had nothing to do with her. On the day before she had given the cardinal authentic samples of the queen’s handwriting for comparison. (She showed Bassenge some scraps of paper and asked if he recognised the queen’s hand – Bassenge did not.) Jeanne did not know how Rohan intended to proceed, but she warned the jewellers to ‘take precautions’ in case he fled.

The queen had been deeply offended, Jeanne continued, by the thank-you note that Rohan had insisted the jewellers write. Had they consulted her, she would have strongly advised against it. Now Jeanne became more precise about the enemies ranged against Rohan. She had ‘certain knowledge that the queen sought to destroy the cardinal and she would refuse to declare that she had received the necklace’. When Bassenge asked how she knew this, Jeanne did not answer directly. Instead she began to decry Cagliostro’s malevolent ascendancy over Rohan: her own niece had even been forced to participate in one of his satanic seances. And where, she wondered aloud, did all of the shaman’s diamonds come from? ‘I repeat,’ said Jeanne, ‘force the prince to take clear measures with you. He has a huge fortune. He can pay you.’

Jeanne’s revelations were wandering and incoherent. What was the great crime? The forgery of the signature or the impolitic letter to the queen? Were they related? Who was intent on the cardinal’s downfall? A rival faction at Court? The queen herself? How, exactly, was Cagliostro involved? Clarity was unnecessary: Jeanne banked on her intelligence so discombobulating Bassenge that he would not question its design. She was correct in her judgement, especially since her revelations were compounded by worse news that Boehmer had received the day before.

On 2 August Boehmer had visited Madame Campan, the queen’s lady-in-waiting. For nearly three weeks, the failure of the queen to respond to his letter had lacerated the jeweller’s nerves and he could bear the silence no longer. Agitated to learn the queen had no message for him, he asked Campan:

‘But the answer to the letter I presented to her – to whom must I apply for that?’

‘To nobody,’ replied Campan. ‘Her Majesty burned your memorandum without even comprehending its meaning.’

‘Madame,’ said Boehmer, ‘that is impossible: the queen knows she owes me money.’

‘Money, Monsieur Boehmer? Your last account with the queen was settled long ago.’

Boehmer, aching with frustration, snapped haughtily: ‘Madame, you are not in on the secret. A man who is ruined for want of the payment of 1.5 million francs cannot be said to be satisfied.’

‘Have you lost your senses? For what can the queen owe you so extravagant a sum!’

‘For my necklace, madame.’

‘What! That necklace again, which you have nagged the queen about for so many years! Did you not tell me you had sold it in Constantinople?’

‘The queen desired me to give that answer to all who asked me about that subject.’

Boehmer now divulged that Rohan had acted as the queen’s intermediary. Campan was astounded: ‘You are deceived, the queen has not once spoken to the cardinal since his return from Vienna; there is no man at Court she looks less favourably upon.’

‘You are deceived yourself, madame,’ Boehmer responded with equally passionate certainty. ‘She sees him very much in private. She gave 30,000 francs to His Eminence, which were paid to me as an instalment. She took them, in his presence, out of the little
secrétaire
of Sèvres porcelain next to the fireplace in the boudoir.’

‘And the cardinal told you all this?’

‘Yes, madame, himself.’

‘What a detestable plot!’

‘Indeed, to tell you the truth, madame, I am beginning to be much alarmed, for His Eminence assured me that the queen would wear the necklace on Pentecost, but I did not see it upon her, and it was that which induced me to write to Her Majesty.’

Campan advised Boehmer, for his own safety, to tell everything to Breteuil immediately. He had been ‘extremely culpable’ since, as ‘a sworn officer it was unpardonable for him to have acted without the direct orders of the king, the queen or the minister’. Boehmer
insisted he had done nothing wrong – he had several letters pertaining to the sale in his possession, signed by Marie Antoinette.

This exchange is drawn from Madame Campan’s memoirs. The reliability of the account – like other of Campan’s recollections – is in doubt, due to the preponderance of provably inaccurate details. For example, Boehmer did not write a memorandum, but a brief thank-you letter; and he did not possess any letters from Marie Antoinette on the subject of the necklace. The most significant claim – that Rohan was handed 30,000 livres by the queen herself – should be treated with severe scepticism. Perhaps Rohan might have told Boehmer that the queen had given him the money in person, in order to reassure him. However, given that Boehmer never mentions this crucial incident in his testimony during the trial, Campan’s report of it should be discounted.

At this point, it is reasonable to question whether anything of substance can be drawn from Campan’s account – or whether, indeed, the conversation happened at all. Writing retrospectively, tangential characters have a tendency to insert themselves more prominently into events of historical moment (both Beugnot and Georgel do so in this story). But despite all the caveats, the diary of the maréchal de Castries, the navy minister, written contemporaneously, records that ‘it appears that on 2 August the queen for the first time suspected that someone had bought the diamonds
in her name’.
*
The only people able, and possibly willing, to confirm the purchase, were the jewellers. Since they could not obtain an audience with the queen, they would have approached a member of her entourage, and it seems reasonable that this would be a person acquainted with the matter.
†

That Boehmer spoke to Campan is of greater significance than the exact words they exchanged. This was the first time someone close to Marie Antoinette learned of the nexus linking the jewellers, the cardinal
and the queen. From this point, events would veer in directions neither Rohan nor Jeanne could have anticipated. Still, Madame
Campan did not immediately inform her mistress; nor, despite the advice he had been given, did Boehmer confess all to Breteuil.

Instead, he returned to his partner to discuss their predicament, and they were compelled to acknowledge they may have been victims of a swindle. The Boehmers needed to elicit from Rohan the extent of his involvement and complicity; and they would also have to grovel before the queen for absolution for any inadvertent wrongdoing and – hope beyond hope – her intervention to rescue them from bankruptcy. Bassenge remained distrustful of Jeanne’s frisky evasions. He had always supposed that Jeanne was the intermediary between Rohan and the queen (her instruction that her name never be mentioned in conjunction with the necklace’s sale raised his suspicions). She knew more, he believed, that she had admitted. And the cardinal, though he appeared to have orchestrated the deception, may in fact have been its victim.

Jeanne realised that a reckoning between the jewellers and Rohan was imminent, but she thought that when the latter understood he had been duped, he would stump up for the necklace to avoid disgrace. He would not have been able to raise the money himself; but the Rohan had mobilised to bail out the prince de Guéméné, and could be relied on to take all measures necessary to preserve their turgid pride.
Rohan himself later admitted he would have tamped down the affair had he been granted the chance.

Nonetheless, Jeanne took further measures to insulate herself in case the disappearance of the necklace were to become the subject of criminal investigation. She needed to bind herself tightly to the cardinal so it would not appear, in hindsight, that she had spent the previous months distancing herself from him, concealing her opulence, leaving him to dangle alone. Paris was thick with police informants and Jeanne herself had been of interest to the police – on unrelated matters – since June, if not earlier.
*
She probably suspected that during any inquiry the authorities were likely to take
an interest in someone who had so rapidly and inexplicably leapt from pauper to profligate. But stool pigeons could be bamboozled. They reported gossamer gossip, on visitors, on movements. False rumours could be seeded, guests paraded, strolls taken like catwalks. You just had to know the story you wanted to tell.

The La Mottes held an uproarious dinner party on the evening of 3 August – they would not see their Parisian friends again for some time. After the guests had left, Jeanne sent Rosalie Brissault, her
femme de chambre
, to Rohan’s
hôtel
with an urgent message: she was unable to leave her house; he must visit her immediately. Rohan found Jeanne maddened with panic and streaming with tears. She told the cardinal she had been accused before Marie Antoinette of boasting of the favour shown to her by her royal patron. Despite her pleading that these lies had been fomented by jealousy, the queen had sided with her accusers. Her only option was to retreat to the countryside – this explained her denuded house – and wait for the queen’s anger to subside.

Yet she was not quite ready to depart and, while she completed her business, felt exposed and threatened. Had the cardinal not seen the undercover officers circling her house, a garrotte ready to snap round her? Jeanne begged Rohan to protect her and Nicolas in his home until they were able to leave Paris. Despite an uneasy feeling that this was a charade, Rohan agreed to take her in. As he later told Georgel, ‘if this woman had not acted in good faith, would she have come and handed herself over
to me like this?’