How to Ruin a Queen: Marie Antoinette and the Diamond Necklace Affair (50 page)

  
55
   
‘and bids goodnight’
: quoted in op. cit., p.144.

  
55
   
‘prudish’
: quoted in op. cit., p.102.

  
56
   
‘repugnance for the whole subject’
: quoted in op. cit., p.117.

  
56
   
‘towering rage’ . . . ‘away from the queen’
: the abbé de Veri, quoted in
Louis XVI
, Hardman, p.69.

  
56
   
‘and a little childish’
: quoted in
Marie Antoinette
, Fraser, p.61.

  
56
   
‘at Versailles today’
: quoted in
Marie Antoinette
, Fraser, p.91.

  
57
   
‘tumbled off a donkey’
: quoted in
Louis and Antoinette
, Cronin, p.159.

  
57
   
‘for their happiness’
: quoted in
Marie Antoinette
, Fraser, p.124.

  
59
   
‘avidity or egotism’
: the comte de Tilly, quoted in
Marie Antoinette
, Fraser, p.120.

  
60
   
‘people with such ease’
: quoted in
Marie Antoinette
, Fraser, p.97.

5. In My Lady’s Chamber

  
62
   
like a felled sapling
: BHVP MS691/153.

  
62
   
did not deter her
: Rohan’s testimony about the initial stages of Jeanne’s deception is found in Campardon, p.207ff; other accounts are found in Georgel, vol. 2, p.39ff, HVJSR, p.52ff and MCB, p.48ff.

  
62
   
for 9,000 livres
: BHVP MS691/160.

  
62
   
‘vain’
: ‘Interrogation with Villette’, Campardon, p.408.

  
63
   
for voicing doubts
: BHVP MS691/217.

  
63
   
‘from doing evil’
: quoted in
The Diamond Necklace
, Funck-Brentano, p.123.

  
63
   
‘before her mother and father’
: HVJSR, p.49.

  
63
   
‘smooth and insinuating’
: MCB, p.35.

  
64
   
‘his most beautiful days’
: Georgel, vol. 2, p.37.

  
64
   
Grand Duke Paul . . . her displeasure known
: PLMA, p.176.

  
66
   
‘with mirrors and panelling’
: the comte d’Hézecques, quoted in
Versailles aux dix-huitième siecle
by Pierre Nolhac, p.304.

  
66
   
‘examining their worthiness’
: quoted in
La Vérité sur l’affaire du collier
by Louis Hastier, p.57.

  
66
   
‘My cousin, the comtesse de Valois’
: Mémoire Rohan, p.28.

  
67
   
worth thousands of livres
: AN X2B/1417/10/Regnier; BHVP MS691/159.

  
67
   
45,000 livres from the king
: BHVP MS691/64.

  
67
   
to pay the landlord
: ibid.

  
67
   
stepped off the coach
: BHVP MS691/152.

  
67
   
sinecure for a friend
: BHVP MS691/129.

  
68
   
‘hear about every day . . . visibly altered’
: Georgel, vol. 2, p.40.

  
68
   
‘Be discreet’
: op. cit, p.41.

  
68
   
nearby rue Saint-Anastase
: BHVP MS691/156.

  
69
   
forging letters of recommendation
: BN JdF 2088/79.

  
69
   
a repeat offender
: for the story of Madame Cahouet de Villiers see MCB, p.33 and PLMA, p.130. There is a good account in
La Vérité sur l’affaire du collier
, Hastier, p.105ff.

  
69–70
‘most familiar style’ . . . ‘regularity in the letters’
: PLMA, p.130.

  
70
   
rapprochement with the queen
: for Madame Goupil, see PLMA, p.130.

  
71
   
‘monster’
: Mémoire Rohan, p.18.

  
71
   
She predicted to Rohan . . . queen’s valet
: Georgel, vol. 2, pp. 63–4.

6. Notes on a Scandal

  
72
   
built on letters
: see
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
by Jurgen Habermas, p.48. Habermas claims that the eighteenth century was the ‘century of the letter’. The sending and receiving of letters was an integral part in the creation of the private sphere, and therefore the cleavage between public and private through which modernity emerged.

  
74
   
‘the outcomes that I desire’
: MJ ‘Pièces Justificatives’, Letter IX, p.26.

  
74
   
‘on the earth’s surface’
: op. cit, Letter XVIII, p.41.

  
74
   
‘chained the lion . . . that I want to do’
: ibid.

  
74
   
‘happiest of his life’
: op. cit., Letter II, p.8.

  
74
   
would not finish
: MCB, p.170.

  
75
   
‘guarantee its authenticity’
:
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
by Choderlos de Laclos (Penguin: London, 1961), p.17.

  
76
   
‘dazzling’
: quoted in
Choderlos de Laclos
by Ronald C. Rosebottom, p.46.

  
76
   
‘without morality’
: quoted in
Laclos ou le paradoxe
by René Pomeau, p.68.

  
76
   
‘horrors and infamies’
: quoted in op. cit., p.4.

  
76
   
‘feared, admired, celebrated’
: quoted ibid.

  
78
   
‘her tyrant or her slave’
:
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
, Laclos, p.334.

  
79
   
‘slightest resemblance to you’
: op. cit., p.177.

  
79
   
‘joyful, at rest’
: op. cit, Letter 150, p.352.

  
79
   
‘he will be pleased to hear’
: op. cit., p.252.

  
80
   
‘your very humble servant’
: op. cit., Letter 121, p.287.

  
80
   
‘I should be embarrassed’
: op. cit., p.160.

  
81
   
‘some way of sustaining it’
: op. cit., Letter 67, p.145.

  
81
   
‘lock away whatever I wish’
: op. cit., Letter 1, p.23.

  
81
   
‘never writing letters’
: op. cit., Letter 81, p.186.

7. To Play the Queen

  
83
   
the gardens of the Palais-Royal
: This chapter primarily draws on d’Oliva’s depositions during the trial and her two trial briefs.

  
83
   
morality was tossed aside
: See ‘Palais-Royal’ in Mercier, vol. 1, pp. 381–3.

  
84
   
‘woo her’
: MGO I, p.12.

  
84
   
hard-working but poor family
: For d’Oliva’s early years, see MGO I, 9 and MGO II, p.51ff.

  
84
   
‘satisfaction and joy’ . . . ‘at Court’
: MGO I: pp. 12–13

  
84–5
‘You might be a bit surprised’ . . . ‘of the queen herself’
: op. cit., pp. 14–16.

  
86
   
‘lively impatience’ . . . ‘smallest thing in the world’
: op. cit., p.17.

  
86
   
‘you will meet there’
: op. cit., p.19.

  
87
   
‘You will hand over the rose’ . . . ‘there you are’
: op. cit., pp. 19–20

  
87
   
‘I foresee for you’
: Mémoire Rohan, p.19.

  
88
   
‘her protection and benevolence’
: ibid.

  
88
   
‘the past will be forgotten’
: ibid.

  
88
   
‘quick, quick, go’
: MGO I, p.22.

  
88–9
‘has just been done’ . . . ‘carry around with you’
: op. cit., pp. 22–3.

  
89
   
near anagram of ‘Valois’
: see, for example,
The Diamond Necklace
, Funck-Brentano, p.147 and ‘The Diamond Necklace Affair Revisited (1785–1786): The Case of the Missing Queen’ by Sarah Maza in
Marie-Antoinette: Writings on the Body of the Queen
, edited by Dena Goodman, p.87.

  
89
   
unthinkingly thrown together
: I am indebted to Caroline Weber’s
Queen of Fashion
for the discussion about the semiotics of the
gaulle.

  
90
   
‘dressed like a serving-maid’ . . . ‘a chambermaid’s dust-cloth’
: quoted in
Queen of Fashion
, Weber, p.161.

  
90
   
‘most indecent position’
: quoted in
Versailles, côté jardins
by William Ritchey Newton, p.196.

  
90–1
   
‘lot of criticism in Paris’
: D’Arneth and Geffroy, Mercy-Argenteau to Maria Theresa, 15 September 1779.

  
91
   
‘in a bad novel’
:
Mémoires de Mademoiselle Bertin sur la Reine Marie Antoinette
, p.98.

  
92
   
‘respected in a government’
: quoted in
Beaumarchais: A Biography
by Maurice Lever, pp. 209–10.

  
94
   
‘The letter Malvolio finds’
: see
Twelfth Night
, Act II, Scene v.

8. Diamonds and Best Friends

  
96
   
‘formal and grave’
: MGO I, p.24.

  
96
   
‘drunk with joy’
: BHVP MS691/218; Mémoire Rohan, p.23.

  
97
   
‘decisiveness and industry’
: quoted in Haynin, p.140.

  
97
   
‘such a bankruptcy’
: quoted in op. cit., p.136.

  
97
   
‘with great kindness’
: Castries, p.302.

  
98
   
sprucer than normal
: BHVP MS691/159; AN X2B/1417/10/Regnier.

  
98
   
‘You boasted’ . . . ‘to no one’
: BHVP MS691/161.

  
98
   
A consortium . . . in the scheme
: BHVP MS691/154, 163.

  
99
   
On 8 September . . . returned to Paris
: MCB, pp. 36–42.

  
99
   
‘service in peacetime’
: op. cit., p.47.

100
   
‘idle lawyers [and] tradesmen’
: HVJSR, p.49.

100
   
‘easy for me’ . . . ‘social conventions’
: MCB, p.47.

100
   
Jeanne reacted . . . well-aimed book
: NLM, p.87.

101
   
‘sparkle of the stones’
:
Journal
by Marquis de Bombelles, 8 February 1783.

101
   
Madame du Barry
:
Correspondance Secrète
, 24 August 1785.

101
   
‘fan barnacled with rocks’
: PLMA, p.102.

102
   
‘ships than jewels’
: op. cit., p.196.