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The Diamond Necklace
by
The papers of De Rohan probably needed purging by fire, for the order to burn them indicates that they contained evidence derogatory to his position as a dignitary of the church. The prince cardinal was a vain and profligate man, full of vicious inclinations, and credulous to a degree that had made him the victim of the unscrupulous schemer, Madame de La Motte Valois, a woman as adroit and unscrupulous as she was daring. Of low birth, brought up by charity, married to a ruined nobleman, she had ended her career by duping and ruining Cardinal de Rohan, a man whose character exposed him to the machinations of an adventuress so skilful, bold, and alluring as La Motte Valois.
So much for preliminary. Let us take up the story at its beginning. The diamond necklace was an exceedingly handsome and highly valuable piece of jewelry, containing about five hundred diamonds, and held at a price equal to about four hundred thousand dollars of modern money. It had been made by Boehmer, a jeweller of Paris, about the year 1774, and was intended for Madame Dubarry, the favorite of Louis XV. But before the necklace was finished Louis had died, and a new king had come to the throne. With Louis XVI. virtue entered that profligate court, and Madame Dubarry was excluded from its precincts. As for the necklace, it remained without a purchaser. It was too costly for a subject, and was not craved by the queen. The jeweller had not failed to offer it to Marie Antoinette, but found her disinclined to buy. The American Revolution was going on, France was involved in the war, and money was needed for other purposes than diamond necklaces.
“That is the price of two frigates,” said the king, on hearing of the estimated value of the famous trinket.
“We want ships, and not diamonds,” said the queen, and ended the audience with the jeweller.
A few months afterwards, M. Boehmer openly declared that he had found a purchaser for the necklace. It had gone to Constantinople, he said, for the adornment of the favorite sultana.
“This was a real pleasure to the queen,” says Madame Campan. “She, however, expressed some astonishment that a necklace made for the adornment of French women should be worn in the seraglio, and, thereupon, she talked to me a long time about the total change which took place in the tastes and desires of women in the period between twenty and thirty years of age. She told me that when she was ten years younger she loved diamonds madly, but that she had no longer any taste for anything but private society, the country, the work and the attentions required by the education of her children. From that moment until the fatal crisis there was nothing more said about the necklace.”
The necklace had not been sold. It remained in the jeweller’s hands until nearly ten years had passed. Then the vicious De La Motte laid an adroit plan for getting it into her possession, through the aid of the Cardinal de Rohan, who had come to admire her. She was a hanger-on of the court, and began her work by persuading the cardinal that the queen regarded him with favor. The credulous dupe was completely infatuated with the idea. One night, in August, 1784, he was given a brief interview in the groves around Versailles with a woman whom he supposed to be the queen, but who was really a girl resembling her, and taught by La Motte to play this part.
Filled with the idea that the queen loved him, the duped cardinal was ready for any folly. De La Motte played her next card by persuading him that the queen had a secret desire to possess this wonderful necklace, but had not the necessary money at that time. She would, however, sign an agreement to purchase it if the cardinal would become her security. De Rohan eagerly assented. This secret understanding seemed but another proof of the queen’s predilection for him. An agreement was produced, signed with the queen’s name, to which the cardinal added his own, and on February 1, 1785, the jeweller surrendered the necklace to De Rohan, receiving this agreement as his security. The cardinal carried the costly prize to Versailles, where he was told the queen would send for it. It was given by him to La Motte, who was commissioned to deliver it to her royal patroness. In a few days afterwards this lady’s husband disappeared from Paris, and the diamond necklace with him.