"Will he?"
Hope and doubt were blended in the question.
"What else?" she asked. "Can you conceive that he will permit such a scandal to burst about his name and the name of the Queen?"
Bassenge saw light. The rights and wrongs of the case, and who might be the guilty parties, were matters of very secondary importance. What mattered was that the firm should recover the 14,000,000 livres for which the necklace had been sold; and Bassenge was quick to attach full value to the words of Madame de la Motte.
Unfortunately for everybody concerned, including the jewellers themselves, Bohmer's mind was less supple. Panic-stricken by Bassenge's report, he was all for the direct method. There was no persuading him to proceed cautiously, and to begin by visiting the Cardinal. He tore away to Versailles at once, intent upon seeing the Queen. But the Queen, as we know, had had enough of Bohmer. He had to content himself with pouring his mixture of intercessions and demands into the ears of Madame de Campan.
"You have been swindled, Bohmer," said the Queen's lady promptly. "Her Majesty never received the necklace."
Bohmer would not be convinced. Disbelieving, and goaded to fury, he returned to Bassenge.
Bassenge, however, though perturbed, retained his calm. The Cardinal, he insisted, was their security, and it was impossible to doubt that the Cardinal would fulfil his obligations at all costs, rather than be overwhelmed by a scandal.
And this, no doubt, is what would have happened but for that hasty visit of Bohmer's to Versailles. It ruined everything. As a result of it, Bohmer was summoned to wait instantly upon the Queen in the mater of some paste buckles.
The Queen received the jeweller in private, and her greeting proved that the paste buckles were a mere pretext. She demanded to know the meaning of his words to Madame de Campan.
Bohmer could not rid himself of the notion that he was being trifled with. Had he not written and himself delivered to the Queen a letter in which he thanked her for purchasing the necklace, and had not that letter remained unanswered—a silent admission that the necklace was in her hands? In his exasperation he became insolent.
"The meaning, madame? The meaning is that I require payment for my necklace, that the patience of my creditors is exhausted, and that unless you order the money to be paid, I am a ruined man!"
Marie Antoinette considered him in cold, imperious anger.
"Are you daring to suggest that your necklace is in my possession?"
Bohmer was white to the lips, his hands worked nervously.
"Does Your Majesty deny it?"
"You are insolent!" she exclaimed. "You will be good enough to answer questions, not to ask them. Answer me, then. Do you suggest that I have your necklace?"
But a desperate man is not easily intimidated.
"No, madame; I affirm it! It was the Countess of Valois who—"
"Who is the Countess of Valois?"
That sudden question, sharply uttered, was a sword of doubt through the heart of Bohmer's confidence. He stared wide-eyed a moment at the indignant lady before him, then collected himself, and made as plain a tale as he could of the circumstances under which he had parted with the necklace Madame de la Motte's intervention, the mediation of the Cardinal de Rohan with Her Majesty's signed approval of the terms, and the delivery of the necklace to His Eminence for transmission to the Queen.
Marie Antoinette listened in increasing horror and anger. A flush crept into her pale cheeks.
"You will prepare and send me a written statement of what you have just told me," she said. "You have leave to go."
That interview took place on August 9th. The 15th was the Feast of the Assumption, and also the name-day of the Queen, therefore a gala day at Court, bringing a concourse of nobility to Versailles. Mass was to be celebrated in the royal chapel at ten o'clock, and the celebrant, as by custom established for the occasion, was the Grand Almoner of France, the Cardinal de Rohan.
But at ten o'clock a meeting was being held in the King's cabinet, composed of the King and Queen, the Baron de Breteuil, and the Keeper of the Seals, Miromesnil. They were met, as they believed, to decide upon a course of action in the matter of a diamond necklace. In reality, these puppets in the hands of destiny were helping to decide the fate of the French monarchy.
The King, fat, heavy, and phlegmatic, sat in a gilded chair by an ormolu-encrusted writing-table. His bovine eyes were troubled. Two wrinkles of vexation puckered the flesh above his great nose. Beside, and slightly behind him, stood the Queen, white and imperious, whilst facing them stood Monsieur de Breteuil, reading aloud the statement which Bohmer had drawn up.
When he had done, there was a moment's utter silence. Then the King spoke, his voice almost plaintive.
"What is to be done, then? But what is to be done?"
It was the Queen who answered him, harshly and angrily.
"When the Roman purple and a princely title are but masks to cover a swindler, there is only one thing to be done. This swindler must be exposed and punished."
"But," the King faltered, "we have not heard the Cardinal."
"Can you think that Bohmer, that any man, would dare to lie upon such a matter?"
"But consider, madame, the Cardinal's rank and family," calmly interposed the prudent Miromesnil; "consider the stir, the scandal that must ensue if this matter is made public."
But the obedient daughter of Marie Therese, hating Rohan at her mother's bidding and for her mother's sake, was impatient of any such wise considerations.
"What shall the scandal signify to us?" she demanded. The King looked at Breteuil.
"And you, Baron? What is your view?"
Breteuil, Rohan's mortal enemy, raised his shoulders and flipped the document.
"In the face of this, Sire, it seems to me that the only course is to arrest the Cardinal."
"You believe, then—" began the King, and checked, leaving the sentence unfinished.
But Breteuil had understood.
"I know that the Cardinal must be pressed for money," he said. "Ever prodigal in his expenditure, he is further saddled with the debts of the Prince de Guimenee."
"And you can believe," the King cried, "that a Prince of the House of Rohan, however pressed for money, could—Oh, it is unimaginable!"
"Yet has he not stolen my name?" the Queen cut in. "Is he not proven a common, stupid forger?"
"We have not heard him," the King reminded her gently.
"And His Eminence might be able to explain," ventured Miromesnil. "It were certainly prudent to give him the opportunity."
Slowly the King nodded his great, powdered head. "Go and find him. Bring him at once!" he bade Breteuil; and Breteuil bowed and departed.
Very soon he returned, and he held the door whilst the handsome Cardinal, little dreaming what lay before him, serene and calm, a commanding figure in his cassock of scarlet watered silk, rustled forward into the royal presence, and so came face to face with the Queen for the first time since that romantic night a year ago in the Grove of Venus.
Abruptly the King launched his thunderbolt.
"Cousin," he asked, "what purchase is this of a diamond necklace that you are said to have made in the Queen's name?"
King and Cardinal looked into each other's eyes, the King's narrowing, the Cardinal's dilating, the King leaning forward in his chair, elbows on the table, the Cardinal standing tense and suddenly rigid.
Slowly the colour ebbed from Rohan's face, leaving it deathly pale. His eyes sought the Queen, and found her contemptuous glance, her curling lip. Then at last his handsome head sank a little forward.
"Sire," he said unsteadily, "I see that I have been duped. But I have duped nobody."
"You have no reason to be troubled, then. You need but to explain."
Explain! That was precisely what he could not do. Besides, what was the nature of the explanation demanded of him? Whilst he stood stricken there, it was the Queen who solved this question.