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The Queen’s intimate friendships had planted ideas in other women’s heads before Jeanne’s. Earlier, two female fraudsters had put it about that they were royal confidantes. One was Mme de Cahouet de Villiers (or ‘Villers’, according to Mme Campan) who with the help of the King’s financial intendant got her hands on some samples of the Queen’s signature, learnt to reproduce them with remarkable fidelity, and swindled an extremely expensive dress from Mme Bertin; she then wrote herself a letter in the Queen’s name asking her secretly to borrow 200,000 francs on her behalf, and the fermier général Beranger had paid out. The deception duly came to light, the woman was incarcerated in the St Pelagia prison, and her husband had to repay the ‘royal loan’. In 1782, a second lady claimed that she was a close friend not only of the Queen but also of Mesdames de Lamballe and de Polignac. She signed nothing in the Queen’s name, but instead requisitioned goods under a royal seal which the Princesse de Polignac had misappropriated from the Queen’s table. Strangest of all, this woman’s name was also de la Motte, her husband being a relation of Jeanne’s. When she was released from the Bastille, where she too was sent for her various frauds, the two ladies took up the connection.

This latter episode showed Jeanne what she should have realised after the first: that the idea of posing as an intimate of the Queen was not original. She was in the same situation — for a person of genius — as Shakespeare’s contemporaries. Like them, Shakespeare had learnt everything he knew, in terms of subject matter, style and method, from those who had gone before — and yet his work stands at the apex of human achievement, towering over all others.

A rather neat saying of Chamfort, who was one of Jeanne’s contemporaries, comes to mind: “There is no species of virtue that can raise the social rank of a woman; only vice can accomplish that.”

How it all started, no one can say. We cannot be certain at what precise moment the idea struck her, and the artist herself shrouded the circumstances in mystery. We have no idea by what sort of skilful overtures she prepared the way, or even how she broached the subject with the Cardinal. All we can be certain about is the way the plan worked and the unstoppable course it took.

According to the Abbé Georgel it was Rohan who complained to her in confidence about how much the Queen’s attitude and behaviour distressed him. “That confidence,” the Abbé tells us, “suddenly made her proposed deception easy. It was one that has few parallels in the long annals of human folly.”

Jeanne told the Cardinal about her ‘intimate friendship’ with the Queen. Thereafter, from time to time, as in the strictest confidence, she would show him letters written on white, watermarked paper, with pale borders and the royal lily of France in the left-hand corners, supposedly written by Marie-Antoinette to her cousine, Jeanne de Valois.

She must certainly have managed this part with some skill, since the Cardinal finally asked her to put a word in for him with her friend. She quickly brought news that she had spoken about him to the Queen. The Queen had heard her out in silence, but without any show of sympathy. She felt that the situation was hopeless.

Then she appeared with altogether more cheering news of her latest secret trip to Versailles. The Queen was taking her more and more into her confidence, and was slowly starting to reconsider her long-established prejudice against the Cardinal. She was beginning to see through the base intrigues of Comte Mercy-Argenteau, which had always represented Rohan in a bad light, and she had been touched by the magnanimity Rohan had shown over the trouble that had befallen his nephew, the Prince de Guéménée. In short, she was coming round to the view that the Cardinal was a fundamentally decent man. Finally in May, having faithfully promised Rohan that she would do everything she could to advance his interests, Jeanne was able to announce, with a radiant smile, that it would not be long before he was restored to royal favour.

Rohan, the most uncritical child of that most critical age, believed everything. Success increased Jeanne’s boldness. She told him to observe the Queen carefully when she passed beside him in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, when she would make a sign with her head in his direction. (When I was a child, my father similarly suggested that the Emperor Franz Josef would acknowledge me in Fürdo˝ street.) And Rohan believed that too. When the Queen raised her head, it would be a subtle indication of her increasing friendliness. The gesture was of course intended not for him but for anyone who happened to be standing there.

Then Jeanne took another step forward. She instructed him, in the Queen’s name, to write a petition justifying his actions vis-à-vis the accusations made against him. Rohan composed his document with the greatest of care, tearing it up twenty times before finally handing it over.

The reply was swift. “I am most glad,” the Queen wrote, “not to have to consider you guilty any longer. I cannot at present grant you the audience you ask for, but I will send you a sign as soon as circumstances permit. Be discreet.”

This was the Queen’s first letter to Rohan. “Those few words,” the Abbé Georgel wrote afterwards, “threw the Cardinal into raptures it would be difficult to describe. Mme de la Motte was from that point onwards his guardian angel, smoothing his path to happiness. From that moment on, she could have whatever she wanted from him.”

On her advice, the Cardinal replied expressing his delight. The Queen’s next response was followed by a rapid exchange of letters. None has survived, for reasons which will be made clear. But the Abbé Georgel, who saw and read them, affirmed that those written by the Queen showed a clearly discernible progression. The tone becomes increasingly cordial, seeming to promise more and more. They give the impression of Jeanne’s well-judged pleadings and Rohan’s well-worded letters working their effect, and the Queen’s heart steadily softening towards her admirer.

Now the Cardinal sat, in his official residence, the Hôtel de Strasbourg, in almost continuous conference with his advisors, Cagliostro and the Swiss Baron Planta. The whole Palace was filled with a hopeful, springlike air of expectation. Perhaps nothing was said openly, but everywhere he was met with conspiratorial smiles of congratulation. Those letters were about more than the Queen’s general goodwill. She was letting him know personally that she would receive him back into favour as soon as she could summon him openly. And then, in the silence of the night …

Elsewhere too, the days were spent in a fever of excitement. Everywhere the very ground under people’s feet seemed to be becoming less certain. Finance Minister Calonne was a kind and intelligent man, but he could do nothing: that terrifying chasm the deficit yawned wider and wider, threatening to swallow everything. Paris sweltered in the appalling, pestilential heat of summer. Far better at such a time to be at Saverne … but Rohan continued to wait in the Hôtel de Strasbourg — to wait, and believe that his star was approaching its zenith.