July. The first payment was due on 1st August. Now growing anxious, Rohan asked Jeanne why the Queen was still not wearing the necklace. Because, Jeanne replied, she thought it too expensive. Unless the jewellers dropped their price by 200,000 livres she was going to return it. Boehmer and Bassenge pulled a face, but agreed the discount. This ‘real-world’ business operation reassured Rohan once again: he felt his feet once more on terra firma. All the same, the jewellers used the occasion, at Rohan’s prompting, to write that letter of thanks, which the Cardinal himself polished up into a little masterpiece of decorum.
On 12th July Boehmer went to Paris to give the Queen some jewels she had ordered for the christening of the Duc d’Angoulême, the son of the Comte d’Artois. This was the opportunity he had been waiting for. He handed her the letter, but as fate would have it, at just that moment in came the Finance Minister, Calonne, the most important man at Court. Boehmer made his exit, bowing deeply all the way, to give her time to read the letter and ask for an explanation.
Some while later she did read it, then gave it to Mme Campan to decode, since she was a clever woman and good at solving mysteries. But Mme Campan could make neither head nor tail of a single word. So the Queen burned the letter over a candle, and told Mme Campan that if ever the lunatic returned she should throw him out.
Thus fate spins its web. Since Marie-Antoinette had accepted the letter and said nothing more about it, the jewellers were convinced she did know about the necklace, and nothing would ever drive this notion out of their heads. Unwittingly, but none the less directly, Marie-Antoinette had become involved: she had contributed to deluding the victims.
We are now in the middle of July, and Jeanne is still her calmly superior self. Someone will eventually pay — after all, there are so many rich people in the world. For example that parvenu, the fabulously wealthy financier and Naval Treasurer Baudard de Sainte-James. Sainte-James was a close friend of the Cardinal, a devotee of Cagliostro, and a pillar of his lodge.
“The Queen is experiencing a short-term financial difficulty regarding the first payment,” she confided to Rohan. “Perhaps you should turn to Sainte-James—400,000 livres is nothing to him.”
The trouble was that others too were thinking of Sainte-James: Boehmer and Bassenge had also asked him to lend them the sum for which they were selling the diamond jewel. Sainte-James scratched his head: he was supposed to lend 400,000 livres so that Boehmer & Co could pay for what they already owned? What sort of business was that? But perhaps he should agree, for the sake of the Queen — he was just the sort of parvenu who doted on titles: it would delight him to do her a favour, in the hope of getting some little medal. So he asked Rohan to bring him a letter, written in the Queen’s own hand, asking him, by name, for the money. Rohan went back to Jeanne. But the letter never came.
According to the Abbé Georgel, this was because Réteaux de Villette was not in Paris at the time to forge one. Funck-Brentano prefers to think that Jeanne was unwilling to place a false document in Sainte-James’s hand. Aristocrats and Cardinals were one thing, but she could not assume the same credulity in a man of business. So this was not the answer.
Meanwhile time was passing, and now even she began to worry. After all, she too was human. In the inspiration of the very last moment she found a provisional solution: she pawned some of the remaining diamonds and gave the 30,000 livres they raised, together with an appropriate letter, to the Cardinal. Rohan passed the sum on to the jewellers, and asked, in the Queen’s name, if he could delay the payment of arrears until 1st October. But that was too much for the jewellers. Sainte-James had told them, they said, that they absolutely had to have the full amount that was due. Only now, it seems, did Jeanne, that glorious mayfly and mistress of the art of living from one day to the next, begin to realise just what danger she was in. Her husband, who had been pottering about in Bar without a care in the world, was summoned to Paris forthwith. And then a great new, and extremely bold, idea occurred to her.
On 3rd August she suddenly informed the jewellers: “You’ve been taken in. The documents in the Cardinal’s possession are forged. But don’t worry — he’s rich enough. He’ll pay.”
She made this statement out of conviction. She had very sensibly calculated that that was what must happen. Rohan, as she well knew, had become involved in such a ghastly and complicated intrigue that he would be afraid of the consequences of having presumed that the Queen would enter into an intimate correspondence and arrange a private rendezvous with him in the Versailles Park, and, last but not least, he would dread the general mockery that his appearance in the Venus Bower, and his credulity, would incur. He would surely pay up, and his entire family would pay up, even if it brought the combined Rohans, Guéménées and Soubises crashing down.
But once again fate made a little move of its own. The jewellers did not dare tell the grandee that the signature had been forged. Instead they turned to Marie-Antoinette, and Boehmer scuttled off to Versailles that very day.
Here the story becomes somewhat less clear. Funck-Brentano does not explain why Boehmer should be less afraid of the Queen than he was of the Cardinal. And what business was it of hers at all, if the letter really had been forged? Let us be silent while Mme Campan, who was one of the principal actors, tells us herself:
At Versailles, Boehmer failed to gain access to the Queen, so he rushed off to Mme Campan’s summer lodging, where the lady had retired for a few days. She happened to have guests with her, and could see him privately only that evening, in the garden.
“I believe I can recall the dialogue that passed between us word for word. From the moment he began to lay bare his extraordinarily base and dangerous intrigue he was so agitated that his every word is deeply engraved on my memory. And the more clearly I began to see the danger, the more distressing it was, so that I did not even notice when thunder and lightning erupted in the middle of our conversation.
“As soon as we were alone, I asked him:
“‘What was the meaning of that letter you gave the Queen last Sunday?’
“‘The Queen must know that perfectly well, Madame.’
“‘Pardon me; she has instructed me to ask you.’
“‘She must have been joking.’
“‘I can’t see why the Queen would want to joke with you! Even you must be aware that she very rarely wears formal dress nowadays; you yourself have remarked how much the austerity here at the Court is affecting trade. The Queen rather fears you’ve concocted another of your schemes, and her message is, most decidedly, that she won’t be buying any diamonds from you, not even one for twenty louis.’
“‘I’m sure she has less need of them than she used to, but then why did she make no mention of the money?’
“‘Because you had it some time ago.’
“‘Ah, Madame, you are very much mistaken. I am still owed a very great deal.’
“‘What do you mean?’
“‘I shall have to tell you everything. It seems the Queen has been keeping this a secret from you. She has purchased that large necklace.’
“‘The Queen? But she refused it. When the King wanted to give it to her she refused it!’
“‘And so? Since then she has had second thoughts.’
“‘In that case she would have spoken to the King. Besides, I have never seen that necklace among her jewellery.’
“‘The fact is, she bought it at Whitsun. I was most surprised to see that she wasn’t wearing it.’
“‘When did the Queen tell you she had finally decided to buy it?’
“‘She has never spoken to me about it in person.’