“‘Then who was the go-between?’
“‘Cardinal Rohan.’
“‘The Queen hasn’t spoken a word to him these ten years! I can’t see what lies behind your little plot, but one thing seems very clear, my dear Boehmer. Someone has robbed you.’
“‘The Queen is simply acting as if His Eminence is in her bad books, but they are getting along all the better for it.’
“‘What do you mean? The Queen is only pretending to dislike someone who is such a laughing stock at Court? Royals are more used to treating people as if they approve of them. For four years now she has made it clear she does not want to buy your necklace, or even to have it as a present! And yet she bought it all the same, and is pretending she has forgotten, because she hasn’t worn it! You must have gone mad, my poor little Boehmer, and got yourself tangled up in some little scheme. I really tremble for you, and am most displeased with you, on Her Majesty’s behalf. Six months ago I asked you what had become of the necklace, and you told me that you had sold it to the Sultan’s favourite.’
“‘My reply was made according to the Queen’s wishes; she left a message by way of the Cardinal that that was what I should say.’
“‘So is that how you got your instructions from the Queen?’
“‘By letters, bearing her signature. And for some time now my creditors have been demanding to see them.’
“‘So you’ve not received any payment?’
“‘Excuse me; I received 30,000 livres, in banknotes when I reduced the price of the necklace. That was the amount the Queen sent to My Lord Cardinal, and they must certainly have met in secret, because when His Eminence gave it to me he told me that he was present when she took it from the portfolio in the Sèvres Porcelain secretaire in her little boudoir.’
“‘This is all lies. But you have made a very grave error. When you accepted your appointment you took an oath of loyalty to the King and Queen, and yet you failed to make the King aware of this very serious matter, even though you were acting without the direct instructions of the Queen.’
“This last expression really shocked the dangerous lunatic—ce dangereux imbécile—and he asked me what he should do. I advised him to go to Baron Breteuil in his capacity of Royal Jeweller, to tell him everything quite candidly, and trust to his guidance. He replied that he would rather I undertook to tell the Queen what had happened. This I refused to do. It seemed wiser not to get involved in that sort of intrigue.”
But a truly brave and loyal soul would have done just that.
If this conversation between Mme Campan and Boehmer really did take place, there are two possibilities. One is that for once Funck-Brentano is wrong, and that Jeanne had not told Boehmer that the letter was forged, so he still believed absolutely that he was dealing with the Queen. The other is that Jeanne did indeed tell him, but that Boehmer took this to mean that the Queen had quite deliberately signed it under a wrong name in case she was found out, calculating that she could then disclaim it. This is a very dark suspicion, though at the time Marie-Antoinette was suspected of even darker things. What gave strength to Boehmer’s suspicions was that Marie-Antoinette had not responded to his letter with a single word of acknowledgement or asked to discuss it, so that he had only a tacit understanding that she had received the necklace at all. We have to consider the appalling climate of suspicion that surrounded the Queen. Besides, Boehmer was just another Figaro, and what he assumed about his royal masters was not so very dire.
Meanwhile Jeanne did not remain idle. She gave Réteaux de Villette four thousand livres to make his escape. She did not want him appearing before the police a second time and saying something stupid. Then she urgently summoned the Cardinal. She told him that her enemies were accusing her of committing an indiscretion and bragging about it (which sounds probable enough), so she no longer felt safe in her home, and needed to hide. She begged him to give her refuge in his palace. At eleven that night, accompanied by a chambermaid, she crept through his gates. With this particular chess move she achieved two of her intended aims: first, to reassure the Cardinal once again — would she have gone there if her conscience were not crystal clear? Second, to link her own fate even more closely with his, so that she could hide behind him in case of danger, and to compromise him even more profoundly.
The next day Rohan sent for Boehmer. His partner Bassenge came instead. Bassenge dared venture only one question:
“Does Your Eminence have complete confidence in the person who went between you and the Queen?”
Rohan replied that he had never spoken directly with the Queen, but said he had every bit as much confidence in her as if he had. Finally he agreed to ask Sainte-James to give the jewellers more time. A few days later he actually did meet Sainte-James at a social gathering, and asked him to be patient for a little longer.
After this, on 6th August, Jeanne went back home to Bar. Why did she not make her escape? Why not flee to England? Was the reason, as we rather suspect, her wonderful mayfly insouciance, or was this deliberate cunning? Running away would amount to a full confession, but while she stayed she testified to her innocence and shifted responsibility onto Rohan. Besides, she continued to assume that Rohan and his family would quietly put everything right behind the scenes. Perhaps too she comforted herself with the thought that tomorrow everything would be just the same as it had been the day before.
Meanwhile Rohan must have been living through the greatest crisis of his life. The jewellers’ doubts must surely have been driving nails into his head. He turned for advice to his master, Cagliostro. Cagliostro knew nothing of the necklace business, as will become clear beyond all doubt in the course of other things. Jeanne obviously had not wanted a second fraudster involved, and had succeeded in persuading Rohan to keep him in the dark. Cagliostro, as we have mentioned, had prophesied a triumphant outcome to the whole undertaking, of whose real nature he was unaware. Which was somewhat careless, for a prophet.
But now Rohan kept it a secret from him no longer. He told him everything, with perfect candour, and showed him the letters. And then something very surprising happened. Cagliostro thought the matter through, and gave Rohan the wisest and most sensible advice anyone could have given in the circumstances. No Apis ram, no Dove, no candles, no Zobiachel. The magician who posed as a man possessed was secretly a shrewd and circumspect individual. It was as if, between two lines of iambic pentameter, a Shakespearean actor were to pull off his wig and declare: “If you please, we will now continue in plain English!” Perhaps Cagliostro actually liked Rohan. He certainly had good reason to.
“The Queen could never have signed this letter ‘Marie-Antoinette de France’,” he told him. “You have been duped, without question. You have been the victim of a fraud, and there is only one thing you can do. Throw yourself at the King’s feet without delay and confess everything.”
There was no doubt that that was what he should have done. The kindly Louis XVI, seeing Rohan’s sincere remorse and distress, would clearly make sure the matter was settled quietly and without fuss — and he would do so in his own interest. Once again we find ourselves at a moment in time when everything might still have turned out for the good — and didn’t.
It was Rohan’s good-heartedness — his eighteenth-century sentimentality and gallantry — that stopped him taking the only appropriate step.
“If I did that,” he told Cagliostro, “that woman would be destroyed.”
“If you don’t want to do it yourself, then a friend could do it for you,” the magus replied, discreetly offering his services.
(The scene he proposed was grotesque — Cagliostro before the King, recounting the story of the necklace to the full accompaniment of oriental mumbo-jumbo!)