“Where are the documents purporting to be signed by the Queen?”
“I have them. Sire. They are forged.”
We well know they are forged !’ I will bring them to Your Majesty.”
I want to warn you. Cousin,” said the King, ‘that you are about to be arrested.”
He looked stricken.
“Your Majesty knows I shall always obey your orders, but I beg you spare me the pain of being arrested in these pontifical robes.”
I saw my husband waver. He wanted to spare the man this disgrace. I clenched my hands. Louis glanced at me almost apologetically and my lips tightened. He was going to allow his pity for my enemy to overcome his desire to please me.
I showed him by my expression how I should regard such an action, and he said: “I fear it must be so.”
“Your Majesty will remember the close ties of our families,” went on Rohan.
I could see that my husband was visibly moved, and the tears of rage filled my eyes. He saw those tears and he said:
“Monsieur, I shall console your family as best I can. I should be extremely pleased if you can prove yourself innocent. But I must do my duty as a King and a husband.”
Monsieur de Breteuil was on my side. He signed to the Cardinal to make his way to the door which opened on to the Salon de la Pendule. On such an occasion this was naturally crowded; all members of the Court were present, some in the Oeil de Boeuf, others in the long gallery, in the council and state rooms.
Breteuil shouted to the captain of the bodyguard the extraordinary command, it echoed through the Galerie des Glaces:
“Arrest the Cardinal de Rohan.
I was triumphant—triumphantly blind.
“There,” I said, ‘that matter is settled. This wicked man will be proved to be a cheat and be punished for all his sins. “
I sat down to write to my brother Joseph:
“As far as I am concerned I am delighted at the thought of not having to hear this miserable business talked of again.”
I do not understand now how I could have deceived myself and whether I actually believed that, or, deep in my heart, realising the enormity of this affair, refused to see it. I have come to believe I was adept at deceiving myself.
I expected congratulations from my friends. I expected them to say how pleased they were to see that wicked man brought to an account of his sins at last. But there was an odd brooding silence in my apartments.
Gabrielle did not visit me; it did not occur to me that her family might be advising her to keep away. Madame de Campan was quiet and restrained as though she were involved in the affair. I should have been warned. She really cared for me, and when I was in danger her love for me would make her anxious while her intelligence would not allow her to deceive herself. The Princesse de Lamballe agreed with me that it was a good thing, but then as Vermond had once pointed out, she had a reputation for stupidity; and Elisabeth was sad, but then she was so pious that she always deplored trouble of any sort even for those who she knew deserved it. My sisters-in-law seemed smugly pleased. But there was so much to think of. What of The Barber of Seville! Nothing must interfere with that production.
I decided to leave Versailles at once for the Petit Trianon. We must continue with the rehearsals this ridiculous affair of the necklace has interrupted,” I declared.
So I went to the Trianon and thought of nothing else but my part.
When Campan told me that Rohan’s family were furious because he had been arrested and sent to the Bastille I merely laughed.
“It is where he should have been long ago,” I retorted. ‘now hear me in the first act. “
How strange that the dialogue in this very play was like a grim warning. I remember now Basile’s speech on calumny, but strangely enough I took no heed of it then. Now it comes back to me:
“Calumny! You don’t know what you are disdaining when you disdain that. I have seen people of the utmost probity laid low by it. Believe me, there is no false report however crude, no abomination, no ridiculous falsehood, which the idlers in a great city cannot, if they take the trouble, make universally believed—and here we have little-tattlers who are past-masters of the art….”
How true that was to prove, and how foolish I was to believe that I had heard the last of the affair of the diamond necklace. But I thought of nothing then but my performance. At the end I stood triumphantly on the stage to receive the applause; I had played as rarely before.
Such a play in my own theatre, myself playing the principal role! I was happy and excited with my success, and I had no notion then that this was the last time I should play there.
Events leading to the Trial
Madame de Boulainvilliers once saw from her terrace two pretty little peasant girls, each labouring under a heavy bundle of sticks; the priest of the village who was walking with her told her that the children possessed some curious papers, and that he had no doubt they were descendants of a Valois, an illegitimate son of one of the Princes of that Name.
The face of this woman (Baronne d’Oliva) had from the first thrown me into that sort of restlessness which one experiences in the presence of a face one feels certain of having well before without being able to say where. What had puzzled me so much in her face was its perfect resemlance to that of the Queen.
After this fatal moment (the meeting in the Grove of Venus) the Cardinal is no longer merely confiding and credulous, he is blind and makes of his blindness an absolute duty. His submission to the orders received through Madame de la Motte is linked to the feelings of profound respect and gratitude which are to affect his whole life. He wilt await with resignation the moment when her reassuring kindness will fully manifest itself, and meanwhile will be absolutely obedient.
Such is the state of his soul.
Looking back, I see the affair of the necklace as the beginning, as the first rumble of thunder in the mighty storm which was to break about my head. I was determined that Rohan should be judged and found guilty; he must be exposed as the swindler I believed um to be. Should he be excused because he was a prince of a noble family? I owed it to my mother as well as my own dignity as Queen of Prance to have him proved guilty of all the sins which I was certain he had committed.
I laughed when I considered what I was sure his family expected. They would imagine that the King would exercise his right to inflict a mild punishment on the Cardinal, perhaps send him a lettre de cachet which would mean a brief exile; then he could return to Court and the incident be for gotten.
I was determined that this should not be.
Louis, as usual, wavered. His good sense told him that he should listen to wise counsellors and obey his own instincts in the matter, which were that the less universally known about the matter the better for us all; but his sentiments towards me and he loved me truly insisted that he listen to my outbursts of fury against a man who had dared presume that I would enter into an underhand negotiation with him. Whenever Rohan’s name was mentioned, I would burst into an angry tirade which often ended in tears.
“The Cardinal must be punished.”
Louis pointed out that the Cardinal belonged to one of the oldest families in France; he was related to the Condes, the Soubises and the Marsans; they believed that they had been personally insulted since a member of their family had been arrested publicly like a common felon.
“Which be isl’ I declared.
“And the whole world should know it.”