refused it,
saying that the money would be better spent equipping a man-of-war.
According to others, Louis XVI. himself changed his mind. After having
vainly tried to place the necklace outside of France, the jewellers
attempted again in 1781 to sell it to Marie Antoinette after the birth
of the dauphin. It was again refused, but it was evident that the queen
regretted not being able to acquire it.

At that time there was a personage at the court whom Marie Antoinette
particularly detested. It was the cardinal Louis de Rohan, formerly
ambassador at Vienna, whence he had been recalled in 1774, having
incurred the queen's displeasure by revealing to the empress Maria
Theresa the frivolous actions of her daughter, a disclosure which
brought a maternal reprimand, and for having spoken lightly of Maria
Theresa in a letter of which Marie Antoinette learned the contents.
After his return to France the cardinal was anxious to regain the favour
of the queen in order to obtain the position of prime minister. In March
1784 he entered into relations with a certain Jeanne de St Remy de
Valois, a descendant of a bastard of Henry II., who after many
adventures had married a _soi-disant_ comte de Lamotte, and lived on a
small pension which the king granted her. This adventuress soon gained
the greatest ascendancy over the cardinal, with whom she had intimate
relations. She persuaded him that she had been received by the queen and
enjoyed her favour; and Rohan resolved to use her to regain the queen's
good will. The comtesse de Lamotte assured the cardinal that she was
making efforts on his behalf, and soon announced to him that he might
send his justification to Marie Antoinette. This was the beginning of a
pretended correspondence between Rohan and the queen, the adventuress
duly returning replies to Rohan's notes, which she affirmed to come from
the queen. The tone of the letters became very warm, and the cardinal,
convinced that Marie Antoinette was in love with him, became ardently
enamoured of her. He begged the countess to obtain a secret interview
for him with the queen, and a meeting took place in August 1784 in a
grove in the garden at Versailles between him and a lady whom the
cardinal believed to be the queen herself. Rohan offered her a rose, and
she promised him that she would forget the past. Later a certain Marie
Lejay (renamed by the comtesse "Baronne Gay d'Oliva," the last word
being apparently an anagram of Valoi), w