ed herself at that retreat.

The Queen made him enter her closet, and asked him by what fatality it was
that she was still doomed to hear of his foolish pretence of selling her
an article which she had steadily refused for several years. He replied
that he was compelled, being unable to pacify his creditors any longer.
"What are your creditors to me?" said her Majesty. Boehmer then
regularly related to her all that he had been made to believe had passed
between the Queen and himself through the intervention of the Cardinal.
She was equally incensed and surprised at each thing she heard. In vain
did she speak; the jeweller, equally importunate and dangerous, repeated
incessantly, "Madame, there is no longer time for feigning; condescend to
confess that you have my necklace, and let some assistance be given to me,
or my bankruptcy will soon bring the whole to light."

It is easy to imagine how the Queen must have suffered. On Boehmer's
going away, I found her in an alarming condition; the idea that any one
could have believed that such a man as the Cardinal possessed her full
confidence; that she should have employed him to deal with a tradesman
without the King's knowledge, for a thing which she had refused to accept
from the King himself, drove her to desperation. She sent first for the
Abbe de Vermond, and then for the Baron de Breteuil. Their hatred and
contempt for the Cardinal made them too easily forget that the lowest
faults do not prevent the higher orders of the empire from being defended
by those to whom they have the honour to belong; that a Rohan, a Prince of
the Church, however culpable he might be, would be sure to have a
considerable party which would naturally be joined by all the discontented
persons of the Court, and all the frondeurs of Paris. They too easily
believed that he would be stripped of all the advantages of his rank and
order, and given up to the disgrace due to his irregular conduct; they
deceived themselves.

I saw the Queen after the departure of the Baron and the Abbe; her
agitation made me shudder. "Fraud must be unmasked," said she; "when the
Roman purple and the title of Prince cover a mere money-seeker, a cheat
who dares to compromise the wife of his sovereign, France and all Europe
should know it." It is evident that from that moment the fatal plan was
decided on. The Queen perceived my alarm; I did not conceal it from her.
I knew too well that she had many enemies not to