in a
drawer of the Cardinal's bureau, in which he had himself written what
Baehmer told him after having seen me at my country house, was likewise an
unfortunate document for his Eminence.

I offered to the King to go and declare that Baehmer had told me that the
Cardinal assured him he had received from the Queen's own hand the thirty
thousand francs given on account upon the bargain being concluded, and
that his Eminence had seen her Majesty take that sum in bills from the
porcelain secretaire in her boudoir. The King declined my offer, and said
to me, "Were you alone when Boehmer told you this?" I answered that I was
alone with him in my garden. "Well," resumed he, "the man would deny the
fact; he is now sure of being paid his sixteen hundred thousand francs,
which the Cardinal's family will find it necessary to make good to him; we
can no longer rely upon his sincerity; it would look as if you were sent
by the Queen, and that would not be proper."

[The guilty woman no sooner knew that all was about to be discovered than
she sent for the jewellers, and told them the Cardinal had perceived that
the agreement, which he believed to have been signed by the Queen, was a
false and forged document. "However," added she, "the Cardinal possesses
a considerable fortune, and he can very well pay you." These words reveal
the whole secret. The Countess had taken the necklace to herself, and
flattered herself that M. de Rohan, seeing himself deceived and cruelly
imposed upon, would determine to pay and make the beat terms he could,
rather than suffer a matter of this nature to become public.-"Secret
Correspondence of the Court of Louis XVI."]

The procureur general's information was severe on the Cardinal. The
Houses of Conde and Rohan and the majority of the nobility saw in this
affair only an attack on the Prince's rank, the clergy only a blow aimed
at the privileges of a cardinal. The clergy demanded that the unfortunate
business of the Prince Cardinal de Rohan should be submitted to
ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and the Archbishop of Narbonne, then
President of the Convocation, made representations upon the subject to the
King; the bishops wrote to his Majesty to remind him that a private
ecclesiastic implicated in the affair then pending would have a right to
claim his constitutional judges, and that this right was refused to a
cardinal, his superior in the hierarchical order. In short, the clergy
and the greater