her hand, she had a letter in her pocket which she forgot to give to
the cloaked man, who knelt, and kissed the skirt of her dress. She
murmured something; the cloaked Cardinal heard, or thought he heard,
her say: 'You may hope that the past is forgotten.'

Another shadow flitted past, whispering: 'Quick! Quick! Come on! Here
are Madame and Madame d'Artois!'

They dispersed. Later the Cardinal recognised the whispering shadow
that fled by, in Villette, the forger. How could he recognise a
fugitive shade vaguely beheld in a dark wood, on a sultry and starless
night? If he mistook the girl d'Oliva for the Queen, what is his
recognition of the shadow worth?

The conspirators had a jolly supper, and one Beugnot, a friend of
Jeanne, not conscious of the plot, escorted the Baronne d'Oliva back
to her rooms in Paris.

The trick, the transparent trick was played, and Jeanne could extract
from the Cardinal what money she wanted, in the name of the Queen that
gave him a rose in the Grove of Venus. Letters from the Queen were
administered at intervals by Jeanne, and the prelate never dreamed of
comparing them with the authentic handwriting of Marie Antoinette.

We naturally ask ourselves, was Rohan in love with the daughter of the
Valois? Does his passion account for his blindness? Most authors have
believed what Jeanne later proclaimed, that she was the Cardinal's
mistress. This the divine steadily denied. There was no shadow of
proof that they were even on familiar terms, except a number of erotic
letters, which Jeanne showed to a friend, Beugnot, saying that they
were from the Cardinal, and then burned. The Cardinal believed all
things, in short, and verified nothing, in obedience to his dominating
idea--the recovery of the Queen's good graces.

Meanwhile, Jeanne drew on him for large sums, which the Queen, she
said, needed for acts of charity. It was proved that Jeanne instantly
invested the money in her own name, bought a large house with another
loan, and filled it with splendid furniture. She was as extravagant as
she was greedy; _alieni appetens, sui profusa_.

The Cardinal was in Alsace, at his bishopric, when in
November-December 1784, Jeanne was brought acquainted with the
jewellers, Boehmer and Bassenge, who could not find a customer for
their enormous and very hideous necklace of diamonds, left on their
hands by the death of Louis XV. The European Courts were poor; Marie
Antoinette had again and again refused