he won in a raffle, and tried so perseveringly to induce the Queen to
buy it, that he became a real torment. She seems to have thought him a
little cracked on the subject; and one day, when he obtained a private
audience, he besought her either to buy the necklace or to let him go
and drown himself in the Seine. Out of all patience, the Queen intimated
that he would have been wiser to secure a customer to begin with; that
she would not buy; that if he chose to throw himself into the Seine it
would be entirely on his own responsibility; and that as for the
necklace, he had better pick it to pieces and sell it. The poor German
(for Boehmer was a native of Saxony) departed in deep distress, but
accepted neither his own suggestion nor the Queen's.

For some months after this, the court jewelers busied themselves in
peddling their necklace about among the courts of Europe. But none of
these concerns found it convenient just then to pay out three hundred
and sixty thousand dollars for a concatenation of eight hundred
diamonds; and still the sparkling elephant remained on the jewelers'
hands.

Time passed on. Madame Campan, one of the Queen's confidential ladies,
happened to meet Boehmer one day, and the necklace was alluded to.

"What is the state of affairs about the necklace," asked the lady.

"Highly satisfactory," replied Boehmer, whose serenity of countenance
Madame Campan had already remarked. "I have sold it to the Sultan at
Constantinople, for his favorite Sultana."

This the lady thought rather curious, but she was glad the thing was
disposed of, and said no more.

Time passed on again. In the beginning of August 1785, Boehmer took the
trouble to call on Madame Campan at her country-house, somewhat to her
surprise.

"Has the Queen given you no message for me?" he inquired.

"No!" said the lady; "What message should she give?"

"An answer to my note," said the jeweler.

Madame remembered a note which the Queen had received from Boehmer a
little while before, along with some ornaments sent by his hands to her
as a present from the King. It congratulated her on having the finest
diamonds in Europe, and hoped she would remember him. The Queen could
make nothing of it, and destroyed it. Madame Campan therefore replied,

"There is no answer, the Queen burned the note. She does not even
understand what you meant by writing that note."

This statement very quickly elicited from the now startled German a
story