d. With infinite shyness and
circumspection, the countess gradually, half unwillingly, lets him find
out that it is the diamond necklace that the Queen wants. By diabolical
ingenuities of talk she leads de Rohan to the full conviction that if he
secures the Queen that necklace, he will thenceforward bask in all the
sunshine of court favor that she can show or control.

And at proper times sundry notes from the Queen are bestowed upon the
enraptured noodle. These are written in imitation of the Queen's
handwriting, by that Villette de Retaux who personated the Queen's
valet, and who was an expert at counterfeiting.

A last and sublime summit of impudent pretension is reached by a secret
interview which the Queen, says the countess, desires to grant to her
beloved servant the cardinal. This suggestion was rendered practicable
by one of those mere coincidences which are found though rarely in
history, and which are too improbable to put into a novel--the casual
discovery of a young woman of loose character who looked much like the
Queen. Whether her name was d'Essigny or Gay d'Oliva, is uncertain; she
is usually called by the latter. She was hired and taught; and with
immense precautions, this ostrich of a cardinal was one night introduced
into the gardens of the Trianon, and shown a little nook among the
thickets where a stately female in the similitude of the Queen received
him with soft spoken words of kindly greeting, allowed him to kneel and
kiss a fair and shapely hand, and showed no particular timidity of any
kind. Yet the interview had scarcely more than begun before steps were
heard. "Some one is coming," exclaimed the lady, "it is Monsieur and
Madame d'Artois--We must part. There"--she gave him a red rose--"You
know what that means! Farewell!" And away they went--Mademoiselle
d'Oliva to report to her employers, and the cardinal, in a seventh
heaven of ineffable tomfoolery, to his hotel.

But the interview, and the lovely little notes that came sometimes,
"fixed" the necklace business! And if further encouragement had been
needed, Cagliostro gave it. For the cardinal now consulted him about the
future of the affair, having indeed kept him fully informed about it for
a long time, as he did of all matters of interest. So the quack set up
his tabernacles of mummery in a parlor of the cardinal's hotel, and
conducted an Egyptian Invocation there all night long in solitude and
pomp; and in the morning he decreed (in s