Antal Szerb - The Queen's Necklace

The next day Rohan sent for Boehmer. His partner Bassenge came instead. Bassenge dared venture only one question:

“Does Your Eminence have complete confidence in the person who went between you and the Queen?”

Rohan replied that he had never spoken directly with the Queen, but said he had every bit as much confidence in her as if he had. Finally he agreed to ask Sainte-James to give the jewellers more time. A few days later he actually did meet Sainte-James at a social gathering, and asked him to be patient for a little longer.

After this, on 6th August, Jeanne went back home to Bar. Why did she not make her escape? Why not flee to England? Was the reason, as we rather suspect, her wonderful mayfly insouciance, or was this deliberate cunning? Running away would amount to a full confession, but while she stayed she testified to her innocence and shifted responsibility onto Rohan. Besides, she continued to assume that Rohan and his family would quietly put everything right behind the scenes. Perhaps too she comforted herself with the thought that tomorrow everything would be just the same as it had been the day before.

Meanwhile Rohan must have been living through the greatest crisis of his life. The jewellers’ doubts must surely have been driving nails into his head. He turned for advice to his master, Cagliostro. Cagliostro knew nothing of the necklace business, as will become clear beyond all doubt in the course of other things. Jeanne obviously had not wanted a second fraudster involved, and had succeeded in persuading Rohan to keep him in the dark. Cagliostro, as we have mentioned, had prophesied a triumphant outcome to the whole undertaking, of whose real nature he was unaware. Which was somewhat careless, for a prophet.

But now Rohan kept it a secret from him no longer. He told him everything, with perfect candour, and showed him the letters. And then something very surprising happened. Cagliostro thought the matter through, and gave Rohan the wisest and most sensible advice anyone could have given in the circumstances. No Apis ram, no Dove, no candles, no Zobiachel. The magician who posed as a man possessed was secretly a shrewd and circumspect individual. It was as if, between two lines of iambic pentameter, a Shakespearean actor were to pull off his wig and declare: “If you please, we will now continue in plain English!” Perhaps Cagliostro actually liked Rohan. He certainly had good reason to.

“The Queen could never have signed this letter ‘Marie-Antoinette de France ’,” he told him. “You have been duped, without question. You have been the victim of a fraud, and there is only one thing you can do. Throw yourself at the King’s feet without delay and confess everything.”

There was no doubt that that was what he should have done. The kindly Louis XVI, seeing Rohan’s sincere remorse and distress, would clearly make sure the matter was settled quietly and without fuss — and he would do so in his own interest. Once again we find ourselves at a moment in time when everything might still have turned out for the good — and didn’t.

It was Rohan’s good-heartedness — his eighteenth-century sentimentality and gallantry — that stopped him taking the only appropriate step.

“If I did that,” he told Cagliostro, “that woman would be destroyed.”

“If you don’t want to do it yourself, then a friend could do it for you,” the magus replied, discreetly offering his services.

(The scene he proposed was grotesque — Cagliostro before the King, recounting the story of the necklace to the full accompaniment of oriental mumbo-jumbo!)

“No, no, let me think about it a bit longer,” said the Cardinal.

This vacillation was his undoing. But how could anyone who had lived such a sheltered life, whose every choice had been made for him by fairy godmothers, come to a quick decision? On the other hand, like Milton’s Adam, he was also destroyed by an act of gallantry, protecting the sinful Eve.

This naturally raises the question of whether there was a rather more intimate relationship between Jeanne and the Cardinal. Funck-Brentano, as befits a Frenchman, devotes an entire chapter to the debate. Jeanne did later testify before the court that she had been Rohan’s mistress (though he rejected the allegation with considerable dignity). According to Funck-Brentano this ‘confession’ was meaningless — it was entirely in her interest to appear closely identified with the Cardinal, the better to take advantage of his privileged position. Her confidant Beugnot claimed to have seen some passionate love letters Rohan had written her, but according to Funck-Brentano that too signified nothing, since we know how much she enjoyed composing fictitious billets-doux. Besides, it was part of her nature to be forever making up romantic stories about herself. Against this is the fact that until almost the last minute the Cardinal had been supplying her with pocket money, but this was in the sort of petty amounts that a grandee might casually dole out to a passing beggar, hardly to a mistress. Jeanne asked for and accepted these small sums so that he would not realise that she had meanwhile made herself rich at his expense.

In the last analysis we can never be completely sure what there was between them, but this much is clear: no one could have behaved with greater gallantry or selflessness than Rohan did at the critical moment. If we are to weigh his character in the balance, there is certainly much good to be said of him.

Now to return to Mme Campan. She was a quiet, modest woman, a little grey sparrow among the peacocks, falcons and brilliantly coloured parrots of the Court. She is famous for her memoirs. Everyone who has written about the period and about Marie-Antoinette, including of course ourselves, has gone to her first and foremost for the more intimate details. She is rather like the ‘I’ in old-fashioned novels who narrates the story but does not directly play a part in it. But now, at this critical juncture, the modest little ‘I’ detonates the bomb. True, there was nothing else she could have done. So perhaps we might briefly introduce her, as she steps onto the stage.

Jeanne-Louise-Henriette Genet was born in 1752, and went to Versailles at the age of fifteen to become reader to Mesdames , the daughters of Louis XV. She was a remarkably cultivated young lady. Louis XV once stopped and asked her:

“Is it true that you speak four or five languages?”

“Only two, Your Highness,” the girl replied modestly.

“Quite enough to annoy any husband.”

In due course he married her off to the young M Campan, whose extremely learned father was secretary to the Royal Cabinet. She received five thousand livres and was appointed Première Femme de Chambre .

Marie-Antoinette had invited Mme Campan to her house in the mock village at Le Petit Trianon, to try out her part as Rosina on her. During the proceedings she casually asked what “this Boehmer” wanted: she knew Mme Campan had sent him but she had refused to see him. So Mme Campan related the full story. Marie-Antoinette became extremely agitated, and immediately sent a message to the man summoning him on some pretext connected with his trade. He duly appeared the next day, 9th August. The Queen questioned him in detail and told him to put everything he knew in writing. According to Mme Campan, the “shameless and dangerous jeweller” simply kept repeating, to whatever was said:

“Madame, this is not the time for play-acting. Would you be so kind as to admit that you have my necklace and to provide me with some assistance, or I shall be utterly bankrupt.”

According to Mme Campan, Marie-Antoinette discussed the matter with the Abbé Vermond and Baron Breteuil, both of them sworn enemies of the Cardinal. She also wrote to Joseph II suggesting that he and the King should decide between them what should be done. Mme Campan saw yet another little twist of fate in the fact that Vergennes, that superb diplomat who had saved the country from the danger of so many wars, was not then at Court. He, surely, would have been the person to find a compromise.