The Historical Nights' Entertainment, Rafael Sabatini [freenovel24 .txt] 📗

the whole of this burden

upon his own shoulders. Hence his resources were in a crippled

condition, and it was beyond his power to advance so considerable

a sum at such short notice. Nor did he succeed in obtaining a

loan within the little time at his disposal.

 

His anxieties on this score were increased by a letter from the

Queen which Madame de la Motte brought him on July 30th, in which

Her Majesty wrote that the first instalment could not be paid until

October 1st; but that on that date a payment of seven hundred

thousand livres - half of the revised price -would unfailingly be

made. Together with this letter, Madame de la Motte handed him

thirty thousand livres, interest on the instalment due, with which

to pacify the jewellers.

 

But the jewellers were not so easily to be pacified. Bohmer, at the

end of his patience, definitely refused to grant the postponement

or to receive the thirty thousand livres other than as on account

of the instalment due.

 

The Cardinal departed in vexation. Something must be done at once,

or his secret relations with the Queen would be disclosed, thus

precipitating a catastrophe and a scandal. He summoned Madame de

la Motte, flung her into a panic with his news and sent her away

to see what she could do. What she actually did would have

surprised him. Realizing that a crisis had been reached calling

for bold measures, she sent for Bassenge, the milder of the two

partners. He came to the Rue Neuve Saint-Gilles, protesting that

he was being abused.

 

“Abused?” quoth she, taking him up on the word. “Abused, do you

say?” She laughed sharply. “Say duped, my friend; for that is what

has happened to you. You are the victim of a swindle.”

 

Bassenge turned white; his prominent eyes bulged in his rather

pasty face.

 

“What are you saying, madame?” His voice was husky.

 

“The Queen’s signature on the note in the Cardinal’s possession

is a forgery.”

 

“A forgery! The Queen’s signature? Oh, mon Dieu!” He stared at

her, and his knees began to tremble. “How do you know, madame?”

 

“I have seen it,” she answered.

 

“But - but - “

 

His nerveless limbs succumbing under him, he sank without ceremony

to a chair that was opportunely near him. With the same lack of

ceremony, mechanically, in a dazed manner, he mopped the sweat

that stood in beads on his brow, then raised his wig and mopped

his head.

 

“There is no need to waste emotion,” said she composedly. “The

Cardinal de Rohan is very rich. You must look to him. He will

pay you.”

 

“Will he?”

 

Hope and doubt were blended in the question.

 

“What else?” she asked. “Can you conceive that he will permit

such a scandal to burst about his name and the name of the Queen?”

 

Bassenge saw light. The rights and wrongs of the case, and who

might be the guilty parties, were matters of very secondary

importance. What mattered was that the firm should recover the

14,000,000 livres for which the necklace had been sold; and

Bassenge was quick to attach full value to the words of Madame

de la Motte.

 

Unfortunately for everybody concerned, including the jewellers

themselves, Bohmer’s mind was less supple. Panic-stricken by

Bassenge’s report, he was all for the direct method. There was

no persuading him to proceed cautiously, and to begin by visiting

the Cardinal. He tore away to Versailles at once, intent upon

seeing the Queen. But the Queen, as we know, had had enough of

Bohmer. He had to content himself with pouring his mixture of

intercessions and demands into the ears of Madame de Campan.

 

“You have been swindled, Bohmer,” said the Queen’s lady promptly.

“Her Majesty never received the necklace.”

 

Bohmer would not be convinced. Disbelieving, and goaded to fury,

he returned to Bassenge.

 

Bassenge, however, though perturbed, retained his calm. The

Cardinal, he insisted, was their security, and it was impossible

to doubt that the Cardinal would fulfil his obligations at all

costs, rather than be overwhelmed by a scandal.

 

And this, no doubt, is what would have happened but for that hasty

visit of Bohmer’s to Versailles. It ruined everything. As a

result of it, Bohmer was summoned to wait instantly upon the Queen

in the mater of some paste buckles.

 

The Queen received the jeweller in private, and her greeting proved

that the paste buckles were a mere pretext. She demanded to know

the meaning of his words to Madame de Campan.

 

Bohmer could not rid himself of the notion that he was being trifled

with. Had he not written and himself delivered to the Queen a

letter in which he thanked her for purchasing the necklace, and had

not that letter remained unanswered - a silent admission that the

necklace was in her hands? In his exasperation he became insolent.

 

“The meaning, madame? The meaning is that I require payment for my

necklace, that the patience of my creditors is exhausted, and that

unless you order the money to be paid, I am a ruined man!”

 

Marie Antoinette considered him in cold, imperious anger.

 

“Are you daring to suggest that your necklace is in my possession?”

 

Bohmer was white to the lips, his hands worked nervously.

 

“Does Your Majesty deny it?”

 

“You are insolent!” she exclaimed. “You will be good enough to

answer questions, not to ask them. Answer me, then. Do you suggest

that I have your necklace?”

 

But a desperate man is not easily intimidated.

 

“No, madame; I affirm it! It was the Countess of Valois who - “

 

“Who is the Countess of Valois?”

 

That sudden question, sharply uttered, was a sword of doubt through

the heart of Bohmer’s confidence. He stared wide-eyed a moment at

the indignant lady before him, then collected himself, and made as

plain a tale as he could of the circumstances under which he had

parted with the necklace Madame de la Motte’s intervention, the

mediation of the Cardinal de Rohan with Her Majesty’s signed

approval of the terms, and the delivery of the necklace to His

Eminence for transmission to the Queen.

 

Marie Antoinette listened in increasing horror and anger. A flush

crept into her pale cheeks.

 

“You will prepare and send me a written statement of what you have

just told me,” she said. “You have leave to go.”

 

That interview took place on August 9th. The 15th was the Feast of

the Assumption, and also the name-day of the Queen, therefore a

gala day at Court, bringing a concourse of nobility to Versailles.

Mass was to be celebrated in the royal chapel at ten o’clock, and

the celebrant, as by custom established for the occasion, was the

Grand Almoner of France, the Cardinal de Rohan.

 

But at ten o’clock a meeting was being held in the King’s cabinet,

composed of the King and Queen, the Baron de Breteuil, and the

Keeper of the Seals, Miromesnil. They were met, as they believed,

to decide upon a course of action in the matter of a diamond

necklace. In reality, these puppets in the hands of destiny were

helping to decide the fate of the French monarchy.

 

The King, fat, heavy, and phlegmatic, sat in a gilded chair by an

ormolu-encrusted writing-table. His bovine eyes were troubled.

Two wrinkles of vexation puckered the flesh above his great nose.

Beside, and slightly behind him, stood the Queen, white and

imperious, whilst facing them stood Monsieur de Breteuil, reading

aloud the statement which Bohmer had drawn up.

 

When he had done, there was a moment’s utter silence. Then the

King spoke, his voice almost plaintive.

 

“What is to be done, then? But what is to be done?”

 

It was the Queen who answered him, harshly and angrily.

 

“When the Roman purple and a princely title are but masks to cover

a swindler, there is only one thing to be done. This swindler must

be exposed and punished.”

 

“But,” the King faltered, “we have not heard the Cardinal.”

 

“Can you think that Bohmer, that any man, would dare to lie upon

such a matter?”

 

“But consider, madame, the Cardinal’s rank and family,” calmly

interposed the prudent Miromesnil; “consider the stir, the scandal

that must ensue if this matter is made public.”

 

But the obedient daughter of Marie Therese, hating Rohan at her

mother’s bidding and for her mother’s sake, was impatient of any

such wise considerations.

 

“What shall the scandal signify to us?” she demanded. The King

looked at Breteuil.

 

“And you, Baron? What is your view?”

 

Breteuil, Rohan’s mortal enemy, raised his shoulders and flipped

the document.

 

“In the face of this, Sire, it seems to me that the only course is

to arrest the Cardinal.”

 

“You believe, then - ” began the King, and checked, leaving the

sentence unfinished.

 

But Breteuil had understood.

 

“I know that the Cardinal must be pressed for money,” he said.

“Ever prodigal in his expenditure, he is further saddled with the

debts of the Prince de Guimenee.”

 

“And you can believe,” the King cried, “that a Prince of the House

of Rohan, however pressed for money, could - Oh, it is unimaginable!”

 

“Yet has he not stolen my name?” the Queen cut in. “Is he not proven

a common, stupid forger?”

 

“We have not heard him,” the King reminded her gently.

 

“And His Eminence might be able to explain,” ventured Miromesnil.

“It were certainly prudent to give him the opportunity.”

 

Slowly the King nodded his great, powdered head. “Go and find him.

Bring him at once!” he bade Breteuil; and Breteuil bowed and

departed.

 

Very soon he returned, and he held the door whilst the handsome

Cardinal, little dreaming what lay before him, serene and calm, a

commanding figure in his cassock of scarlet watered silk, rustled

forward into the royal presence, and so came face to face with the

Queen for the first time since that romantic night a year ago in

the Grove of Venus.

 

Abruptly the King launched his thunderbolt.

 

“Cousin,” he asked, “what purchase is this of a diamond necklace

that you are said to have made in the Queen’s name?”

 

King and Cardinal looked into each other’s eyes, the King’s

narrowing, the Cardinal’s dilating, the King leaning forward in his

chair, elbows on the table, the Cardinal standing tense and suddenly

rigid.

 

Slowly the colour ebbed from Rohan’s face, leaving it deathly pale.

His eyes sought the Queen, and found her contemptuous glance, her

curling lip. Then at last his handsome head sank a little forward.

 

“Sire,” he said unsteadily, “I see that I have been duped. But I

have duped nobody.”

 

“You have no reason to be troubled, then. You need but to explain.”

 

Explain! That was precisely what he could not do. Besides, what

was the nature of the explanation demanded of him? Whilst he stood

stricken there, it was the Queen who solved this question.

 

“If, indeed, you have been duped,” she said scornfully, her colour

high, her eyes like points of steel, “you have been self-duped. But

even then it is beyond belief that self-deception could have urged

you to the lengths of passing yourself off as my intermediary - you,

who should know yourself to be the last man in France I should

employ, you to whom I have not spoken once in eight years.” Tears

of anger glistened in her eyes; her voice shrilled up. “And yet,

since you have not denied it, since you put forward this pitiful

plea that you have been duped, we must believe the unbelievable.”

 

Thus at