He had among his intimate acquaintances a bold, dashing woman by the name of Madame de la Motte, who pretended to be a countess of the family of Valois. She had married a man by the name of La Motte, who was intimate with the notorious quacks Villette and Cagliostro, who were then in the zenith of their fame. The Countess was well known in Paris as a woman of immorality and deeply versed in the arts of intrigue.
She became acquainted with the facts of the Queen’s admiration for the necklace and the infatuation of Rohan for the Queen; and upon these she arranged her scheme for duping the Prince and obtaining possession of the property. She soon won the confidence of Rohan, and represented to him the Queen’s intense longing for the necklace, and the favor he would gain in loaning the means which would enable her to obtain the coveted jewel and pay for it at her leisure. She promised, furthermore, through the aid of Cagliostro, to obtain an interview with the Queen on this subject. The promised interview took place one night in August, 1784, in the garden of Versailles; but the Queen was represented by a low character by the name of D’Oliva, who was almost a counterpart of Marie Antoinette.
Rohan was completely deceived, and agreed to purchase the necklace; which he did not long after, giving his notes for half-yearly payments, and receiving as security a bond from the pretended Queen, which, however, was forged by La Motte’s husband. The Prince Cardinal then intrusted the jewel to the Countess for conveyance to the Queen; but she passed it over to her husband, who lost no time in hurrying to London, where he immediately converted its gems into money. The Countess, however, did not hasten to join her husband, but remained at Paris, rejoicing in her audacity and good fortune, and with the hope of plucking more feathers from her princely victim. Nearly a year passed away before the secret was discovered.
Böhmer, anxious for his pay, approached the King; and the fraud was at once discovered. The Cardinal Prince was arrested just as he was about to perform mass before the court, and sent to the Bastile. After a short imprisonment, he was tried by a court of justice, but acquitted of criminal offence. However, he was sent in disgrace to reside at an abbey of his in Auvergne. Madame la Motte paid dearly for her crime and her dalliance in Paris after the prize had been secured, for she was sentenced to be branded on the shoulders, scourged in public, and condemned to perpetual imprisonment. She bore her trials with fortitude, and had the good fortune to escape from her prison in less than a year after her sentence. She joined her husband in London, and there published a bitter pamphlet against the French Court, and especially the Queen. It is generally supposed that the Countess died in London in 1791, either from a fever or the result of an accident caused by a drunken debauch. But a startling story comes from Russia, giving another account of the last moments of this celebrated adventuress.
It appears that the Emperor Alexander, disgusted with the conduct of three lady reformers who attempted to establish a revolution in religious opinion at St. Petersburg, banished them to the Crimea. They were Princess Galitzin, Madame de Krudener, and a mysterious personage who went by the name of Countess Gauchin. After death, which occurred during her banishment to the Crimea, the strange Countess proved to be the notorious De la Motte, who many years before had been publicly branded on the Place de la Grève in Paris.
It would appear from statements in mediæval history that necklaces were not much known in France, or at least were not in fashion, until the times of Charles VIII. For one of the earliest known in that country was that given by the above-named monarch to the beautiful Agnes Sorel. The uncut gems, which were of great beauty and value, weighed heavily upon the delicate neck and bosom of the fair creature; and she complained of it to her lover as being an instrument of torture as well as a decoration. The King, fascinated with the charming effect of the gems, together with the natural entrancing beauty of the maiden, begged her to wear it, saying, with a supplicating smile, “One might surely bear some little inconvenience to please those we love.”
The late Madame Thiers possessed a rare jewel, which came to her by inheritance, and which she wisely bequeathed to the Louvre collection. This jewel is a necklace of precious stones of the sixteenth century workmanship, and is regarded as without a rival in Europe except among the regalia preserved at St. Petersburg.
There are a great many diamonds owned in France among the nobility, the landed proprietors, and the successful merchants. Paris has been for a long time the chief market in the world for the sale of the gem; and most of the stones cut at Amsterdam find their way, primarily, to the Parisian bazaars. Many of these are taken as securities by the rich; but the most of them are absorbed by the requirements of fashion and the love of display.
Adventurers, during the tide of success, prefer to invest their gains in gems, and especially diamonds, rather than in lands or bonds. There is a twofold reason for this preference. Great wealth can be concealed in a handful of gems which can be easily transported; and the glitter of the stones adds vastly to the fascinations of the investment. Disastrous wars and commercial panics generally betray hoards of this description; and new sources of the precious stones are thus opened to commerce. It is reported that the Bonaparte family, since the disaster at Sedan, have thrown upon the market diamonds to the value of several millions of dollars.