“Indeed, she may be constrained to return it, after all, unless the Bohmers are prepared to be reasonable.”
If His Eminence was a little dismayed by this, at least any nascent uneasiness was quieted. He consented to see the jewellers in the matter, and on July 10th—three weeks before the first instalment was due—he presented himself at the Grand Balcon to convey the Queen's wishes to the Bohmers.
Bohmer scarcely troubled to prevent disgust from showing on his keen, swarthy countenance. Had not his client been a queen and her intermediary a cardinal, he would, no doubt, have afforded it full expression.
“The price agreed upon was already greatly below the value of the necklace,” he grumbled. “I should never have accepted it but for the difficulties under which we have been placed by the purchase of the stones—the money we owe and the interest we are forced to pay. A further reduction is impossible.”
The handsome Cardinal was suave, courtly, regretful, but firm. Since that was the case, there would be no alternative but to return the necklace.
Bohmer took fright. The annulment of the sale would bring him face to face with ruin. Reluctantly, feeling that he was being imposed upon, he reduced the price by two hundred thousand livres, and even consented to write the Queen the following letter, whose epistolary grace suggests the Cardinal's dictation:
MADAME,—We are happy to hazard the thought that our submission with zeal and respect to the last arrangement proposed constitutes a proof of our devotion and obedience to the orders of Your Majesty. And we have genuine satisfaction in thinking that the most beautiful set of diamonds in existence will serve to adorn the greatest and best of queens.
Now it happened that Bohmer was about to deliver personally to the Queen some jewels with which the King was presenting her on the occasion of the baptism of his nephew. He availed himself of that opportunity, two days later, personally to hand his letter to Her Majesty. But chance brought the Comptroller-General into the room before she had opened it, and as a result the jeweller departed while the letter was still unread.
Afterwards, in the presence of Madame de Campan, who relates the matter in her memoirs, the Queen opened the note, pored over it a while, and then, perhaps with vivid memories of Bohmer's threat of suicide:
“Listen to what that madman Bohmer writes to me,” she said, and read the lines aloud. “You guessed the riddles in the 'Mercure' this morning. I wonder could you guess me this one.”