“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 a blow she shattered the fond hopes he had been cherishing ever since the night of gems—of gems, forsooth!—in the Grove of Venus; thus she laid his ambition in ruins about him, and left the man himself half stunned.
Observing his disorder, the ponderous but kindly monarch rose.
“Come, my cousin,” he said more gently, “collect yourself. Sit down here and write what you may have to say in answer.”
And with that he passed into the library beyond, accompanied by the Queen and the two Ministers.
Alone, Rohan staggered forward and sank nervelessly into the chair. He took up a pen, pondered a moment, and began to write. But he did not yet see clear. He could not yet grasp the extent to which he had been deceived, could not yet believe that those treasured notes from Marie Antoinette were forgeries, that it was not the Queen who had met him in the Grove of Venus and given him the rose whose faded petals kept those letters company in a portfolio of red morocco. But at least it was clear to him that, for the sake of honour—the Queen's honour—he must assume it so; and in that assumption he now penned his statement.
When it was completed, himself he bore it to the King in the library.