What followed was a drama of surprises.  It was with as much astonishment as indignation that Marie Antoinette learned that Boehmer believed that she had secretly bought the necklace, which openly and formally she had refused, and that he was looking to her for the payment of its price.  And about a fortnight later it was like a thunder-clap that a summons came upon the Cardinal de Rohan, who had just been performing mass before the king and queen, to appear before them in Louis’s private cabinet, and that he found himself subjected to an examination by Louis himself, who demanded of him with great indignation an explanation of the circumstances that had led him to represent himself to Boehmer as authorized to buy a necklace for the queen.  Terrified and confused, he gave an explanation which was half a confession; but which was too complicated to be thoroughly intelligible.  He was ordered to retire into the next room and write out his statement.  His written narrative proved more obscure than his spoken words.  In spite of his prayers that he might be spared the degradation of being arrested while still clad in his pontifical habits, he was at once sent to the Bastile.  A day or two afterward Madame La Mothe was apprehended in the provinces, and Louis directed that a prosecution should be instantly commenced against all who had been concerned in the transaction.

For the queen’s name had been forged.  The cardinal did not deny that he had represented himself to Boehmer as employed by her for the purchase of the jewel which, as he said, she secretly coveted, and for the payment of its price by installments.  But, as his justification, he produced a letter desiring him to undertake the business, and signed “Marie Antoinette de France.”  He declared that he had never suspected the genuineness of this letter, though it was notorious that such an addition to their Christian names was used by none but the sons and daughters of the reigning sovereign, and never by a queen.  And eventually his whole story was found to be that Madame La Mothe had induced him to believe that she was in the queen’s confidence, and also that the queen coveted the necklace and was resolved to obtain it; but that she was unable at once to pay for it; and that, being desirous to make amends to the cardinal for the neglect with which she had hitherto treated him, she had resolved on employing him to make arrangements with Boehmer for the instant delivery of the ornament, and for her payment of the price by installments.

This was strange enough to have excited the suspicions of most men.  What followed was stranger still.  Not content with forging the queen’s handwriting, Madame La Mothe had even, if one may say so, forged the queen herself.  She had assured the cardinal that Marie Antoinette had consented to grant him a secret interview; and at midnight, in the gardens of Versailles, had introduced him to a woman of notoriously bad character named Oliva, who in height resembled