A stranger event than a revolution in politics has happened at Paris.  The Cardinal de Rohan is committed to the Bastile for forging the Queen’s hand to obtain a collar of diamonds;[1] I know no more of the story:  but, as he is very gallant, it is guessed (here I mean) that it was a present for some woman.  These circumstances are little Apostolic, and will not prop the falling Church of Rome.  They used to forge donations and decretals.  This is a new manoeuvre.  Nor were Cardinals wont to be treated so cavalierly for peccadilloes.  The House of Rohan is under a cloud:  his Eminence’s cousin, the Prince of Guemene,[2] was forced to fly, two or three years ago, for being the Prince of Swindlers. Our Nabobs are not treated so roughly; yet I doubt they collect diamonds still more criminally.

[Footnote 1:  “A collar of diamonds.” The transaction here referred to—­though, strangely enough, it is looked on as one that had a political interest—­was, in fact, a scheme of a broken-down gambler to swindle a jeweller out of a diamond necklace of great value.  The Court jeweller had collected a large number of unusually fine diamonds, which he had made into a necklace, in the hope that the Queen would buy it, and the Cardinal de Rohan, who was a member of one of the noblest families in France, but a man of a character so notoriously profligate, that, when he was ambassador at Vienna, Maria Teresa had insisted on his recall, was mixed up in the fraud in a manner scarcely compatible with ignorance of its character.  He was brought to trial with the more evident agents in the fraud, and the whole history of the French Parliaments scarcely records any transaction more disgraceful than his acquittal.  For some months the affair continued to furnish pretext to obscure libellers to calumniate the Queen with insinuations not less offensive than dangerous from their vagueness; all such writers finding a ready paymaster in the infamous Duc d’Orleans.]

[Footnote 2:  The Prince de Guemenee, a very profligate and extravagant man, by 1782 had become so hopelessly embarrassed that he was compelled to leave Paris, and consequently the Princess, his wife, who ever since the birth of Louis XVI. had held the office of “Governess of the Royal Children,” a life-appointment, was forced to resign it, much to the pleasure of the Queen, who disapproved of her character, and bestowed the office on Mme. de Polignac, and when, at the beginning of the Revolution, she also fled from Paris, on Mme. de Tourzel.  But, in truth, under Marie Antoinette the office was almost a sinecure.  She considered superintendence of the education of her children as among the most important of her duties; and how judiciously she performed it is seen in an admirable letter of hers to Mme. de Tourzel, which can hardly be surpassed for its discernment and good-feeling. (See the Editor’s “Life of Marie Antoinette,” iii. 55.)]