An adventuress, a Mme. de La Motte, acquainted at court and also with the Prince Louis de Rohan, who had incurred the displeasure of the queen, informed the cardinal that Marie Antoinette was willing to again extend to him her favor.  She counterfeited notes, and even went so far as to appoint a meeting at midnight in the park at Versailles.  The supposed queen who appeared was no other than an English girl, who dropped a rose with the words:  “You know what that means.”  The cardinal was informed that the queen desired to buy the necklace, but that it was to be kept secret—­it was to be purchased for her by a great noble, who was to remain unknown.  All necessary papers were signed, and the necklace turned over to the Prince de Rohan, who, in turn, intrusted it to Mme. de La Motte to be given to the queen; but the agent was not long in having it taken apart, and soon her husband was selling diamonds in great quantities to English jewelers.

In time, as no payments were received and no favors were shown by the queen, an investigation followed.  The result was a trial which lasted nine months; the cardinal was declared not guilty, the signature of the queen false, Mme. de La Motte was sentenced to be whipped, branded, and imprisoned for life, and her husband was condemned to the galleys.  Nevertheless, much censure fell to the share of the queen.  It was the beginning of the end of her reign as a favorite whose faults could be condoned.  She was beginning to reap the fruits of her former dissipations.  In about 1787, when she least deserved it, she became the butt of calumny, intrigues, and pamphlets.

During these years she was the most devoted of mothers; she personally looked after her four children, watched by their bedsides when they were ill, shutting herself up with them in the chateau so that they would not communicate their disease to the children who played in the park.  In 1785 the king purchased Saint-Cloud and presented it to the queen, together with six millions in her own right, to enjoy and dispose of as she pleased.  That act added the last straw to the burden of resentment of the overwrought public; from that time she was known as “Madame Deficit.”  Also she was accused of having sent her brother, Joseph II., one hundred million livres in three years.  She was hissed at the opera.  In 1788 there were many who refused to dance with the queen.  In the preceding year a caricature was openly sold, showing Louis XVI. and his queen seated at a sumptuous table, while a starving crowd surrounded them; it bore the legend:  “The king drinks, the queen eats, while the people cry!” Calonne, minister of finance, an intimate friend of the Polignacs, but in disfavor with the queen, also made common cause with the enemies, in songs and perfidious insinuations.  Upon his fall, in 1787, the queen’s position became even worse.