“Eight or ten years had elapsed from the time Her Majesty had last seen the Cardinal to speak to him, with the exception of the casual glance as she drove by when he furtively introduced himself into the garden at the fete at Trianon, till he was brought to the King’s cabinet when arrested, and interrogated, and confronted with her face to face.  The Prince started when he saw her.  The comparison of her features with those of the guilty wretch who had dared to personate her in the garden at Versailles completely destroyed his self-possession.  Her Majesty’s person was become fuller, and her face was much longer than that of the infamous D’Oliva.  He could neither speak nor write an intelligible reply to the questions put to him.  All he could utter, and that only in broken accents, was, ‘I’ll pay!  I’ll pay Messieurs Bassange.’

“Had he not speedily recovered himself, all the mystery in which this affair has been left, so injuriously to the Queen, might have been prevented.  His papers would have declared the history of every particular, and distinctly established the extent of his crime and the thorough innocence of Marie Antoinette of any connivance at the fraud, or any knowledge of the necklace.  But when the Cardinal was ordered by the King’s Council to be put under arrest, his self-possession returned.  He was given in charge to an officer totally unacquainted with the nature of the accusation.  Considering only the character of his prisoner as one of the highest dignitaries of the Church, from ignorance and inexperience, he left the Cardinal an opportunity to write a German note to his factotum, the Abbe Georgel.  In this note the trusty secretary was ordered to destroy all the letters of Cagliostro, Madame de Lamotte, and the other wretched associates of the infamous conspiracy; and the traitor was scarcely in custody when every evidence of his treason had disappeared.  The note to Georgel saved his master from expiating his offence at the Place de Grave.

“The consequences of the affair would have been less injurious, however, had it been managed, even as it stood, with better judgment and temper.  But it was improperly entrusted to the Baron de Breteuil and the Abbe Vermond, both sworn enemies of the Cardinal.  Their main object was the ruin of him they hated, and they listened only to their resentments.  They never weighed the danger of publicly prosecuting an individual whose condemnation would involve the first families in France, for he was allied even to many of the Princes of the blood.  They should have considered that exalted personages, naturally feeling as if any crime proved against their kinsman would be a stain upon themselves, would of course resort to every artifice to exonerate the accused.  To criminate the Queen was the only and the obvious method.  Few are those nearest the Crown who are not most jealous of its wearers!  Look at the long civil wars of York and Lancaster, and the short reign of Richard.  The downfall of Kings meets less resistance than that of their inferiors.