“Money, M. Boehmer?  Your last accounts against the Queen were discharged long ago.”

“Madame, you are not in the secret.  A man who is ruined for want of payment of fifteen hundred thousand francs cannot be said to be satisfied.”

“Have you lost your senses?” said I.  “For what can the Queen owe you so extravagant a sum?”

“For my necklace, madame,” replied Boehmer, coolly.

“What!” I exclaimed, “that necklace again, which you have teased the Queen about so many years!  Did you not tell me you had sold it at Constantinople?”

“The Queen desired me to give that answer to all who should speak to me on the subject,” said the wretched dupe.  He then told me that the Queen wished to have the necklace, and had had it purchased for her by Monseigneur, the Cardinal de Rohan.

“You are deceived,” I exclaimed; “the Queen has not once spoken to the Cardinal since his return from Vienna; there is not a man at her Court less favourably looked upon.”

“You are deceived yourself, madame,” said Boehmer; “she sees him so much in private that it was to his Eminence she gave thirty thousand francs, which were paid me as an instalment; she took them, in his presence, out of the little secretaire of Sevres porcelain next the fireplace in her boudoir.”

“And the Cardinal told you all this?”

“Yes, madame, himself.”

“What a detestable plot!” cried I.

“Indeed, to say the truth, madame, I begin to be much alarmed, for his Eminence assured me that the Queen would wear the necklace on Whit-Sunday, but I did not see it upon her, and it was that which induced me to write to her Majesty.”

He then asked me what he ought to do.  I advised him to go on to Versailles, instead of returning to Paris, whence he had just arrived; to obtain an immediate audience from the Baron de Breteuil, who, as head of the King’s household, was the minister of the department to which Boehmer belonged, and to be circumspect; and I added that he appeared to me extremely culpable,—­not as a diamond merchant, but because being a sworn officer it was unpardonable of him to have acted without the direct orders of the King, the Queen, or the Minister.  He answered, that he had not acted without direct orders; that he had in his possession all the notes signed by the Queen, and that he had even been obliged to show them to several bankers in order to induce them to extend the time for his payments.  I urged his departure for Versailles, and he assured me he would go there immediately.  Instead of following my advice, he went to the Cardinal, and it was of this visit of Boehmer’s that his Eminence made a memorandum, found in a drawer overlooked by the Abbe Georgel when he burnt, by order of the Cardinal, all the papers which the latter had at Paris.  The memorandum was thus worded:  “On this day, 3d August, Boehmer went to Madame Campan’s country house, and she told him that the Queen had never had his necklace, and that he had been deceived.”