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FIRE IN THE EARTH
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not conscientiously offer a lower one. So she declined, to purchase it.
But
the little jeweler had been observant enough to note the glitter in the
queen's eyes as she beheld the glitter of the necklace; to remember,
too, the almost hysterical exclamation of joy as he opened the box and
took the jewel from it and placed it in the hand of one of her
ladies-in-waiting; to note the despair as she shrugged away the
opportunity to purchase it.
He
spoke of these things to his associates and they and he spoke of them
to various customers and they spoke of them to their friends.
Eventually it became excited talk among those on the outer fringes of
fashionable French royal society. But one of those who heard it was a
woman known as the Countess d'Valois. Actually, she was Mme de la
Motte, whose husband had assumed the title of Count d'Valois in order
to aid him in his polite swindling activities. Mme de la Motte was a
beautiful woman and, through her husband's bogus title and her own
attractiveness, as well as the historic gullibility of that individual,
was able to ingratiate herself with Prince Cardinal Louis Rene Edouard
de Rohan.
The
prince cardinal was a handsome man, gallant and courteous but, as many
said, conceited. He had been involved in a number of royal escapades,
the most serious of which was during his appearance as ambassador at
the court of Vienna. It was charged that while there he divulged court
secrets, whereupon he was disgraced. He now continued to live in
Paris, in modified social exile, so that many of his acquaintances were
said to have been of a questionable character. If Mme de la Motte,
alias the Countess of Valois, was an example, the rumor seemed to have
some basis in fact. For the countess herself was a
(174)
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