Free How to Ruin a Queen: Marie Antoinette and the Diamond Necklace Affair by Jonathan Beckman

The language of her memoir – she caught the comte’s eye‘in a particular manner’; he ‘honoured her with a distinctionshe had not sought’ – seems to confirm suspicions. But the fling was too fleeting for Jeanne to extract any useful introductions– or even sufficient booty to supply her for the foreseeable future. By the early summer of 1782, again running short of money, Jeanne wrote to Rohan and asked to meet with him. The delay of nearly a year between her introduction to the cardinal and her return to him for help indicates that even Jeanne – who could be as obtuse as anyone – had realised that the cardinal’s promises were vacuous. At least, perhaps, she could present herself as worthy of the alms that he was entrusted to distribute. Jeanne ordered Beugnot to lend her his horse and trap – ‘there are only two ways in this country of demanding charity’, she told him, ‘at the doors of the churchand in a carriage’.
    The Hôtel de Rohan-Strasbourg stands on rue Vieille du Temple in the Marais, on the eastern side of a quadrangle of Rohan residences. The complex was a statement of the Rohan’s princely independence. One entered the main palace, the Hôtel Soubise, through a narrow archway in the stout, concave exterior wall that seemed to clasp visitors inwards. The gate widened onto a large cobbled courtyard – the biggest in Paris – surrounded by a horseshoe colonnade which led up to the neoclassical facade mounted with allegorical representatives of Might, Wisdom, Knowledge, Renown, Watchfulness, Glory and Magnificence. Within this enclave, the Rohan ruled supreme. The Hôtel de Rohan-Strasbourg, lent to the bishops of Strasbourg by their Soubise cousins, was narrower and more austere, though it had stables large enough to house a string of fifty-two horses. Its interior was plushly furnished: the bedsheets were of crimson damask; tapestries from the Gobelins factory and paintings by Boucher hung on the walls. The Cabinet des Singes, where piquet was played and tea sipped, had been painted with ludic freshness by Christophe Huet. The decoration combined two of the eighteenth century’s obsessions: the Orient and humanoid monkeys. Frolicsome Chinamen bounced on stilts and seesaws in pastoral contentment and smartly dressed simians walked tightropes blindfolded, performed tricks with dogs and twanged musical instruments. A small oratory was concealed behind a panel, giving a clear sense of the relative importance that the Rohan cardinals placed on private prayer.
    Any anxiety Jeanne may have felt in approaching Rohan was well concealed. His secretary Georgel recalled that Jeanne did not possess‘striking beauty’ – a consideration that held sway with the cardinal – ‘but she found herself adorned with all the graces of youth: her face was lively and attractive; she spoke with ease; an air of good faith in her stories placed persuasion on her lips’. This time, Rohan was moved by Jeanne’s account of her childhood ordeals and irked by the cursory attention which Louis XVI had given a Valois. For the first time in her campaign to insinuate herself at Court, Jeanne received some practical counsel. Obtain an interview with the queen, Rohan advised, though he frankly admitted that he could not fix one himself because she so detested him. He also suggested approaching the contrôleur-général (the finance minister), and promised to draw up a memorandum in her cause.
    The cardinal kept his word, and rapped on doors on Jeanne’s behalf. But the French treasury had far greater worries than whether Jeanne had the money to quilt the walls of her apartment. There were four contrôleurs-général between 1781 and 1783: Jacques Necker, Jean-François Joly de Fleury (a decrepit, unpleasant man who, wits remarked, was neither delightful nor flourishing), Henri d’Ormesson and Charles Alexandre de Calonne. * The rapid turnover testifies to the unmanageable nature of the task each was presented with.