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Updated: June 25, 2025
It was the day before a great festival, and at the festival the queen wanted to wear the necklace. In the evening a trusted servant of the queen was to take the necklace from the dwelling of the Countess Lamotte-Valois. The countess herself requested the cardinal to be present, though unseen, when the delivery should take place.
"I thought they had been delivered to the Queen." "Who commissioned you?" "A lady, called the Comtesse de Lamotte-Valois, who handed me a letter from the Queen; and I thought I was gratifying her Majesty by taking this business on myself."
The goldsmith had been discovered to whom the countess had sold the golden setting of the necklace, and Bohmer and Bassenge had recognized in the fragments which remained their own work. It is unquestionable that the Countess Lamotte-Valois, through her intrigues and cunning, had been able to gain possession of the necklace, and that she had appropriated it to her own use.
"I thought they had been delivered to the Queen." "Who commissioned you?" "A lady, called the Comtesse de Lamotte-Valois, who handed me a letter from the Queen; and I thought I was gratifying her Majesty by taking this business on myself."
Madame de Campan had told them that the queen did not possess the necklace; that no Countess Lamotte-Valois had ever had an interview with the queen; that she had told the jewellers with extreme indignation that some one had been deceiving them; that they were the victims of a fraud, and that she would at once go to Trianon to inform the queen of this fearful intrigue.
"Sire," said the cardinal, after a pause, "I supposed that they were given to the queen." "Who intrusted you with this commission?" "Sire, a lady named Countess Lamotte-Valois. She gave me a letter from her majesty, and I believed that I should be doing the queen a favor if I should undertake the care of the commission which the queen had the grace to intrust to me."
She called herself the Countess of Lamotte-Valois; her husband, the Count Lamotte, was the royal sub-lieutenant in some little garrison city, and his salary was not able to support them except meagrely. The young lady was beautiful, intellectual, of noble manners, and it was natural that the cardinal should interest himself in behalf of the unfortunate daughter of the kings of France.
He brought the purchase to a conclusion; he paid the first instalment of six hundred thousand francs, and gave the necklace to the friend of the queen, the Countess Lamotte-Valois, after he had availed himself of her assistance in receiving from the lips and hand of the queen in the garden of Versailles the assurance of the royal favor.
The friends of the queen asserted that her majesty was completely innocent; that she had never spoken to the Countess Lamotte-Valois, and only once through her chamberlain. Weber had never sent her any assistance. But these friends of the queen were not numerous, and their number diminished every day.
"The moment," wrote the queen " the moment which I desired is not yet come. But I beg you to return at once to Paris, because I am in a secret affair, which concerns me personally, and which I shall intrust to you alone, and in which I need your assistance. The Countess Lamotte-Valois will give you the key to this riddle."
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