_THE CARDINAL'S NECKLACE_


'Oh, Nature and Thackeray, which of you imitated the other?' One
inevitably thinks of the old question thus travestied, when one reads,
in the fifth edition, revised and augmented, of Monsieur
Funck-Brentano's _L'Affaire du Collier_,[10] the familiar story of
Jeanne de Valois, of Cardinal Rohan, and of the fatal diamond
necklace. Jeanne de Valois might have sat, though she probably did
not, for Becky Sharp. Her early poverty, her pride in the blood of
Valois, recall Becky's youth, and her boasts about 'the blood of the
Montmorencys.' Jeanne had her respectable friends, as Becky had the
Sedleys; like Becky, she imprudently married a heavy, unscrupulous
young officer; her expedients for living on nothing a year were
exactly those of Mrs. Rawdon Crawley; her personal charms, her fluent
tongue, her good nature, even, were those of that accomplished lady.
Finally she has her Marquis of Steyne in the wealthy, luxurious
Cardinal de Rohan; she robs him to a tune beyond the dreams of Becky,
and, incidentally, she drags to the dust the royal head of the fairest
and most unhappy of queens. Even now there seem to be people who
believe that Marie Antoinette was guilty, that she cajoled the
Cardinal, and robbed him of the diamonds, fateful as the jewels of
Eriphyle.

[Footnote 10: Hachette, Paris, 1903. The author has made valuable
additions and corrections.]

That theory is annihilated by M. Funck-Brentano. But the story is so
strangely complicated; the astuteness and the credulity of the
Cardinal are so oddly contrasted; a momentary folly of the Queen is so