We naturally ask ourselves, was Rohan in love with the daughter of the
Valois? Does his passion account for his blindness? Most authors have
believed what Jeanne later proclaimed, that she was the Cardinal's
mistress. This the divine steadily denied. There was no shadow of
proof that they were even on familiar terms, except a number of erotic
letters, which Jeanne showed to a friend, Beugnot, saying that they
were from the Cardinal, and then burned. The Cardinal believed all
things, in short, and verified nothing, in obedience to his dominating
idea--the recovery of the Queen's good graces.

Meanwhile, Jeanne drew on him for large sums, which the Queen, she
said, needed for acts of charity. It was proved that Jeanne instantly
invested the money in her own name, bought a large house with another
loan, and filled it with splendid furniture. She was as extravagant as
she was greedy; _alieni appetens, sui profusa_.

The Cardinal was in Alsace, at his bishopric, when in
November-December 1784, Jeanne was brought acquainted with the
jewellers, Böhmer and Bassenge, who could not find a customer for
their enormous and very hideous necklace of diamonds, left on their
hands by the death of Louis XV. The European Courts were poor; Marie
Antoinette had again and again refused to purchase a bauble like a
'comforter' made of precious stones, or to accept it from the King.
'We have more need of a ship of war,' she said, and would not buy,
though the jeweller fell on his knees, and threatened to drown
himself. There were then no American millionaires, and the thickest
and ugliest of necklaces was 'eating its head off,' for the stones had
been bought with borrowed money.

In the jewellers Jeanne found new victims; they, too, believed in her