'that is impossible. The queen knows that she owes me money.' "

"I owe him money!" cried the queen, horrified. "How can the
miserable man dare to assert such a thing?"

"That I said to him, your majesty, but he answered, with complete
self possession, that your majesty owed him a million and some five
hundred thousand francs, and when I asked him in complete amazement
for what articles your majesty owed him such a monstrous sum, he
answered, 'For my necklace.'"

"This miserable necklace again!" exclaimed the queen. "It seems as
if the man made it only to make a martyr of me with it. Year after
year I hear perpetually about this necklace, and it has been quite
in vain that, with all my care and good-will, I have sought to drive
from him this fixed idea that I must buy it. He is so far gone in
his illusion as to assert that I have bought it."

"Madame, this man is not insane," said the king, seriously. "Listen
further. Go on, Campan."

"I laughed," continued Madame de Campan, "and asked him how he could
assert such a thing, when he told me only a few months ago that he
had sold the necklace to the Sultan. Then he replied that the queen
had ordered him to give this answer to every one that asked about
the necklace. Then he told me further, that your majesty had
secretly bought the necklace, and through the instrumentality of the
Lord Cardinal de Rohan."

"Through Rohan?" cried the queen, rising. "Through the man whom I