false and forged document. "However," added she, "the Cardinal possesses
a considerable fortune, and he can very well pay you." These words reveal
the whole secret. The Countess had taken the necklace to herself, and
flattered herself that M. de Rohan, seeing himself deceived and cruelly
imposed upon, would determine to pay and make the beat terms he could,
rather than suffer a matter of this nature to become public.-"Secret
Correspondence of the Court of Louis XVI."]

The procureur general's information was severe on the Cardinal. The
Houses of Conde and Rohan and the majority of the nobility saw in this
affair only an attack on the Prince's rank, the clergy only a blow aimed
at the privileges of a cardinal. The clergy demanded that the unfortunate
business of the Prince Cardinal de Rohan should be submitted to
ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and the Archbishop of Narbonne, then
President of the Convocation, made representations upon the subject to the
King; the bishops wrote to his Majesty to remind him that a private
ecclesiastic implicated in the affair then pending would have a right to
claim his constitutional judges, and that this right was refused to a
cardinal, his superior in the hierarchical order. In short, the clergy
and the greater part of the nobility were at that time outrageous against
authority, and chiefly against the Queen.

The procureur-general's conclusions, and those of a part of the heads of
the magistracy, were as severe towards the Cardinal as the information had
been; yet he was fully acquitted by a majority of three voices; the woman
De Lamotte was condemned to be whipped, branded, and imprisoned; and her
husband, for contumacy, was condemned to the galleys for life.

[The following extract is from the "Memoirs" of the Abbe Georgel: "The
sittings were long and multiplied; it was necessary to read the whole