Devil's Eye (21 page)

Jimmy Powell smiled broadly, presuming her remark to be flirtatious.

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Marie Antoinette’s diamonds are a fitting subject,” she said. “And may, indeed, have contributed to her trip to the guillotine.”

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Didn’t she own the Hope Diamond?” Chelsea Smith asked.

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It was part of the Royal French Collection,” Dr. Mitchell replied. “Actually, it was a larger version owned already by her husband’s grandfather, Louis the Fifteenth, who presided over the virtual collapse of pre
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revolutionary France. He had it set in his personalized design of the exalted Order of the Golden Fleece.”

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Well, if France was collapsing around Louis the Fifteenth, couldn’t it be because of the curse?” Miss Smith asked expectantly.

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It’s a long
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standing legend, Chelsea. It depends on if you believe in curses.”

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We covered France’s loss of India and Canada to the British in the Seven Years—slash—French and Indian War,” offered one of the students.

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It was loss of empire to be sure,” responded the professor, “but other countries lost empires also, didn’t they?”

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Famine in France under Louis the Fifteenth,” added another student. “Financial crisis.”

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Again, same things have happened in other countries,” she replied, enjoying the exchange as an educational exercise. “But we can’t say it’s because of a curse.”

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Maybe this one had more of a focus,” ventured Corey the divinity student. “Maybe it was meant to be cumulative.”

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I’m not sure I follow you,” replied Dr. Mitchell.

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The diamond was still in the collection of the French Monarchy when Louis the Sixteenth and Marie Antoinette took over and things got even worse, ending in the Revolution.”

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Well, I guess you could interpret it that way,” the professor replied after a thoughtful pause.

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And you did say that this Father Dumas was seen as some sort of witch or warlock who had influence at Court through Queen Marie Antoinette.”

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It does seem to have some kind of crazy logic, doesn’t it?” Dr. Mitchell replied.

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Maybe the French Monarchy was cursed because of the diamond?” ventured Chelsea Smith.

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Are we drifting into superstitions here? Or is this a history seminar?” the professor chided playfully.

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Don’t some historians write that she got a raw deal?” asked Jerome Butler, a journalism student sitting to her right.

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They do, indeed,” Dr. Mitchell replied as she shifted in her seat towards the student. “In part from a series of inflammatory pamphlets circulated from England by a conniving swindler, whose diamond caper helped trigger the French Revolution.”

Dr. Mitchell paused, as much for dramatic effect, as to formulate her thoughts. Abigail Hitchcock, who was next to her, spontaneously offered her an unopened bottle of water.

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Thanks,” she said accepting the gesture. “Now, this is not for credit,” the professor announced jovially, as she twisted the cap and took a sip to the grinning of the other students.

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The Affair of the Diamond Necklace,” she continued, “may have fatally sealed the animosity of the French people towards Marie Antoinette.”

Dr. Mitchell took another sip of water and related that a woman calling herself Jeanne de Saint Remy de Valois weaseled her way into the Court at Versailles through a lover. She was the wife of a self
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styled Count, Nicholas de la Motte. She was supposedly of noble birth, but her family had fallen on hard times. She longed to recapture the courtly life she felt she deserved.

Jeanne La Motte traded on her beauty and guile and eventually became the mistress of Cardinal de Rohan. The Cardinal believed that through her he could regain the Queen’s favor, because Madame la Motte told the Cardinal that she, herself, was a lover of Marie Antoinette and would persuade the Queen to end his ostracism.

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The swindler hired a look
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alike prostitute to pretend to be the Queen and rendezvous with the Cardinal in the moonlight at one of the gardens at Versailles. In a brief encounter the imposter declared through a veiled face that all was forgiven,” Dr. Mitchell related.

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Cardinal de Rohan fell for the ruse, most probably because he was so desperate to get back in the good graces of the Queen and an appointment as minister—even prime minister. For Jeanne La Motte, the swindler, this was just the setup,” Dr. Mitchell said conspiratorially.

Jeanne la Motte now told Cardinal de Rohan that Marie Antoinette was interested in having him procure for her the elaborate diamond necklace that her husband’s grandfather—Louis the Fifteenth— had commissioned for his official mistress, Marie
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Jeanette du Barry.

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Unfortunately, the King had died of smallpox and his mistress Madame du Barry was banished. Meanwhile, the jeweler was stuck with the most stunning creation of diamond jewelry and facing certain bankruptcy.”

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It had cost one hundred million dollars in today’s currency,” Dr. Mitchell said.

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A hundred million dollars?” several students repeated in awe.

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A hundred million,” Dr. Mitchell emphasized. “The necklace— the word does not do justice to the piece—was more like a cascade—it had nearly three thousand carats and was the most elaborate piece of jewelry ever created up to that time. All of European royalty was aware of it and the jeweler had even offered it for sale in the various Courts of Europe. There is an image on
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line and in history books under various headings related to the French Revolution.”

Laura remembered her conversation with Alvin Carruthers that morning at the museum. She repeated the details, smiling to herself at how conveniently it fit into her train of thought.

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Cutters were perfecting techniques of how to bring out the intrinsic brilliance of diamonds. Consequently diamonds became valued more than rubies and other gemstones.”

The nobility now competed with each other for their possession, Dr. Mitchell explained. Commissioning the 3,000 carat necklace was a foolish act by Louis the Fifteenth to dampen his image as an ineffectual monarch. He spent lavishly to boost his image among his regal counterparts in other countries, even as France sank deeper into economic and political ruin.

As Laura remembered the exchange with Carruthers, she was in the museum again, the two glowering employees in the elevator, the deadly attack fended off by Christopher Caine. She visibly shook the thought away.

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Are you sure you’re okay?” Abigail asked again.

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It’s nothing, really. I just felt a chill going through me. I hope it’s not a cold coming on.” She would have to speak with Al again, she thought. “Where was I?”

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The swindler asking Cardinal de Rohan to get the necklace for Marie Antoinette,” Abigail answered.

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Yes. Well, as it happens, the real Marie Antoinette had refused the necklace when her husband—Louis the Sixteenth—had actually offered to buy it for her much earlier. She is recorded as stating that the piece was much too expensive, and that the money would be better spent to buy a Man
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of
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War for the navy. Now, doesn’t this go against the grain,” she said with emphasis, “that Marie Antoinette was a frivolous spendthrift?”

Dr. Mitchell went on to relate that the swindler told Cardinal de Rohan that the Queen wanted him to secretly buy the necklace for her with la Motte as the go
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between, because it would be unseemly to buy such extravagant jewelry at a time of financial crisis in France. La Motte showed the Cardinal a note with Marie Antoinette’s forged signature indicating she wanted the necklace. The jeweler could then directly bill the Queen.

Cardinal de Rohan did procure the necklace and gave it to Jeanne la Motte to present to Marie Antoinette. Instead, the greedy schemer immediately had her husband break up the necklace into its component diamonds and abscond with them to England. They were eventually sold piece by piece and provided a comfortable life for the felonious social climber.

Meanwhile, Cardinal de Rohan was puzzled that Marie Antoinette kept ignoring him at Court and soon enough the Palace erupted in a fury when the jeweler presented her a bill for the necklace.

Polite, knowing laughter punctuated Dr. Mitchell’s remark.

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Various high ranking nobles and church officials urgently appealed that the affair be settled quietly—either through the Palace itself or the Vatican. They argued that the Cardinal was duped, but was not guilty of any crime. And he was much admired by the people. They said a public trial would totally undermine the monarchy.”

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Now here is the fateful turning point that likely sealed her doom: Marie Antoinette might have been persuaded to settle the affair quietly and not cause embarrassment to the Cardinal of France and the Church,” the professor emphasized. “However, her confessor, the country cleric, Father Pierre Dumas, insisted that she not bend to the pleas of the nobility and the Church. He stressed that the fallacy of a lesbian affair with Jeanne la Motte and her honor as an innocent victim were at stake. Consequently, Marie Antoinette remained adamant that a public trial be held.”

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The trial, conducted by the Parliament—the nobles of the Second Estate—was one of the most sensational in France and became a focal point in all of Europe,” Dr. Mitchell continued. “The Cardinal was found innocent to the cheers of the people, while Marie Antoinette’s reputation never recovered.”

The professor looked to her students in the seminar room, but no questions or comments interrupted their absorbed attention.

She went on that most historians concluded that Marie Antoinette had nothing to do with the necklace affair, that Cardinal de Rohan was deceived, and that Jeanne la Motte and her husband were guilty of stupendous fraud and injury to the Crown. Still a majority of the French citizenry continued to believe that the Queen deliberately used the la Mottes to get at Cardinal de Rohan, whom Marie Antoinette publicly despised. The people also presumed the Queen must have been complicit in something, since the Cardinal was found innocent. Not only did Marie Antoinette’s popularity keep sinking, but so did the role of the Monarchy itself.

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Jeanne la Motte was whipped, branded and jailed. She later escaped—most probably with inside help—and fled to England,” Dr. Mitchell related. “There, living comfortably from sales of the disassembled necklace, she wrote her memoirs and continued publishing bitter, vindictive pamphlets against Marie Antoinette, which were enormously popular throughout Europe. Jeanne la Motte had become a poster child for the spirit of rebellion in France.”

The professor took another sip of water, waiting for any reaction. The students kept listening, waiting.

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Maybe the events leading to the storming of the Bastille in Seventeen eighty
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nine could have been avoided had Marie Antoinette agreed to settle the necklace affair quietly. The role of the monk Pierre Dumas in goading the Queen to have a public trial may be momentous. The legacy of the trial leads to the downfall and execution of Marie Antoinette and her husband, Louis the Sixteenth, in the fever of The French Revolution.”

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Just like Grigori Rasputin,” Tom Stuart repeated in a climactic tone.

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So, what happened to the monk?” Amy Cabot asked.

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After the trial he was never seen again,” Dr. Mitchell replied. “The mysterious Father Dumas disappears from the historical record. But his dog Monsieur—his so
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called familiar—was spotted running with a pack of wolves in the wooded forests south of Versailles during the Reign of Terror.”

Dr. Mitchell paused, satisfied with the wide
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eyed attention of the students.

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What happened to the Hope Diamond?” Chelsea Smith finally asked, breaking the reflective silence in the room.

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The jewels from the Royal Treasury were looted during the Revolution,” Dr. Mitchell replied. “They were sold all over Europe. The so
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called French Blue went through a number of hands and eventually reappeared as the Hope Diamond in the eighteen
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thirties after Henry Hope, one of its later owners.”

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I don’t know the provenance, but many of the French Crown jewels eventually found their way into museums, including the Smithsonian down the street. The Hope Diamond was donated there in Nineteen fifty
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eight.”