The judgment rendered by the Parlement in the famous case of the diamond necklace, in the following reign, was received with very different emotions by the court and the people. It may be remembered that the Bishop of Strasbourg, Cardinal de Rohan, a member of one of the most arrogant families of the nobility, anxious to regain the favor of the Queen Marie Antoinette, had fallen into the snares of a clever adventuress, Jeanne de Saint-Remy de Valois, Comtesse de la Motte. The latter was aware that the crown-jewelers, MM. Bœhmer and Bassenge, had offered the queen a necklace of diamonds for the price of one million six hundred thousand livres, but that she had declined it, saying that the money would be better applied in the purchase of a vessel of war. Madame de la Motte proceeded to open fictitious negotiations with the jewelers in the name of the queen, pretending that the latter had changed her mind but did not wish the affair to become public, that the purchase would be made by instalments and through the hands of a great seigneur of the court. This was the Cardinal Rohan, upon whom she imposed, by means of forged letters from the queen, skilfully prepared by her secretary, one Sieur Rétaux de Villette. She even arranged a brief nocturnal interview in the gardens of Versailles for him, as related in the last chapter, with a demoiselle from the Palais-Royal disguised as Marie-Antoinette. A few days later, the cardinal remitted to the comtesse the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand livres on a pretended letter; but when she proposed to him, later, to purchase the necklace himself on the strength of the queen's promise to indemnify him, he had so many doubts that he went to consult the adventurer Cagliostro, then in great favor in Paris. The magician pronounced favorably upon the enterprise; in January, 1785, the cardinal received the jewels from the merchants in return for a paper signed and sealed by him but bearing on the margin the words: "_Approuvé_, MARIE-ANTOINETTE _de France_" in which it was agreed that they were to be paid for in four instalments of four hundred thousand livres each, the first payment to be made on the 1st of August following. The queens of France were never in the habit of adding anything to the signature of their Christian names. On the first of February the cardinal delivered the necklace in a casket, in the apartments of Madame de la Motte at Versailles, to an assumed valet in the royal livery, whom he thought he recognized, but who was no other than the crafty Rétaux de Villette. The stones were immediately separated, the comtesse kept the small ones for herself and sold the larger ones in England. Naturally, the affair came to light a few months later, and on the 15th of August the cardinal was lodged in the Bastille.