The Necklace of Love

AUTHOR’S NOTEI have seen and touched the necklace I have written about in this novel, which is now in the possession of the Countess of Sutherland. This is the true story of what is wrongly called ‘The Marie Antoinette Necklace’. The poor unfortunate Queen of France, who was to be guillotined, never even saw it. The Comtesse de la Motte, an adventuress descended from a bastard of King Henry II, intrigued to procure the necklace by pretending that it was for Queen Marie Antoinette, but in reality it was for herself. An enormous and magnificent diamond necklace worth a million and a half livres, it had twenty-one huge diamonds in a collet round the neck and four long strands, each containing hundreds of diamonds falling from it and ending in enormous tassels of diamonds. The Comtesse tricked Prince Louis de Rohan, Cardinal and the Head Chaplain of France, into believing that the Queen wished to acquire it surreptitiously and he agreed to help her. When a servant arrived to collect the necklace with the forged signature of the Queen, Cardinal Rohan was deceived into believing that it was genuine and handed him the diamond necklace. The jeweller claimed his money for the necklace and Queen Marie Antoinette disclaimed all knowledge of it. Eventually the truth came out. The Comtesse de la Motte was sentenced to be flogged and branded on each shoulder with a ‘V’, Voleuse, a thief. Taking with her the two large diamonds from the collet of the necklace, the Comtesse escaped to London, where she sold the diamonds. She died in 1791. Cardinal Rohan was acquitted of the charge of fraud, but was deprived of his offices and banished. This saga gravely discredited and weakened the French Monarchy and was particularly responsible from the beginning for the violence of the French Revolution.