THE DIAMOND NECKLACE AFFAIR
Only the Jewels Were Real

(Diamond Necklace Affair). The Affair of the Diamond Necklace was a sensational, elaborate confidence game involving the Comtesse de la Motte, her husband, Cardinal Rohan, the Parisian jewelry firm of Böhmer and Bassenge, possibly Marie Antoinette, and a diamond necklace valued at 1,600,000 livres. The conspirators' scheme to secure the necklace under the guise of Marie Antoinette's acquiring it through intermediaries began in the summer of 1784, and came to fruition in January of the next year; the ever-complicating drama involved a sham queen, a sham cardinal, and sham royal servants—false assumptions, false signatures, false marriages, and false promises of fabulous wealth—everything was bogus but the diamonds. Arrests were made and an absolutely electrifying trial held in which the cardinal was acquitted, the countess was "condemned to be whipped, branded and shut up in the Salpetrière," and her husband, who had fled to England with the necklace, "was condemned . . . to the galleys for life" (Encyclopædia Britannica).

The first-person, passionate mémoires/pleadings/depositions in this case were snapped up hot off the press, to be eagerly read by the public and criticized as if literature or theater (Funck-Brentano, ch. 3). The case was theater, and in the hands of Dumas père it became literature; it was in turn, of course, a movie—twice.

On “collection” terms:  Five items, 10% off; seven items, 15% off; ALL items, 20% off.

Some of the personalities:

Count Cagliostro: an 18th-century alchemist, fraud, and confidence man who travelled widely in the principal capitals of Europe, staying a quick step ahead of his fleeced followers; during a stay in Paris he was implicated in the sensational Diamond Necklace affair. The court found him innocent of all charges.

Comtesse de la Motte: the brilliantly evil genius behind "The Con of the Century." Convicted and indeed whipped ("naked"), branded, etc.

Cardinal Rohan-Guémene: a prince of the Church and the pawn and dupe of Comtesse de la Motte, who convinced him that Marie Antoinette, well known to be his bitter enemy, was ready to favor him with sexual ecstacy, and that she trusted him to obtain for her the infamous Diamond Necklace. Acquitted, but ruined.

Marie Lejay: renamed by the Comtesse de la Motte Baronne Gay d'Oliva (Oliva being a near anagram of the countess's maiden name, Valois). Oliva's role in the sting was to pose as the queen for a meeting with the cardinal, during which she would convince him that he was truly back in her graces, thus advancing the countess's plan. Acquitted, she became the mistress of her lawyer.

Rétaux de Villette: accomplice of the La Mottes and a member of their household; appeared in the countess's drama as a pretend Cardinal Rohan and as the pretend equiry to the pretend queen. His testimony was the first in the trial directly to incriminate the La Mottes and to suggest strongly that the cardinal was innocent of involvement in any fraud—although it also exposed the ostensibly canny cardinal as capable, on the personal level, of almost incredible credulity.

Baron de Fages-Chaulnes: a member of the king's brother's company of guards who, through his involvement as both victim and adventurer in a sub- or simultaneous scam proposing his marriage to a supposed one-time mistress of Cardinal Rohan's, was used as a semi-innocent fence in the conspirators' attempts to sell stones from the necklace. On the strength of his "great expectations" he bought a fortune's worth of watches and bibelots from the jewelers Vaucher and Loque, whom of course he then could not pay. Fined by the criminal court and pursued in civil suit by the defrauded jewelers.

Comte de Précourt: a distinguished soldier who had served in Poland and elsewhere, seeing battle on sea and land; a colonel of infantry; and a knight of the Order of St. Louis. Somehow, he ended up a guarantor of Baron de Fages's debt and so, while apparently innocent of any direct involvement in the Diamond Necklace Affair, was swept up to his cost in the turbulence it caused.

Bette d'Étienville, Jean Charles Vincent de: another adventurer/victim; like the Baron de Fages, a "biter bit." The man who enticed the baron into the marriage scheme, he was involved in his debt to Vaucher and Loque and represented one layer in the La Mottes' multitiered fencing scheme. Although fined, he seems to have come well out of the scrape—fittingly, he became a novelist, and he continued to the end of his life to indulge in shady intrigue. But, he died poor.

Cagliostro, Con-Man

•  Original Italian edition of this biography of one of history's most notorious charlatans — Giuseppe Balsamo, a.k.a. Count Cagliostro. It was published anonymously by the Vatican's printing office, but has been attributed to Giovanni Barberi (1748–1821), one of Cagliostro's Inquisitors during the 1791 trial that landed him in confinement at the Castel Sant'Angelo. Cagliostro, a forger, alchemist, and dabbler in the occult, was brought before the Inquisition on the charge of Freemasonry. Translations of the work appeared that same year in German, French, and English. Click the interior image for an enlargement.

•  Passano, Dizionario di opere anonime e pseudonime, 77.   Recent quarter black morocco and marbled paper-covered sides. Spine with gilt-stamped title and gilt center devices in spine compartments; gilt-stamped place and date of publication at foot; gilt-accented raised bands, with gilt ruling above and below each band; and gilt-tooled border on covers. Some loss of paper in lower margin of two leaves. Inked four-digit number at base of p. 1; no other markings. Small ink smudge within text area of p. 5, blotting out a few letters but not overall sense; pages otherwise clean. A very attractive copy.  (24464)

The pamphlets:   

Bette d'Étienville, Jean Charles Vincent de. Mémoire pour le Sr. de Bette d'Etienville, servant de reponse a celui de M. de Fages. Paris: De l'Imprimerie de Cailleau, 1786. 4to (25.8 cm, 10.2"). 30 pp.
$210.00

•  This memorandum in defense of the Sieur de Bette d'Étienville was witnessed by the subject and, more prominently, by his lawyer, M. Montigny.

•  Modern quarter blue cloth with French-swirl marbled paper sides; blue leather gilt label on front cover. Moderate waterstaining.

•  Drop-title appearing on folio A1r: Mémoire a consulter, pour Jean-Charles-Vincent de Bette d'Etienville...contre le sieur Vaucher, marchand horologer, & le sieur Loque, marchand bijoutier à Paris, plaignans. Some libraries file this work under the drop-title; Some libraries file the present work under its drop-title; it contains a chronology of events as de Bette d'Étienville saw them, and concludes with some legal analysis by Mssrs. Meslier and Hemery on the state of de Bette d'Étienville's case.

•  Modern quarter blue cloth with French-swirl marbled paper sides; blue leather gilt label on front cover. Moderate waterstaining.

Fages-Chaulnes, de, baron. Mémoire pour M. le Bon. de Fages-Chaulnes...contre les sieurs Vaucher et Loque, marchands bijoutiers, accusateurs. Et encore contre monsieur Procureur-Général. Paris: Chez Prault, 1786. 4to (25.8 cm, 10.2"). 30 pp.
$210.00

•  A well-reasoned defense document, filled with the baron's interpretation of the facts.

•  Modern quarter blue cloth with French-swirl marbled paper sides; blue leather gilt label on front cover. Some noticeable staining, usually light (sometimes approaching medium brown).

•  Modern quarter blue cloth with French-swirl marbled paper sides; blue leather gilt label on front cover. Some noticeable staining, usually light.

Guay d'Oliva, Marie Nicole le. Second mémoire pour la demoiselle le Guay d'Oliva...accusée; contre M. le Procureur général, accusateur; en présence de M. le Cardinal-prince de Rohan, de la dame de la Motte-Valois, du sieur de Cagliostro, & autres; tous co-accusés. Analyse et résultat des récolemens & confrontations. Paris: Chez P.G. Simon & N.H. Nyon, 1786. 4to (25.8 cm, 10.2"). 56 pp.
$245.00

•  Modern quarter blue cloth with French-swirl marbled paper sides; blue leather gilt label on front cover. Moderately waterstained throughout; a few leaves more noticeably browned, and several with spots of foxing.

•  The drop-title is printed below a large woodcut headpiece with a central medallion of the scales of justice. The countess rebuts certain of the charges made against her and quotes portions of them at length; she presents her genealogy as part of her defense. More than one edition of this was published in 1785 and 1786.

La Motte's descent from "the blood of the Valois" might better have been presented in defense of the folly of her victims, for few of her impostures or illusions could have been persuasive were it not for the glamour and potential profitability of that well-publicized, and apparently genuine, association.

•  Modern quarter blue cloth with French-swirl marbled paper sides; blue leather gilt label on front cover. Some noticeable staining, usually light (sometimes approaching medium brown).

La Motte, Jeanne Saint-Remy de Valois, comtesse de. [drop-title] Réponse pour la comtesse de Valois-la Motte, au mémoire du comte de Cagliostro. Paris: Imp. de L. Cellot, 1786. 4to (25.8 cm, 10.2"). 46 pp.
$175.00

•  The countess here rebuts some of the charges made against her by Cagliostro, mostly by attacking that infamous adventurer's credibility.

•  Modern quarter blue cloth with French-swirl marbled paper sides; blue leather gilt label on front cover. A few spots of foxing and some very faint waterstaining. Title-page almost entirely lacking—three-quarters torn away.

•  Précourt defends himself against charges of having been involved in intrigue with his fellow soldier, the Baron. According to NUC Pre-1956, all reported copies of this had the date as "1776" on the title-page; ours definitely says 1786.

•  Modern quarter blue cloth with French-swirl marbled paper sides; blue leather gilt label on front cover. Some noticeable staining, often approaching medium brown, with one leaf deeply dog-eared.

Villette, Louis Marc-Antoine Rétaux de. Requête pour le Sieur Marc-Antoine Rétaux de Villette...accusé; contre M. le Procureur général accusateur; en présence de M. le Cardinal-prince de Rohan, de la Dame de la Motte-Valois, du Sieur Cagliostro, de la Demoiselle d'Oliva, & autres; tous co-accusés. Paris: Chez P.G. Simon & N.H. Nyon, 1786. 4to (25.8 cm, 10.2"). 19, [1 (blank)] pp.
$200.00

•  In this piece, Villette bemoans his abject misery, paints himself as an innocent cruelly misled by the countess ("la cruelle enchanteresse"), and—somewhat more usefully—enumerates his actions throughout the plot.

•  Modern quarter blue cloth with French swirl marbled paper sides; blue leather gilt label on front cover. Some waterstaining, usually light.

A pleasing feature of these documents as a group is their array of charming headpieces and title-page ornaments of the era; not all the mémoires have them, but many do. On the Diamond Necklace Affair, see: Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed., VIII, 164-65; see Frantz Funck-Brentano, The Diamond Necklace (tr. H. Sutherland Edwards), 1901.

As a collection: Five items, 10% off; seven items, 15% off;
  ALL items, 20% off.

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