Descended from a bastard of Henry II.'s, brought up by charity and married to a ruined nobleman, Madame de la Motte Valois had bewitched, duped, and robbed Cardinal Rohan.

Accustomed to an insensate prodigality, asserting everywhere that a man of gallantry could not live on twelve hundred thousand livres a year, he had considered it very natural that the queen should have a fancy for possessing a diamond necklace worth sixteen hundred thousand livres.

The jewellers had, in fact, offered this jewelry to Marie Antoinette; it was during the American war.

"That is the price of two frigates," the king had said.
"We want ships and not diamonds," said the queen, and dismissed her jeweller.

A few months afterwards he told anybody who would listen that he had sold the famous collar in Constantinople for the favorite sultana.
"This was a real pleasure to the queen," says Madame Campan; "she, however, expressed some astonishment that a necklace made for the adornment of Frenchwomen should be worn in the seraglio, and, thereupon, she talked to me a long while about the total change which took place in the tastes and desires of women in the period between twenty and thirty years of age.