She told me that when she was ten years younger she loved diamonds madly, but that she had no longer any taste for anything but private society, the country, the work and the attentions required by the education of her children.

From that moment until the fatal crisis there was nothing more said about the necklace." The crisis would naturally come from the want of money felt by the jewellers.

Madame de la Motte had paid them some instalments on account of the stones, which her husband had sold in England: they grew impatient and applied to the queen.

For a long while she did not understand their applications: when the complaints of the purveyors at last made her apprehend an intrigue, she sent for Abbe de Vermond and Baron de Breteuil, minister of the king's household both detested the cardinal, both fanned the queen's wrath; she decided at last to tell the king everything.

"I saw the queen after the departure of the baron and the abbe," says Madame Campan; "she made me tremble at her indignation." The cardinal renounced the privileges of his rank and condition; he boldly accepted the jurisdiction of the Parliament.
The trial revealed a gross intrigue, a disgraceful comedy, a prince of the church and a merchant equally befooled by a shameless woman, with the aid of the adventurer Cagliostro, and the name, the favors, and even the personality of the queen impudently dragged in.