' As Cagliostro pointed out to Rohan later, too
late, the Queen could not possibly use this signature. Neither the
prelate nor the tradesmen saw the manifest absurdity. Rohan carried
the necklace to Jeanne, who gave it to the alleged messenger of the
Queen. Rohan only saw the _silhouette_ of this man, in a dusky room,
through a glass door, but he later declared that in him he recognised
the fleeting shade who whispered the warning to fly, in the dark Grove
of Venus. It was Villette, the forger.
Naturally people asked, 'If you could not tell the Queen from Mlle.
d'Oliva when you kissed her robe in the grove, how could you
recognise, through a dim glass door, the man of whom you had only
caught a glimpse as a fleeting shadow? If you are so clever, why, it
_was_ the Queen whom you met in the wood. You cannot have been
mistaken in her.'
These obvious arguments told against the Queen as well as against the
Cardinal.
The Queen did not wear the jewels at the feast for which she had
wanted them. Strange to say, she never wore them at all, to the
surprise of the vendors and of the Cardinal. The necklace was, in
fact, hastily cut to pieces with a blunt heavy knife, in Jeanne's
house; her husband crossed to England, and sold many stones, and
bartered more for all sorts of trinkets, to Grey, of New Bond Street,
and Jeffreys, of Piccadilly.
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