The queen's collar
The Queen's Necklace is the second part of the four-volume series of novels Memoirs of a Doctor by the French author Alexandre Dumas the Elder. Ä. , which also includes Joseph Balsamo , Ange Pitou and The Countess of Charny . Starting with Joseph Balsamo , Dumas published the series of novels between 1846 and 1855 in the feature pages of the Paris newspaper La Presse .
The novel deals with the collar affair surrounding Marie Antoinette , Cardinal de Rohan , Countess de la Motte and Count Cagliostro in 1785 in a not entirely authentic way. Dumas published this work with the original title Le Collier de la reine from 1849.
content
The Cardinal de Rohan worships the French Queen Marie Antoinette, but with whom he has fallen out of favor, which makes him difficult. By the cunning Countess de la Motte him is of an extremely valuable diamond collier reported that the Queen of the jewelers was offered Bohemian and Boss In purchasing, which they did, because they know how bad it is to the French treasury, refuse had . La Motte, an impoverished descendant from the Valois family , who has visited the Queen a few times, persuades the cardinal to advance Marie Antoinette the money to buy the necklace, and in return promises him the grace of the high lady, who is so dear to her wishes.
Said and done. The jewelry is bought and Rohan receives a nightly rendezvous in the Apollo baths in the gardens of Versailles as thanks for his expenses . The months go by and the jewelers, who have only been paid the first installment for their piece of jewelry, are starting to get restless. Finally they turn to the Queen herself. The commotion is great. The queen denies having ever supported the sale of the necklace. The cardinal is arrested and in turn defends himself by divulging the secret rendezvous. The queen is indignant, the cardinal is deeply offended, but the jewelry has disappeared.
But what had actually happened now? La Motte had forged letters from the queen, presented the cardinal in the Apollo baths with a look-alike Marie-Antoinette (Nicole, who was mentioned in the first volume of the series of novels and who the reader now encounters as Mademoiselle Olivia), finally received the necklace, the diamonds Broken from its sockets and tried to sell through middlemen. The chief puppeteer is Giuseppe Balsamo, who, following his conspiratorial activity in Paris under the name of Cagliostro, worked out the entire intrigue. Just like La Motte, he was arrested, but soon afterwards he was released again as there was nothing to prove to him, while in early 1786 the countess was publicly branded, whipped and then imprisoned for life.
The real damage, however, is the innocent Marie Antoinette. The prestige of royalty suffered badly as a result of the affair. Balsamo's plan to drive it to total ruin has taken a big step forward.
A secondary line of the novel tells the love story of the young Count Olivier de Charny and Queen Marie Antoinette, in which the siblings Philippe and Andrea de Taverney, known to the reader of the first volume, are also involved. Olivier, who has just returned from America, is not only fiery in his youth, but also careless. When Louis XVI. turns up one day at a moment when Charny confesses his love for the queen at her feet, Marie Antoinette explains to her husband that the young count has asked for the hand of her maid Andrea. Andrea, who is passionately adored by Olivier, has to consent to a compulsory marriage, knowing that her husband will never love her. Philippe, for his part, leaves his sister and Versailles to search for the death on a research expedition, which he was denied in the American Revolutionary War .