The Story of the Diamond Necklace by Henry Vizetelly

1786–1793.

What became of the Dupe-Cardinal Prince Bishop Louis-René-Édouard de Rohan? Finding the bleak air of the Auvergne mountains sorely trying to his constitution, broken as it was by excesses and long confinement in the Bastille, the cardinal asked and obtained permission of the king to choose another place of residence. Either he or the Baron de Breteuil fixed upon the Abbey of St. Bénoît, on the Loire, near Orléans, but the lady superior of this establishment, alarmed at the prospect of the cardinal and his large retinue of servants coming there and eating them out of house and home, besides being very backward in his payments, protested that she was unable to afford the cardinal the necessary accommodation.[444] Eventually he was taken in at the Abbey of Marmontier, near Tours, where, we are told, he was ever lamenting the mad hopes in which he had permitted himself to indulge with regard to the queen, and the blind confidence he had reposed in Madame de la Motte.[445] Growing tired after a time of his new home, the cardinal made various efforts to obtain permission to return to his diocese, and even sent medical certificates to his old enemy, the Baron de Breteuil, setting forth that the air of his native Alsace was absolutely necessary to the restoration of his health. The king at last gave an unwilling consent, and for a time the cardinal lived in something like his old accustomed luxurious state at pleasant Saverne. On the approach of the Revolution he was nominated, by the influence of the popular party-who thought that his desire to be revenged upon the court would secure him to their side-a deputy of the clergy of Alsace. Being still under sentence of exile he did not dare accept the nomination, and a certain Abbé Louis was elected in his place. The abbé dying, the cardinal was again chosen, and the National Assembly having cancelled his sentence of exile, after some delay he came to Paris and took his seat, amidst loud shouts of applause-much, however, against the wish of his illustrious relatives, who, one and all, hated the Revolution as a certain individual is said to hate holy water. For a time the cardinal, with the view of self-preservation, went with the revolutionary current, and even took the civic oath; but when his co-reformers began to meddle with the property of the clergy, decreeing the sale of their lands and superfluous edifices, he cut himself adrift from them, and retired once more to his loved Saverne, to dream, however, no more mad dreams of love and ambition while pacing up and down his once-favourite "Promenade de la Rose."