Anyone wealthy readers fluent in French are advised to head straight across to The Philadelphia Rare Books & Manuscripts Company, who are selling a book concerning the “Affair of the Diamond Necklace“…
..an elaborate confidence game involving the countess de la Motte, her husband, Cardinal Rohan, the Parisian jewelry firm of Boehmer and Bassenge, possibly Marie Antoinette, and a diamond necklace valued at 1,600,000 livres.
The conspirators’ scheme to secure the necklace under the guise of Marie Antoinette’s acquiring it through intermediaries began in the summer of 1784, and came to fruition in January of the next year.
Arrests were made and an absolutely sensational trial was held in which the cardinal was acquitted, the countess was “condemned to be whipped, branded and shut up in the Salpetrière,” and her husband, who had fled to England with the necklace, “was condemned . . . to the galleys for life” (Encyclopaedia Britannica).
The branding doesn’t do it for me, but I could dream about whipped countesses for days…
A “list of the personalities” provides further insights:
Comtesse de la Motte: the brilliantly evil genius behind “The Con of the Century.” Convicted and indeed whipped (“naked”), branded, etc.
“Naked”.
This particular 42-page volume (at $210) is the count’s spin on events: the “Réponse de m. le comte de Précourt…aux mémoires des sieurs d’Étienville, Vaucher & Loque”, to give it its full title. Published in 1786 in Paris.
The countess herself published her own version of events, and that’s for sale too at a mere $175. Whether she discusses the whipping isn’t clear.
Well if she doesn’t, how could it possibly be worth $175? (Yeah yeah, I know… rare books are expensive; I try to stay away from them. I take enough financial blows from the common ones.)
LOL I agree: I’d expect a detailed account, with anedcotes from any spectators, probably also including a discussion of the floggings of the girls in front of her in the whipping queue!