Chapter XII: Appendix: Detailed Description of the Diamond Necklace 387 (9)

The principal entrance to the Little Trianon leads immediately to the grand staircase with its handsome gilded balustrade, in the interlacings of which the initials M. A. are prominently displayed. Facing the landing, as if in menace, is a head of the Medusa, which proved powerless however to keep out scandal. After a small antechamber comes the _salle-à-manger_, decorated with paintings of the four seasons by Dejeune, and bathing and fishing subjects by Pater, and the re-joined _parquet_ of which shows traces of the opening through which Loriot’s flying table was accustomed to ascend at the orgies of Louis XV. In this apartment commence the ornaments upon the panelling—crossed quivers surmounted by wreaths of roses and garlands of flowers—executed by order of Marie-Antoinette. The little _salon_ near the _salle-à-manger_ displays in relief upon its sides emblems of the vintage and the attributes of the genius of comedy. Hanging from festoons of grapes are bunches and baskets of fruit, masks and tambourines, flutes and guitars, and beneath the marble beards of the goats that support the mantelpiece more bunches of grapes are entwined. At the four corners of the cornice of the grand _salon_ are groups of cupids at play. Each panel, surmounted by the emblems of literature and the arts, springs from a stalk of triple flowering lilies, garlanded with laurel and with a wreath of full-blown roses by way of crest. Four paintings by Watteau—of those graceful Decameron-like subjects in which he excelled—are on the walls of this apartment. In the little cabinet which precedes the queen’s bedchamber the finest arabesques run over the woodwork; here are cupids bearing cornucopias overflowing with flowers, cooing doves, smoking tripods, and crossed bows and arrows hanging to ribbons. Bouquets of poppies intermingled with thousands of small flowers, all most delicately rendered, are scattered over the panels of the bedroom; the bed with its light blue silk hangings, the chairs and couches _en suite_, and the console tables, looking-glasses, clock and chandeliers being, it is said, much as they were in the days of Marie-Antoinette.

The most elegant façade of the little palace, with its four fluted Corinthian columns and its four flights of steps in the form of an Italian terrace, looks over the French garden, with its flower beds of geometric form and the flowers themselves planted in straight lines. In the centre of this garden, which is bordered by cool green arcades formed of trees clipped into shape, is a small pavilion with groups of cupids surmounting each of its four entrances. This was the summer dining-room of both Louis XV. and Marie-Antoinette. At the end of one of these leafy arcades is the theatre, where the queen and her friends performed alike comedies and operas. Sculptured in high relief above the principal entrance is a cupid grasping a lyre and a crown of laurel, with torches, trumpets, and rolls of music lying at his feet. The interior decorations of the theatre are white and gold; the orchestra stalls and fronts of the boxes are covered with blue velvet, the panels being decorated with cupids suspending garlands of flowers. On either side of the stage two gilded nymphs gracefully twist themselves into candelabra, and above the curtain two other nymphs support the escutcheon of Marie-Antoinette.

At the back and to the right of the little palace is the queen’s production, the English garden as it is called, laid out with an absence of formality which almost rivals the productions of Nature’s self. The waters apparently wind according to their own fancy, the trees and shrubs seem to have been sown at the will of the wind. Nearly a thousand varieties of trees, some among them being most rare, join their shade and mingle the different tints of their leaves, which vary from the lightest and deepest greens to dark purple and cherry red. The flowers appear to have been planted at hazard; the ground rises and falls at its will; paths wind and go out of the way with provoking pertinacity; stones have been converted into rocks, and small patches of grass made to resemble meadows.

From a hillock in the midst of a thicket of roses, jasmine, and myrtle, rises a belvidere, from whence the queen was accustomed to take in a view of the whole of her domain. This octangular pavilion, with its four windows and its four doors, and its eight sphinxes crouching upon the steps, has repeated eight times over, in figures upon its skirtings and in emblems over its entrances, the allegory of the four seasons, carved by perhaps the cleverest chisel of the century. The interior is paved with coloured marbles, and coloured arabesques run along its walls, with more bows and arrows and quivers, more bouquets and garlands of flowers and musical instruments, together with cameos and cages hanging from ribbons, and little monkeys and squirrels that scratch the sides of a crystal vase or play with the fishes. In the centre of the pavilion, a table, from which hang three rings, rests upon three claws of gilt bronze; this is the table at which Marie-Antoinette breakfasted, for this belvidere was her morning _salle-à-manger_.

From here she could overlook her grotto and the group of artificial rocks; the waterfall, and the trembling bridge thrown across the little torrent; the lake, and, under the shade of the shrubs, the embarking and landing-places, with the galley dotted all over with _fleurs-de-lis_; the temple of love open to all the winds, with its statue, by Bouchardon, of Cupid trying to trim for himself a bow out of the massive club of Hercules; the groves that skirt the river’s bank; and, finally, at the most remote part of the garden—the background, so to speak, of the picture—the hamlet where Marie-Antoinette had the king disguised as a miller, and the Count de Provence as a schoolmaster. Here are the little houses of the village nestled together like members of one family. The queen’s is the prettiest of them all, for it has vases filled with flowers, and grape-vines in front of it. On the opposite side of the lake, and near to the water’s edge, is the white marble dairy, with its four goat’s-head fountains, and close beside it, and near to a weeping-willow planted by the queen’s own hand, is the tower of Marlborough, so called from the nursery song which the young dauphin’s _bonne_ used to sing to him. Nothing is wanting to this pretty village of the stage, neither the curé’s house nor that of the bailiff; nor the mill, with its wheel which actually turns; neither the farmhouse, with the stone troughs for the cattle, and the little barns to store away the corn; nor the thatched roofs, the wooden balconies, the little diamond-paned windows, and the flights of steps at the sides of the cottages. Marie-Antoinette and Hubert Robert, the painter, had thought of everything, even of painting rents in the stone work, cracks in the plaster, with here and there beams and bricks jutting out of place, as if time would not wither with sufficient rapidity this pleasantry of a queen.[234]

Marie-Antoinette put aside all regal authority at the Trianon. Here she was no longer queen, but merely the mistress of the establishment, which was like an ordinary country-house, with its small retinue of servants and all its unrestrained habits. When the queen entered the _salon_, the ladies neither quitted the piano nor their embroidery-frames, nor the men their games at billiards or backgammon. The king would come to Trianon on foot, and unattended. The queen’s guests arrived at two o’clock to dinner, and returned to Versailles at midnight. Marie-Antoinette’s occupations and amusements were exclusively those of a country life. Attired in a white muslin dress, a lace shawl, and a straw hat, she would run about the gardens, or visit her farm, where she would take her guests to drink her milk and eat her new-laid eggs; or she would conduct the king to a summer-house, where he could read his book undisturbed until she summoned him to a lunch on the grass; after which she would amuse herself by watching the milking of her cows, or with fishing in the lake, or, seated on a rustic seat, would occupy herself by winding up the distaff of some young villager. Now and then she would give some grand ball, to which all the courtiers from Versailles would be invited, when dancing would go on under a large tent on the lawn in the day-time until the sun set, and at night-time almost until it rose again.

All this must have been a great relief from Versailles and Marly and the troop of intriguing courtiers that migrated backwards and forwards according as royalty pitched its tent at one château or the other. There was something too morally foul in the atmosphere of both these places. Most of the evenings not given up to dancing were spent at play, which some letters of court gossip of the time characteristically describe as being “murderous.” The Count d’Artois, after losing two million francs, was exiled by the king to Fontainebleau. On one occasion a certain M. de Chalabre lost as much as 42,000 louis at a sitting, and being without sufficient ready cash to discharge the whole of his obligations, had to hand over debts due to him from the Countesses de Provence and d’Artois, for fifty thousand and twenty-five thousand crowns respectively. The queen, who was a winner of 7000 louis of poor Chalabre’s money, sent the next day, we are told, for Mdlle. Bertin, her milliner, and paid her account. Among the persons of rank and position admitted to these assembles there seem to have been both sharpers and pickpockets, for on one occasion a rouleau of fifty counterfeit louis was placed on a card by M. du Luc d’Andilly, an ex-mousquetaire, and son of Count du Luc of Picardy. On the cheat being discovered, the king ordered the culprit to be degraded from his nobility and declared incapable of serving him in future. At another time, Count Arthur Dillon, one of the queen’s intimate friends, had his pocket picked of his purse filled with bank notes. It was suggested that everybody in the _salon_—some forty in number—should be searched, but nothing was done, and the count never saw his purse again.[235]

Private theatricals were at this time in great favour with the queen, whose Trianon _troupe_ comprised the Count d’Artois, who is said to have danced passably well on the tight rope, but only acted in a manner that was just bearable,[236] M. de Vaudreuil, M. d’Adhémar, the Duke and Duchess de Guiche, the Countess Diane de Polignac, and M. de Crussol: occasionally the Baron de Besenval, the Countess de Polastron, and Counts Esterhazy and de Coigny had parts assigned them. The Count de Provence and his wife considered these diversions beneath their rank, and the king, moreover, disapproved of them. Out of politeness to the queen, he was now and then present at the representations, when he habitually hissed the actors. On one occasion, when the “Devin du Village” was being played, and the queen was singing an air with more than her accustomed taste, all at once a whistle was heard from the back of one of the boxes. Marie-Antoinette soon perceived that it was from the king himself that this interruption proceeded. Advancing to the footlights, she bowed profoundly, and said, with a smile: “Sir, if you are dissatisfied with the performers you can leave, and your money will be returned to you.”[237] She then resumed her song, which she was permitted to finish without further interruption. Beaumarchais’ comedy of the “Barbier de Seville,” for which, Madame Campan tells us, Marie-Antoinette was studying her part at the time she made the disclosure to her of the conversation she had had with Böhmer respecting the Necklace, was the last piece performed by this aristocratic _troupe_. It was played on the 19th of August, 1785, the very day on which the Countess de la Motte was lodged in the Bastille.

XXVII.

1785.

CALUMNIES AGAINST THE QUEEN.—HER ANIMOSITY AGAINST THE CARDINAL DE ROHAN.

From the day she became queen, to the very hour of her death, and even after the grave had closed over her headless corse, the unhappy Marie-Antoinette was fated to be the victim of calumny. Her youthful levity was magnified into natural vice. Her most innocent amusements were made the objects of dark suspicion. Her friendships were so many criminal attachments. From Marly to Versailles, and from Versailles to Marly, slander pursued her. It penetrated the groves of Trianon, and insinuated that secret orgies, rivalling those of the “Parc aux cerfs,” were carried on in this now favourite retreat. Indecent pamphlets referring to her, written by hireling scribes, were circulated all over France. Libels against her were even forged in the police bureau. Scandalous songs were thrown at the king’s feet, in the “Œil-de-Bœuf.” Scandalous libels were placed under his dinner-napkin. Courtiers repeated the last foul epigram, the last lying report against the queen, in the royal antechambers, whispered it and chuckled over it even in the queen’s presence; carried it from Versailles or Marly, post haste to Paris, to the different hostile _salons_, to the green-rooms of the theatre and the opera, and to the _cafés_, thence to be disseminated all over the capital, even to the _halles_; carried it to their country châteaux, and laughed over it at their dinner-tables, whence it spread among their tenantry and the inhabitants of the adjacent towns:

“And they who told it added something new,
And they who heard it made enlargement too,
In ev’ry ear it spread, on every tongue it grew.”

Fancy what a perfect fund of scandal this affair of the Necklace, enveloped as it was at first in such an impenetrable mystery, provided for these despicable minds! What an arsenal for defamation and calumny it furnished to the avowed enemies of Marie-Antoinette! The Orléans faction professed to look upon it as a state crime, pretending to believe that the real culprit was the queen, who had secured the Necklace through the medium of the cardinal, he having been her dupe in the first instance, and afterwards her victim. They gave out, through their herd of itinerant agents—men without characters, without homes, without bread, without settled occupations, fitted only for scandalous adventures, and living only by dishonourable expedients—that it was Marie-Antoinette herself, “_la louve Autrichienne_,” as they styled her, who had met the grand almoner in the park of Versailles at midnight; that it was she who had heard his exculpation, and had listened to his new promises of fealty, which had been sealed by embraces and the gift of a rose; and further, that she had subsequently granted him several secret interviews at the Little Trianon. On this false basis they raised their broad superstructure of defamation, and pursued the queen with every species of malignant slander in pasquinades, epigrams, and songs,[238] “unfit for print or pen, the brutality of which nothing can exceed; but which, nevertheless, found believers—increase of believers, in the public exasperation—and did the queen, say all her historians, incalculable damage,”[239] until finally the hideous fabrications culminated in the epithet of Messalina, hurled at her by the furies of the _halles_ on her way to the guillotine.

To this body of antagonists must be added those retailers of gossip and small talk who, in a country like France, where most men are mixed up in intrigues, (and no reputation is too sacred for the inuendo, the smart sally, and the _bon-mot_,) delight and revel in scandals enveloped in some degree of mystery. There was certainly no lack of mystery in the affair of the Necklace, and these quick-witted individuals, thinking only of the entangled web offered them to unravel, displayed their ingenuity in suggesting clue after clue, regardless as to whether this or that clever explanation which they put forward compromised the queen or no, for the old loyal feeling of the nation was by this time utterly dead.

The lower classes of society in France had for some time past been brought to believe, and not without reason, that kings and queens were their natural enemies; that they despised, if they did not hate, their poorer subjects, whom they only valued as so much food for powder, or for what they could furnish to the exchequer through the hard extortion of the tax-gatherer. Marie-Antoinette was deservedly blamed for her thoughtless acquisition of the château of St. Cloud, at an outlay of six million francs, at this particular period when several bad harvests had imposed new hardships on the people; when provisions were frightfully scarce, prices correspondingly high, and tillage employment, save as “statute labour,” hardly to be had. The peasants in certain parts had even been reduced to live “on meal, husks, and boiled grass.” In the towns, the distress, if not so great, was still considerable, and large numbers of men were out of work. Crowds of idlers, as a matter of course, filled the cafés and cabarets—men with fermenting minds, and only too ready to believe any new calumny against the objects of their disaffection, and to lend their busy tongues to circulate the foulest slanders through the land. Upon the quick fancies of these thoughtless men, who never paused to examine what they heard, the enemies of Marie-Antoinette, who went about inflaming the discontented, encouraging the angry, and imposing on the thoughtless and the credulous, made a lasting and fatal impression.

Whilst the numerous enemies of the queen were thus at work turning the Necklace scandal to the best account, the Baron de Breteuil, whose hatred of the cardinal knew no bounds, was straining every nerve to convert it into an instrument for the effectual ruin of his enemy. The Abbé Georgel assures us that this animosity went so far as to induce the minister to promise Böhmer—who, according to some accounts, had in the first instance been arrested in conjunction with Saint-James and others on suspicion of being privy to the abuse of the queen’s name[240]—full payment for the Necklace if he would aggravate his evidence against the cardinal. De Breteuil also sent emissaries to the Bastille, to communicate with Madame de la Motte, offering to save her if she would furnish sufficient proof to inculpate his old enemy.

Beugnot, at this period a rising young barrister of four-and-twenty, understood to be an intimate acquaintance of the De la Mottes, and known to have been the person last in company with the countess previous to her arrest, fully expected to be sent to join her in the Bastille. The Baron de Breteuil, however, far from ordering Beugnot’s arrest, instructed M. de Crosne,—recently appointed lieutenant of police in place of M. Lenoir, promoted to the presidency of the administration of finances—to send privately for the young barrister, when, playing on his vanity, he recommended him to take the countess’s brief, as the trial was certain to attract the eyes of all men, and could hardly fail to push forward a young advocate in his career. But Beugnot, who knew his proposed client too well, declined to avail himself of the opportunity. “The next day,” observes he, “I received a new message from M. de Crosne, which involved another visit on my part. The lieutenant of police gave me an opened letter of Madame de la Motte’s, who, not understanding the difficulties which I felt in charging myself with her defence, begged me to come and see her. M. de Crosne backed up her request with some pressing solicitations of his own; then judging from my obstinate refusal, or possibly from something that Madame de la Motte had said to him, that I thought there was danger attached to the post proposed to me, he sought to reassure me on this point, and urged me to see the Baron de Breteuil. I declined. ‘I could say nothing to the minister,’ I remarked, ‘which I had not already said to him, neither would the former obtain from me what I had refused to the lieutenant of police.’ M. de Crosne insisted still more strongly, and gave me to understand that more condescension on my part to the views of the authorities would be neither prejudicial to my professional advancement nor to my fortune; his favourite refrain always being—‘See the Baron de Breteuil.’ I gave M. de Crosne to understand that I should not have that honour, since I did not see to what it could lead, and I left him, after obtaining permission to address to him a letter in reply to the one he had delivered to me.

“When recalling this scene, I can scarcely doubt the nature of the political interest which the Baron de Breteuil took in Madame de la Motte. He knew from one of his confidential emissaries, with whom I had been conversing, that I treated the stealing of the Necklace as comparatively a pitiful incident; but that I regarded the scene in the park almost in the light of a capital crime. This was apparently in precise accordance with his own views, and made him anxious that Madame de la Motte’s counsel should share to the fullest extent in his opinions. In replying to the countess’s letter, I grounded my refusal on my want of talent and experience for so grave a business, and I added, that it would be useless for her to insist further, as my refusal being dictated to me by my conscience, nothing she could urge would induce me to revoke it.”[241]

On her side, Marie-Antoinette, deeply and very naturally incensed against the Prince de Rohan, and, truth to tell, quite as eager for his destruction as the minister Breteuil, refused likewise to look elsewhere for a culprit. Both she and the king believed the grand almoner to be guilty of the peculation of the Necklace, and of an impertinent abuse of the queen’s name. They knew he had contracted enormous debts; they knew, too, that he had been charged with tampering with the funds of a rich hospital, the Quinze-Vingts, of which he was treasurer, and that he had hitherto led a most dissolute life. Was he not, therefore, precisely the man who would be likely to perpetrate such a crime? Already branded in public opinion for an alleged malversation of a million of francs in the matter of the Hospital of the Quinze-Vingts, his office of grand almoner, and his dignity as a prince of the Church, could not raise him above suspicion. The aversion first excited in the queen’s mind by the cardinal’s private letter against her mother, and his injurious representations respecting herself at the court of Vienna, was increased to positive hatred by the description of the scene in the park of Versailles, by the frequent association of her own name with his in people’s mouths, as well as by the offensive commentaries provoked by that association. This burning abhorrence, continually fed by fresh reports similar in character to the foregoing, so blinded Marie-Antoinette to the strict rules and rigid formalities of justice, that in her first moments of passion she is said to have demanded the cardinal’s life of the king, and the king, moreover, is believed to have promised her that he should not escape the scaffold.

XXVIII.

1785. SEPT.–OCT.

PREPARATIONS FOR THE TRIAL.—CAPTURE OF THE COUNTERFEIT QUEEN.

The Cardinal de Rohan, who in the first instance was looked upon as the grand criminal in the Necklace affair, was no sooner in safe keeping than the somewhat difficult question arose what should be done with him. It is true that the queen, in her first moments of anger, urged on by her adviser, the Abbé Vermond, and the cardinal’s enemy, the Baron de Breteuil, was for doing swift execution upon the grand almoner; but fortunately for the latter there were certain tedious forms of law to be gone through before a prince of the holy Roman Church could be consigned to the scaffold. Irresolute Louis XVI. had, of course, no opinion of his own upon the subject, and it is quite certain that much indecision on the subject prevailed among his chief advisers. Phlegmatic M. de Vergennes, though no friend of the queen, seems to have thought it best to hush the matter up, and let the scandal die out if it would, and he well-nigh convinced the king that this would be the proper course to pursue. While the affair was under discussion, Louis XVI. wrote to M. de Vergennes as follows:

“I thank you, sir, for your new interview with M. de Breteuil. I have weighed your reasons; come to-morrow before mass, and I will hear you upon this subject once more. It is necessary that a decision should be arrived at, so as to end with this intrigue of a needy man, who has so scandalously compromised the queen, and who, in order to clear himself, has no other recourse than to allege his connection with an adventuress of the worst kind. He dishonours his ecclesiastical character. Being a cardinal, he is none the less a subject of my crown.”[242]

This interview seems to have resulted in a proposal to the cardinal, offering him the option of throwing himself upon the clemency of the king, or of being arraigned before the parliament, not doubting that he would be only too ready to accept the first of these two alternatives. The cardinal, however, decided upon consulting his friends and advocates; and among the latter were two of the ablest members of the Paris bar, the one, M. Target, robust of brain and body, pompous in speech, learned as intense study could render him, versed in the treasures of literature, fiery, impetuous, an athlete redoubtable to all,[243] who, as member of the National Assembly, subsequently busied himself a good deal in framing the constitution, and was in after years applied to to undertake the defence of Louis XVI. himself—a duty which he declined on the plea that he was getting old; the other, M. Tronchet, who, though ten years older than Target, did undertake to defend the king, although he knew he was engaging in a hopeless cause—Tronchet, whose natural phlegm disposed him to listen with attention, and whom a healthy judgment directed aright even in the most difficult matters.[244] The cardinal’s friends were all of them in favour of the parliament; while his advocates were divided in opinion. Nevertheless, by the parliament he decided he would be judged, and made known his election to the king in the following terms:

“Sire,—I respectfully thank your majesty for the alternative you have been pleased to offer me. I have no hesitation in preferring the parliament, as affording me the surest way of unmasking the intrigue of which I am the victim, and of proving my innocence before the world.”[245]

On receiving this reply, and exactly three weeks after the cardinal’s arrest, the king issued his royal letters patent, addressed to the Parliament of Paris, formally apprising it of the great fraud that had been committed in the queen’s name, and of the arrest of the supposed authors of it, and requiring the parliament to investigate and judge the affair. The cardinal having selected the parliament as the tribunal before which he desired to be arraigned, now protested, in his character of bishop and prince of the holy Roman Church, in a somewhat mild way, against the competency of the judges he had himself chosen, and humbly besought the parliament that he might be tried by an ecclesiastical tribunal, composed of his peers or brethren in the episcopacy, in accordance with the recognised rights and privileges of the Catholic Church. This request being refused, the cardinal had no option but to accept the tribunal named by the king. On the pope hearing of this, he summoned a consistory, which unanimously declared that the Cardinal de Rohan had acted contrary to his dignity as a member of the sacred college in recognizing the authority of the parliament, and at once directed his ecclesiastical suspension for a period of six months, at the end of which time, in the event of his persisting in his course, he was to be struck off the list of cardinals.[246] In this dilemma, the Abbé Lemoine was despatched to Rome by the cardinal’s friends, and succeeded in proving to the pope that the Prince de Rohan had made the protests which his dignity required, though without avail, and that he only accepted a secular tribunal because he was compelled to subscribe to the will of the king. The interdict was thereupon removed, and the cardinal reinstated in all his functions.

While these formalities were being discussed, and the affair still partook of the character of a political contest between the adherents and friends of the house of Rohan united with the enemies of Marie-Antoinette on the one hand, and the court and government and partizans of the crown on the other;—while people were eagerly devouring the statements circulated on behalf of the accused, and were now blaming, now seeking to exculpate the cardinal, and were either attacking or sympathising with Madame de la Motte, and ridiculing Cagliostro,—an individual whom no one was particularly regarding, was silently, but none the less earnestly, labouring to overthrow the cold calculations of political animosity, and dissolve all those dreams of private vengeance of which the Prince de Rohan was the object. This was the Abbé Georgel, the cardinal’s vicar-general, who had taken upon himself the task of disentangling the threads of this complicated affair. With the sanction of the grand almoner, he went first of all to the jewellers, and arranged with them that they should receive payment for the Necklace in full, with all interest then due or that might hereafter accrue, and he gave them as security an assignment under the cardinal’s hand, of the revenues of the Abbey of St. Waast, to the amount of three hundred thousand livres per annum. Thus this able man of business, by a single wrench, so to speak, drew out the most envenomed shaft, converting the jewellers from enemies, if not into friends, at any rate into very harmless antagonists. The cardinal’s other creditors, whose claims amounted to nearly two millions of livres, on hearing of this assignment, became clamorous, and had also to be successfully arranged with.[247]

The abbé directed his attention to the state prosecution, in order to see whether it could not be diverted from the cardinal, the actual victim of the fraud, to the countess and her confederates, the perpetrators of it. Night and day, with the pertinacity of the true Jesuit, did the Abbé Georgel pursue his plan; now visiting the Bastille and interrogating the cardinal next examining his friends, his visitors, and his domestics, and then again the different individuals to whom these referred him, and taking notes of every scrap of information he obtained. For many weeks his industry seemed to yield him no result, for as yet he was without anything like a positive clue. At length, from hints given him by the Abbé de Juncker, he tracked out Father Loth, one of the countess’s minor instruments, and so far privy to, if not an actual accomplice in, her misdeeds as to judge it prudent on his part to keep entirely in the background until the Necklace inquiry was brought to a close.[248] For a long time he was a most unwilling witness, but eventually the Abbé Georgel skilfully extracted from him all that he knew, and learned for the first time the names of Mademoiselle d’Oliva and of Rétaux de Villette, and the _rôles_ they had been engaged to play. The announcement of this discovery demolished in a moment the subtle political intrigue, the object of which had been to send the Cardinal de Rohan to the scaffold.

Encouraged by this stroke of good fortune, the abbé proceeded to track the fugitives, for Mademoiselle d’Oliva, and Rétaux de Villette, had both turned their backs upon Paris soon after the countess’s arrest. Through the good offices of the Count de Vergennes, who prevailed on the king to consent to a demand being made in his name, for the surrender of the “_jolie demoiselle_” of the Palais Royal she was arrested at Brussels on the 16th of October in the middle of the night by the sub-lieutenant of police, three civic officers, a greffier, and some half-dozen of the town guard—rather a formidable force to take an unprotected female of four-and-twenty into custody. It is supposed to have been owing to the exertions of Marie-Antoinette’s sister, the Duchess of Saxe-Teschen, then _gouvernante_ of the Austrian Netherlands, that the Demoiselle d’Oliva and her lover, a certain M. de Beausire, formerly attached to the household of the Count d’Artois, were routed out. In a letter of the queen’s, written to her sister, she says, “Your government, I am certain, will second me in searching for the woman who played the part in the garden scene, and who has taken refuge with you.”[249] D’Oliva was at once brought to Paris, and lodged in the Bastille. She, however, knew nothing beyond what related to the nocturnal scene in the park of Versailles, when she had been tricked out to play the part of queen.

Yet what Mademoiselle d’Oliva did know she told with frankness and with an air of perfect truth. A memorial, ostensibly on her behalf, was brought out by the indefatigable abbé, containing the announcement of the important fact, now proved beyond a doubt, that it was the humble individual now in custody, and not the Queen of France, who took part in the famous interview which had given rise to so much scandal. The story was so clear, the incident so fully explained, that the malice of ten thousand tongues was in a moment deprived of its nutriment, and the great figure of Marie-Antoinette was suddenly withdrawn from the scene—too late, alas! for her subsequent reputation,—while the innocence of the cardinal was everywhere beginning to be felt.

Before D’Oliva’s memorial made its appearance, however, and indeed, before the counterfeit queen’s capture, Madame de la Motte had been engaged in furnishing her counsel with the materials for a memorial on her own behalf, which was made public early in November, when, in all probability, she had not heard of D’Oliva’s arrest. This formed number one of that series of lying “Mémoires” issued by the countess, which, in their endeavour to explain away certain new evidence that had come to light, contradicted former statements made by her, contradicted each other, and at times contradicted themselves. The countess avers that so great was the excitement on the occasion of the issue of her first memorial, that M. Doillot, her advocate, was obliged to have a guard at his house during the distribution of the copies, six thousand of which were sold in the course of a day or two.[250]

The countess, who had been in the Bastille for several months, feeling by no means dissatisfied with the turn her case was apparently taking, and contenting herself with denying all knowledge of the Necklace, experienced a certain degree of disquiet on learning of the arrest of Mademoiselle d’Oliva; still, her fertile brain was soon at work to concoct some kind of explanation of the circumstances to which this new witness might be expected to depose. Besides, if it came to the worst, could she not fall back upon her system of general denial? and was not D’Oliva a person of notoriously bad character, whose word would weigh as nothing against that of a descendant of the house of Valois? It must have been about this time that she would have also heard from her counsel of the rumours afloat respecting the depositions which Carbonnières, intendant of the cardinal’s household, had procured in England from the jewellers Gray and Jefferys, and have seen how necessary it was that the more complete story which she would now be constrained to tell should fit in all its parts with this new and unexpected evidence. It was more than ever requisite that she should be wakeful, since she had heard, like the rest of the world, that the prosecution would be a contest between the queen and the Baron de Breteuil on the one hand, and the Prince de Rohan and his powerful partisans on the other; and there are strong reasons for believing that the home secretary and other enemies of the cardinal had insinuated to her, through various channels, that if she could only produce good evidence against the grand almoner, no other victim would be required. If we can believe her own statement, that “mercenary hireling,” as she calls him, Commissary Chénon, “made use of every argument to exasperate me against the cardinal,” and wound up by saying, “He indeed may lay all manner of things to your charge, but make yourself easy, we shall take care to saddle him with everything.”

XXIX.

1786. JAN.

THE TRIAL: EXAMINATION OF THE ACCUSED.

At length, after the law had exhausted its customary period of delay, the examination of the accused commenced. The Cardinal de Rohan was first questioned, and told his story much the same as the reader has already gathered it from the preceding pages. Mademoiselle d’Oliva was next examined, and simply confirmed all that she had stated in her published memorial, from which we have quoted the chief passages. Pecuniary embarrassment, she said, was the sole reason of her leaving Paris within a few weeks of the time that Madame de la Motte was arrested, for it was then that her creditors began to press her for payment of their claims. She went to Brussels by the recommendation of a person who lived in the same house that she did, and whom she knew to be a native of that place. It was now the countess’s turn, for as yet Rétaux de Villette had proved more than a match for the sleuth-hounds of the Abbé Georgel, and was still skulking in some safe retreat. As for Cagliostro, his examination was to be deferred until after the countess’s had been brought to a close.

Madame de la Motte commenced by detailing the chief incidents in her career, from the time she was taken notice of by the Marchioness de Boulainvilliers until the moment of her first introduction to the Cardinal de Rohan, with something like a regard for truth. When questioned respecting her pretended intimacy with the queen, she said she had not the honour of being known to her, and denied ever having represented that she had access to her; averred that she had never shown any letters purporting to be from her majesty; that she had never been honoured with letters from her, and consequently could not have shown any such letters.

With regard to Mademoiselle d’Oliva, the countess stated that all she knew of her arose from casually meeting her in the Palais Royal, when she learnt from her that her husband, who was a friend of Monsieur de Choiseul, had left her, and gone to America. Compassionating her lonely condition, and finding her to be, to all appearances, a well-conducted young person, she had asked her to her house, “and had taken her on one occasion to Versailles, where she stayed with her for three days.” When asked if she had not told D’Oliva that she was a lady of the court, on terms of close intimacy with the queen, by whom she was charged to find a person who would render her majesty some service, for which a reward of fifteen thousand francs would be given, she ridiculed the entire affair. She maintained it to be an invention on the part of the cardinal and Father Loth, who both knew of the unpleasantness that had arisen between her husband and herself with regard to the woman D’Oliva, whom she afterwards found by her behaviour to be anything but the respectable person she represented herself, being, in fact, a common courtesan who had been receiving the visits of Count de la Motte for some time past. She admitted that D’Oliva walked in the park of Versailles with her husband and Villette, on some evening in July of the year 1784, while she was promenading with the Cardinal de Rohan, but she utterly denied the whole story of dressing her up to personate the queen, and then conducting her to the park and instructing her what she was to say on being addressed by a great personage to whom she was to hand a letter and a rose. The countess protested that she felt highly indignant at the mere suggestion of these “numerous falsehoods,” these “horrible reports;” that “the entire thing was most absurd, and nothing but a foolish and incredible fable, most wretchedly concocted by its author, the Prince de Rohan.” She said, of course it was false that she had ever told D’Oliva that the queen was pleased at the way in which she had acquitted herself, or that she had read a letter to her, purporting to be from the queen, saying the same thing; and as for having given D’Oliva one thousand or three thousand livres, or any money whatever, after this affair, she had certainly done nothing of the kind.

When asked if she had obtained from the Cardinal de Rohan two sums of 50,000 livres and 100,000 livres, in the months of August and November, 1784, in the queen’s name, she simply ridiculed the suggestion, and pertinently asked, was it likely the cardinal would have been so mad as to have handed over to her such considerable amounts as these without receiving orders perfectly well known to have come from the queen, or, at any rate, without taking some kind of acknowledgment from her for them?

On being questioned with respect to the Necklace, the countess denied having had anything whatever to do with its purchase. She said she only saw the jewellers once before it was sold to the cardinal, on which occasion she peremptorily declined meddling in the affair. When asked if she had carried or had shown to the cardinal a letter purporting to be from the queen, wherein the queen expressed a wish to possess the Necklace, she ingeniously observed, that if it were intended to be suggested that she had been the bearer of any such letter as that alluded to, she desired the letter might be produced, for it was the cardinal’s duty to have preserved a document of such importance. She admitted having casually spoken to the cardinal about the Necklace the day after the jewellers had shown it to her, but the cardinal appeared to pay no attention to what she said, although he afterwards sent to her for the jewellers’ address. She certainly showed his note to Böhmer and Bassenge, but never said or hinted to them that he was acting on behalf of the queen, whose name was never once mentioned. With regard to the actual purchase of the Necklace she knew positively nothing until several days afterwards, when the cardinal told her that he had bought it for the queen.

As to the contract, the countess declared it had not been given to her to show to the queen, and consequently she could not have returned it to the cardinal “approved” and signed. When the contract was first shown to her she immediately recognised the body of it as being in the cardinal’s handwriting, but she did not know the writing of the signature: she positively denied having written it herself, or that it had been signed by any person she knew.[251]

In reply to further questions, Madame de la Motte stated that she did not know when the Necklace was handed over, and could not say whether she saw the cardinal at Versailles on the 1st of February, 1785, although she saw him most days when he was there. She had no hesitation in declaring the story about the cardinal bringing the Necklace to her house, and the casket being handed over to a person who came with a note from the queen, to be absolutely false from beginning to end. The countess indignantly denied ever having had the Necklace in her possession, or having had it taken to pieces; but, knowing well enough that there was evidence forthcoming of her and her husband having sold some of the diamonds forming part of it, she endeavoured to make her admission fit, as it were, with the evidence she thought likely to be brought forward. She maintained, however, that she was merely acting as agent for the cardinal, who, she said, sent her first of all twenty-two diamonds in a little box, with a note bidding her sell them as soon as she could. Subsequently he sent her a second box, containing a number of small diamonds which she was likewise to dispose of. The first parcel of diamonds Villette, she said, endeavoured to sell, but was unsuccessful, and they were eventually sold to the jeweller Paris for fifteen thousand livres, by recommendation of Monsieur Filleul,[252] advocate of Bar-sur-Aube, and this amount she duly remitted to the cardinal, who afterwards sent her sixteen other diamonds, which she sold to the same person for sixteen thousand livres, and forwarded the amount to the cardinal in the early part of May. The small diamonds, she said, she sold to Regnier, together with one of larger size which the cardinal had given her, for the sum of five thousand five hundred and forty francs. The two diamond rings which, it will be remembered, were set by Regnier, were set, she said, for the cardinal, and she asserted the same with respect to a _bonbonnière_ which Regnier had encircled with diamonds for the count.

During the same month, while the Cardinal de Rohan was at Saverne, she said, one Carbonnières, a member of the cardinal’s household, came to her in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Gilles, at six o’clock in the morning, and inquired if it would be possible for her to undertake a journey to Saverne in four days’ time, some urgent business which he had in hand preventing him from going himself. He had something of great value and importance to transmit to the cardinal, who, he knew, would be very much pleased with her if she but did what he asked. At the expiration of the four days, Carbonnières, she said, brought her a large sealed packet, and lent her his walking-cane, and directed the coachman to proceed by the Porte St. Martin as far as Pantin, the first stage. On reaching Saverne she put up at an inn, and apprised the cardinal of her arrival, whereupon he sent over one of his own carriages to fetch her. Immediately she saw the cardinal she gave him the sealed packet, and he asked her to stay and dine with him, but as she was dressed in man’s clothes she was obliged to decline. The cardinal, after thanking her for the trouble she had been at on his account, then made her a present of the _bonbonnière_ which Regnier had mounted with diamonds for him. “Open it,” he said, “and you will find something.” She did as directed, and saw it was full of unset diamonds. On leaving the cardinal intrusted her with a packet of letters for Carbonnières, which, on her arrival at Paris, she duly forwarded to the Hôtel de Strasbourg, together with the walking-cane which had been lent to her.

At this point of her examination the countess essayed what she thought would prove a grand _coup_, which, bewildering and astonishing her judges, would make her innocence apparent with due melodramatic effect. She stated that in the month of March of the year before she went, accompanied by her niece, a little girl of ten or twelve years of age, daughter of Madame de la Tour, to the Hôtel de Strasbourg to meet that great, that extraordinary man, as the cardinal invariably called him, the Count de Cagliostro, whom she had seen at Strasbourg four years previously, and who was on the present occasion to exhibit some of his marvellous performances. She and her niece were conducted to the cardinal’s sleeping apartment, which was lighted up with twenty or thirty candles, when Count Cagliostro, calling her niece to him, took her upon his knee, and made her promise never to reveal to any one what she was about to see. He then dressed her out with a blue, green, and black ribbon, and also a white ribbon, to which was attached a cross and a star, and put on her a white apron covered over with different orders, and ornamented with beautiful silver lace. He next placed his naked sword upon her head, and pronounced these words: “I command thee, in the name of the Great Cofte and of the angels Michael and Raphael to show me what I shall presently tell thee;” and, taking her niece by the hand, he led her behind a screen where there was a table and a bottle of very clear water, on which he made her place her hand. The count then passed to the other side of the screen, where Madame de la Motte and the cardinal were seated, and commanded them to keep strict silence. He then pronounced certain words, of the meaning of which she understood nothing—but which the cardinal told her were to drive away the evil spirit—and said to her niece: “Say, ‘I command thee to make me see all that I desire.’ Strike! What dost thou see? Hold thy hand always upon the bottle. What dost thou see?” “Nothing, monsieur.” “Strike again. Strike! strike! What dost thou see? Dost thou not see a woman dressed in white, with a long fair face?” “Yes, monsieur.” “Who is it? Dost thou not see the queen? Dost thou know her?” “Yes, monsieur; it is the queen.” “Say again, ‘In the name of the Great Cofte I command thee to show me all that I shall desire.’ Strike! What dost thou see, little one? Seest thou not an angel on thy right, who turns towards thee as though to embrace thee? Seest thou?” “Yes, monsieur.” “Ah well! embrace him!”

Some days afterwards the Count de Cagliostro, who was not satisfied with this _séance_, at which all had not been made visible that he desired, directed that her niece should be dressed entirely in white, with her hair hanging loosely down, when he recommenced the same ceremony. The cardinal, on this occasion, forced her to go behind the screen, and Cagliostro made her and her niece go upon their knees, after which he said to the latter: “I ordain thee, &c. What seest thou, little one? Look at the point of my sword. Dost thou not see some one kneeling? Who is it? Name them!” “It is my lord cardinal and my aunt.” “What does my lord do?” “He takes a crown of six livres from a snuff-box which you hold in your hand.” “What further does he do?” “He takes a crown of three livres out of the same box.” “What more dost thou see at the point of my sword? Dost thou not see a magnificent palace and gardens?” “Yes, monsieur.” “Whom dost thou see there?” “No one, monsieur.” “Look again; look well.” “I see nothing, monsieur.” Then Cagliostro, finding that she saw nothing, said to the cardinal: “She is too old, she is not pure. I must have another child.” To which the cardinal remarked: “I understand, one of those you know well.”

Eight days afterwards, Cagliostro went through a similar performance with two young children by turns, and in the following month there was another _séance_ at the cardinal’s hôtel, when Cagliostro directed a table to be taken to one end of the saloon, and a large number of lighted candles to be placed upon it. He then laid his naked sword, crossing it with a poignard, in the centre, and arranged around it a quantity of medals, and the crosses of Jerusalem and St. Andrew, and commanded the countess to lay her hands upon them, and swear that she would never divulge what she was about to see and hear, and what was going to be proposed to her. Then, turning to the cardinal, Cagliostro said to him: “Prince, go now; go now, prince.” They spoke together in a low tone, and the cardinal went to his secretary, which stood by the side of his cabinet, and brought from it a rather large oval-shaped box of white wood, whereupon Cagliostro said to him: “There is still another; bring it forth.” On opening these boxes they were both found to be full of diamonds, and the cardinal then said to her: “Will your husband go to England if I send him? I will give him two thousand crowns, which he can place with some banker here for a draft upon London.” Whereupon she asked the cardinal the name of this banker and his address, to which he replied: “It is Bergaud (Perregaux), Rue du Sentier; he is my ordinary banker. Here, take the diamonds; I will settle the price. Impress upon your husband on no account to sell them without first of all having them set, and tell him he must not bring any unset ones back with him.”