Chapter XVII: Appendix: Detailed Description of the Diamond Necklace 387 (14)

The famous march of women to Versailles took place at this period, and the Paris papers announced that Madame de la Motte led the column of Mœnades, who went to storm the château. This was a piece of pure invention, for the countess was still residing in England, where, according to the count, overtures were from time to time made to her by the agents of the Duke d’Orléans. M. de Montmorin, hearing of this, proposes furnishing an apartment for the countess, and providing her with funds to come to Paris, so that she may be beyond the duke’s influence; but the countess, having a wholesome dread of the branding-iron, and fearing that a “C” (_calomniatrice_) might be added to the “V” (_voleuse_) which already graced her shoulders, and having, too, the terrors of the Salpêtrière before her eyes, prefers remaining where she is, spite of Orléanist agents and other ills by which she is beset, a resolution which, as we shall presently see, proved most unfortunate for her.

Some short time after the receipt of the countess’s letter wherein she expresses the above determination, news reaches the count of a most frightful accident having befallen his wife, and almost immediately afterwards comes a long letter from herself, written on her bed of suffering, corroborative of the dismal intelligence. The count—who is openly living with a notorious courtesan of the period, _la belle impure Seymour_, as she was styled[409]—takes the matter very coolly; writes, no doubt, a short sympathizing note in reply, but as for hastening to the bedside of his dying wife, to watch beside it even for a few hours, and speak to her those few kind words of comfort which might have helped to assuage her sufferings and lighten the gloom of her departing moments, this never enters into the man’s thoughts. The summer days pass pleasantly enough with him; he can lounge in the Palais Royal gardens in the morning, and in the Palais Royal gambling saloons at night, and it is only from the hawkers in the streets that he gains intelligence of his wretched wife’s death. Hearing the news shouted out on the boulevards, he buys one of the broadsides and turns into a neighbouring café to read it, takes it all for granted, and, so far as we can discover, troubles himself no further on the subject.

Deprived of his helpmate, the miserable woman on whose mendicancy, vices and crimes he had lived from the very day that he married her, the count has now to labour single-handed against the government, and after a time against society itself, for the means of subsistence. He obtains an audience of M. Duport du Tertre, minister of justice, whom he presses with reference to a rehearing of the process against him in the Necklace affair, and from whom he asks, and eventually obtains, a letter _d’ester à droit_, which confers the right of appearing before a court of law spite of the judgment of the Parliament of Paris, still hanging over him. Of course if the count can get the case reheard, and the judgment set aside, all the De la Motte property seized at Bar-sur-Aube would be restored to him. Duport du Tertre was by no means opposed to this course, for though a minister of the crown, he sympathised with that party who wished to bring Marie-Antoinette before the new tribunals with reference to her share—for they persisted in believing her to have had a share—in the Necklace transaction.[410] Meanwhile, by some skilful manœuvring of his own, the count is brought into communication with M. de Laporte, intendant of the civil list, keeper, in fact, of the king’s privy purse, who, he says, tells him that the king, having heard so good an account of his opinions, and conduct, and devotion to his person, has accorded him a certain credit on the civil list, and has commanded Laporte to say that justice shall certainly be done him in the Necklace affair. And as a sort of earnest of what the count is to expect in future, M. de Laporte at parting places in his hand a sealed packet, containing two thousand four hundred francs in assignats.

Time wears on, the troubles of the court increase, and the flight of the royal family from Paris is decided on. The count asserts that it was arranged for him to accompany an old friend of his, ex-mayor of Lyons, in a carriage, in which a large amount of specie was to have been stowed away, and that they were to have kept a short distance ahead of the royal party. For some reason not given, this arrangement, which we do not believe was ever made, is not carried out.

The count, with whom the revision of the Necklace process has become a fixed idea, persistently bores the minister of justice to order a rehearing before one of the new courts, and in November, 1791, by the king’s direction, according to the count, a sort of council is held, at which M. Duport du Tertre presides, when it is decided that the count shall appeal to the third tribunal. The president of this is a certain M. de Plane—believed to be amenable to court influence,—who, the count tells us, fought by the side of his father at the battle of Minden, and promises to do all he can to assist the son of his old comrade.

No sooner is this decision arrived at than the count obtains one thousand crowns from Laporte, who asks him to call upon him at the Tuileries that evening. The count goes, and to his astonishment finds himself in the presence of the king. His first movement, he tells us, is to throw himself at his sovereign’s feet. On his rising, the king informs him that, from what he has heard, and the good opinion which he has himself formed of him, he has decided to grant him all that he asks. He then inquires of the count whether he happens to have with him the original draft of the petition drawn up by Mirabeau. Of course, the count has brought his portfolio, and instantly produces the document in question. “_Le misérable!_” exclaims the king, “he deserved his fate;” which observation of his majesty satisfies the count Louis XVI. was not ignorant that Mirabeau had been poisoned. The son of the Chevalier of St. Louis, and former gendarme at Lunéville, having declared to his sovereign that he was ready to shed his last drop of blood for him, now makes his obeisance, and retires from the royal cabinet.

On January 4, 1792, Count de la Motte, having taken the precaution to go the day beforehand to La Force, and choose his cell just as a man might engage the most convenient vacant room at an hotel, proceeds to constitute himself a prisoner. His apartment being somewhat damp, he orders a large fire to be made, and retires to rest for the night, but is, by-and-by, aroused from his sleep by a sense of suffocation. Springing out of bed, he finds his cell on fire, and shouts loudly for assistance. After a time he is rescued, but not until his hair is singed half off his head, and his great-coat burnt, more or less, to tinder. Hébert’s “Père Duchesne” came out the next day with an accusation against the “Austrian she-wolf,” of having caused the prison to be set on fire to consume both M. de la Motte and the documents he was on the eve of producing implicating her in the Necklace affair. From La Force the count is transferred to the Conciergerie, and on the second day of his arrival there his old friend and former barber, Burlandeux—he to whom the De la Motte furniture was wont to be consigned to save it from being taken in execution[411]—pays him a visit in company with some seven or eight others, whom Burlandeux introduces as Manuel (afterwards procureur of the commune), Sergent (one of the “killers” at the ensuing September massacres), Panis (a friend of Danton’s), Robespierre, Marat, Hébert, etc., all of them having come to compliment the count upon his courage and to offer their aid, while vilifying poor Marie-Antoinette in most offensive language. De la Motte then has his say, tells his visitors that he is a _voluntary_ prisoner, and exclaims vehemently against the old Paris parliament for having “sacrificed an innocent woman, deprived of the means of defence, that they might save a debauched prelate.” At the conclusion of the count’s harangue, his new friends, seemingly very well satisfied with what he has said to them, take their leave.

The hearing of the appeal for the revision of the Necklace process at length comes on. De la Motte pretends that the public excitement is intense, the hall being packed from floor to ceiling with Jacobins—ragged men and slatternly women for the most part—in the midst of whom he recognizes Burlandeux. According to the count, the judgment which the third tribunal eventually pronounces, at the suggestion of the president, would have had the effect of restoring to him all his property seized by the crown, if at this moment the minister of justice had not given orders for all the documents relating to the process to be remitted to the _procureur du roi_, who afterwards brings the whole affair before the first tribunal. The following letter, written by the count to the king, puts the matter, however, in a somewhat different light:—

“Sire,—When I voluntarily constituted myself a prisoner I
should, in accordance with the promise made to me by M. Duport
(du Tertre), and after the precautions which he had taken,
have obtained my liberty and the entire restitution of my
property within the week. For four months have I been detained
and persecuted by a cabal which, disregarding all prudential
considerations, seeks to give an annoying _éclat_ to this
affair. M. de Plane, president and judge of the third tribunal,
was appointed to examine me, which he did in the most indecent
manner, his questions having no other object than to try and
compromise the queen, and principally to find the means of
confronting her with me in open court, as a necessary witness
and deponent of facts set forth in this horrid process.

“M. A. DE LA MOTTE.

“From the Conciergerie of the Palace of Justice, May 5th,
1792.”[412]

At the time the foregoing letter was written, unless there is a mistake in the month—May instead of April—judgment had actually been pronounced by the third tribunal exactly one month previously, namely on the 5th of April, a circumstance, one would imagine, of which the person most concerned could hardly have been ignorant.[413]

The count’s old friend Burlandeux pays him another visit at this particular juncture. “Dog of an aristocrat!” exclaims the enraged barber, thrusting his fist in the count’s face, “Capet and the Austrian she-wolf will never help you to get out of this prison.” After thus abruptly delivering himself, Burlandeux, to the count’s great relief, quietly retires.

While the De la Motte appeal was going forward, one day a stranger asks to speak to the count. He proves to be a bookseller named Gueffier, who has received, he says, from his correspondent in London the whole of the French edition of the last “Mémoires” of Madame de la Motte,[414] which “Mémoires,” the count avails himself of this opportunity of stating (believe him, who pleases), were written against his advice. The count says that he communicated the above information to M. de Laporte, who obtained the king’s authority for him to treat with Gueffier for the purchase of the work. The fact, however, is that De la Motte wrote direct to the king upon the subject, as may be seen by the extract which we are enabled to give from his letter, which, curiously enough, bears the same date as his other letter to the king—namely, May 5th, 1792:

... “There has just been bought up by a bookseller of Paris, named Gueffier, ‘the Life of Madame de la Motte, written by herself,’ and printed in London. Before constituting myself a prisoner, I informed M. Duport (du Tertre) of the existence of this work, which is really by Madame de la Motte, and which she sold on certain conditions, in order to maintain herself, to a printer in London, who ought, after having received what he has advanced and his own charges, to deliver up the complete editions of the work in French and English. Your majesty has, without doubt, been informed of these facts by M. Duport, who some time since endeavoured to buy up the work, and prevent its being made public. It appears that these endeavours were without result, as the French copies have arrived at Rouen, and are to be published in a few days at the shop of this Gueffier. This is what the London printer, whom I saw two days ago, assured me.

“I have informed my counsel of these details, and they seem much alarmed for the public tranquillity, and that of your majesty and the queen, on account of the dangers of the publication of this work. They have imperatively counselled me to have it seized before it arrives in Paris, as the property of Madame de la Motte, and now belonging to me by the right of succession. But as the booksellers who have purchased it, and who advanced Madame de la Motte the money, claim what is due to them, I shall either be forced to abandon the seizure or to pay them their demand. I cannot myself make a sacrifice of twenty thousand francs. I therefore beg your majesty to put yourself to the necessary expense in order to frustrate the projects of these evil-disposed persons. My plan, if it meets with your majesty’s approval, is to seize and seal up this work at Rouen, and to offer the holders of it the amount due to them from Madame de la Motte. The whole will then be sealed up and delivered by my counsel to M. de Laporte, who will dispose of it according to your majesty’s orders.”[415]

Negotiations are opened with Gueffier, who offers to surrender the whole of the copies on receiving a sum of twenty-five thousand francs. The count suggests eighteen thousand, which Gueffier eventually agrees to accept, whereupon M. de Laporte forwards the count twenty thousand francs, with an intimation that he need not trouble himself to return the balance.[416]

An attempt, of which the king and M. de Laporte evidently knew nothing, had, it seems, been previously made to sell the manuscript of this edition of the countess’s life to Marie-Antoinette. But the queen, guided by past experience, saw clearly enough that, whether she bought the manuscript or not, the libel was equally certain to be published, and indeed it must have been printed off at the time the manuscript was offered to her. She therefore peremptorily refused to enter into any negotiation. “At the commencement of 1792,” writes Madame Campan, “an estimable priest asked of me a private interview. He had heard of a new libel of Madame de la Motte’s, and told me he had remarked that the people who came from London to get it printed in Paris[417] were actuated only by the desire of gain, and that they were ready to deliver up the manuscript for one thousand louis, if some friend of the queen could be found disposed to make this sacrifice to ensure her tranquillity.

“I communicated this proposition to the queen, who declined it, and commanded me to reply that, at the time when it was possible to punish the circulators of those libels she had considered them so atrocious and so improbable that she had disdained to take any steps for arresting their course, that if she now were imprudent enough to buy up one only, the active espionage of the Jacobins would not fail to discover it, and the libel so bought would not the less be printed, and would become much more dangerous when the public learnt the means she had adopted to keep it from their knowledge.”[418]

M. de Laporte had the edition of the countess’s life, which had been purchased from Gueffier, conveyed to his hôtel; but after a time, growing alarmed at the daily increasing excesses of the population of Paris, and fearful that at some moment when he least expected it, an irruption might be made into his house, and these “Mémoires” carried off and distributed among the people, he gave an order for them to be burnt with all necessary precaution and secrecy. Unfortunately, the person who received this order confided the execution of it to one Riston, a dangerous intriguer, and former advocate of Nancy, escaped, a year previously, from the gallows, by favour of the new tribunals, although he had been proved guilty of fabricating impressions of the great seal, and forging decrees of the council in proceedings undertaken at the request of the king’s household. “I had,” says Bertrand de Moleville, minister of marine, “to read over to the witnesses their depositions, and to confront them with the accused, at the peril of being assassinated, not only by Riston, who, at one of the sittings, threw himself upon me with a knife, but also by the brigands in his pay, with whom the hall of audience was filled, and who were enraged at finding their threatening outcries did not prevent me from repressing the insults which the accused offered unceasingly to the witnesses who came to depose against him.

“This same Riston, who a year previously was in the toils of a capital accusation, instituted against him in the name and by order of the king, finding himself charged with a commission which interested his majesty, and the importance of which was apparent from the mystery attaching to it, troubled himself less about the best way of executing it than in making a parade of this mark of confidence. On May 30th, 1792, (at ten o’clock in the morning), he had the printed sheets conveyed in a cart, which he himself accompanied, to the porcelain manufactory at Sèvres, and caused a great fire to be made of them in the presence of all the workmen belonging to the establishment, who were expressly forbidden to approach near it. All this parade, and the suspicion to which it gave rise in these critical times, caused the matter to be publicly talked of and discussed; and the same evening it was brought before the Assembly, when Brissot, and others of the Jacobin party argued with as much effrontery as vehemence that these papers, burnt with so much secrecy, could have been nothing else but the registers and correspondence of the Austrian committee. M. de Laporte was called to the bar, and gave a most exact account of the facts. Riston was also summoned, and confirmed the account given by M. de Laporte. But these explanations, however satisfactory they ought to have been, did not appease the violent feeling which this affair had excited in the Assembly.”[419]

Madame Campan tells an interesting anecdote in connection with this unfortunate casualty. “One day,” observes she, “M. d’Aubin came and said to me, ‘the National Assembly has been engaged with a denunciation made by the workmen of the manufactory of Sèvres, who brought to the president’s desk a pile of pamphlets, which they said was the life of Marie-Antoinette. The director of the manufactory was called to the bar, and declared that he had received orders to burn these printed works in the kilns used for baking the porcelain.’ Whilst,” says Madame Campan, “I was giving an account of this to the queen, the king coloured and hung his head over his plate. The queen said to him, ‘Do you know anything of this, sir?’ The king did not answer. Madame Elisabeth asked him to explain what it all meant. Still the same silence. I promptly retired. A few minutes afterwards the queen came to me, and told me it was the king who, out of regard for her, had caused the whole of the edition printed from the manuscript of which I had spoken to her, to be purchased, and that M. de Laporte had not thought of any more secret way of destroying the work than having it burnt at Sèvres, in the presence of two hundred workmen, one hundred and eighty of whom were certain to be Jacobins. She told me that she had concealed her grief from the king; that he was dismayed, and that she could say nothing when she found that his tenderness and goodwill towards her had been the cause of this accident.”[420]

Such was the end of the last of the De la Motte libels, which were nevertheless reprinted in subsequent years, and even so recently as the year 1846, more than half a century after their first dissemination, so thorough is the vitality of calumny!

Marie-Antoinette, in reply to questions put to her at her trial, with reference to the papers burnt at Sèvres, said: “I believe it was a libel. I was not, however, consulted on the matter. I was told of it afterwards. Had I been consulted, I should have opposed the burning of any writing which was against me.”[421]

XLI.

MAY, 1789–AUG. 1791.

RETRIBUTION.—THE CRIMINAL AND HER ACCOMPLICES.

We must now go back in our narrative to the point of time when Count de la Motte left England to traffic in his wife’s “Mémoires” abroad, with what success we have already seen. Judging from the countess’s dolorous account of their dealings with them in England, it is evident that trouble as well as profit resulted from these “Mémoires Justificatifs.” Neither she nor her husband were satisfied with disposing of copies of them through the ordinary channels, but sought to force a trade among merchants, and even hatters. It seems that nine hundred copies of the French, and two hundred and fifty copies of the English edition of the “Mémoires,” together with two hundred and eighty-three copies of the countess’s “Scourge for Calonne”—published at the several prices of one guinea, half a guinea, and five shillings—were intrusted to a French hatter in New Bond Street, named Coup, who advanced the count, at various times, something like three hundred pounds upon them. “Without any previous demand,” says Madame de la Motte, “Coup came one day (May 14, 1789), in the absence of my husband, at the head of half a dozen bailiffs, and lodged an execution at my house in Chester Place, where he for the first time told me he had sufficient authority, my husband never having even mentioned the circumstance to me.

“This was another disagreeable attack, and I saw my house and furniture sold on the 21st of May, without being able to procure any account from this man of the books he had sold, which would have been more than double his demand, as at that particular juncture the sale of these books must have been at once rapid and extensive. He even had the meanness to put an execution upon four or five hundred ‘Mémoires’ which remained with him, and which were sold for only six guineas, and were resold by the purchasers at half a crown and three shillings each.

“Of the five thousand ‘Mémoires’ which had been printed, Coup had received only nine hundred. I proceed to mention what became of the remaining ones. My credulous husband, profuse of confidence, notwithstanding he had been formerly deceived by a man pretending to be a capital merchant, trusted this man with a certain number of ‘Mémoires,’ French as well as English, which he was to dispose of as merchandise to his correspondents in different countries, from whom, in a short time, he would receive remittances.

“M. de la Motte, though formerly deceived, yet gave him his confidence, and delivered to him nine hundred and nine French ‘Mémoires,’ valued at a guinea each, three hundred and eighty-six English ditto, valued at half that sum, and a number of the ‘Scourge for Calonne,’ for all of which we never received one farthing. This man’s wife, upon whom I took pity, remained in my house during the time of the execution, under the specious pretext of rendering me service. Alas! what service did she render me? Small miniature paintings of great value, and other valuable articles to the amount of forty or fifty guineas, she put into her pocket, and when I reclaimed these effects, she made me a most audacious and impertinent reply, to the effect that when M. de la Motte should pay them, they would then give an account. Against their injustice I have no remedy. They have no property, and I am heartily sick of having any business with attorneys, who have already had too much to do with my unfortunate husband.

“Mr. Ridgway, who was the publisher of all these ‘Mémoires,’ had, upon supposition, about four hundred. These he sold for about one hundred and eighty pounds, out of which there was eighty pounds for expenses. I have scarce received one hundred pounds, and I have remaining, out of eight thousand copies, eight hundred French, and three hundred English ‘Mémoires,’ for which I have received no money.

“Very soon after this execution was levied against me, my servant, Angelica (the same who was with the countess in the Salpêtrière, we suppose) got into bad company, and was advised to sue for her wages, to the amount of twenty guineas. She applied to an attorney, who threatened me with arrest. Alas! I that am nobly descended, that have been the favourite of a queen, that have basked in the sunshine of affluence and felt the smiles of distinction, am now nothing; and were it not for the benevolence of some respectable characters, I might probably be reduced to the dire necessity of returning to my former mean situation, and of imploring charity of every passing stranger.”

And this is what ten years of struggling, scheming, intriguing, and petitioning; of lying, swindling, forgery, theft, slander, and depravity—and all to be lady of the manor of Fontette—have brought this wretched woman to at last! “Misery, like a vulture, gnawing her heart,” she says, “and poverty chasing at her very heels;” her household goods sold for debt incurred with respect to her malicious libels; herself threatened with arrest by the very servant whose release she procured from the Salpêtrière, while her husband is flirting in Holland with some flaxen-haired young _frau_. Either to console herself in the midst of these accumulated troubles, or else—and which is by far the most likely reason—with the view of pecuniary gain, she now writes her “Life,” in two volumes, octavo, taking care to reiterate therein all her previous malignant slanders against the French queen.

“Nothing,” says she, almost prophetically, “could have induced me to undertake a task like this—to retrace a life which has already been too long, and which, if my ideas of it are as just as I could wish, is drawing fast to a close; nothing,” she continues, in her most high-flown style, “could have roused me from this lethargy of grief but the desire of rescuing my memory, when this fluttering pulse shall cease to beat, and the hand that now guides my pen be mouldered into dust, from the detractions of malice. Abused, insulted, and disgraced, the wounds of bleeding honour are too deep to be closed. Do they call for vengeance? No; there is a just and righteous Judge, before whose tribunal I shall again meet my enemies, where neither the strong arm of oppression nor the ‘gilded’ hand of offence will be sufficiently powerful to vanquish innocence.”[422]

Such were the motives which inspired the countess to write her “Life.” Curiously enough, the Duke d’Orléans chances to be in England at this precise period—he arrived in London during October, 1789, and did not return to France until the following July—and it is believed that he encourages madame, by liberal bribes, to prosecute her task, even if he does not have a hand himself in its production.[423] The count, too, is by this time in Paris, and in communication with the government, and there are the best of reasons for believing that the countess’s main object in writing this work was to extort more money from a well-nigh bankrupt royal exchequer. Be this as it may, the work is completed towards the close of the year 1790, when the Count de la Motte is receiving bribes both from the French ministry and the Orléans party; but “its publication is delayed,” we are informed, “from overtures being made for its suppression by a person pretending to be charged with a commission for that purpose from the then highest powers in France. Some months were wasted in fruitless negotiation, till the unexpected flight and consequent embarrassments of the royal fugitives destroyed that flattering prospect and pleasing hope of the countess’s being relieved from the difficulties in which the most vindictive persecutions had involved her. The speedy flight of the negotiator, who had impressed her with an idea that she would soon be placed beyond the reach of fortune by the immediate settlement of an annuity upon herself, and the liquidation of her husband’s debts, on condition of giving up the manuscript and printed copies of her ‘Life,’ left her to struggle with these new-created difficulties which his flattering assurances had tended so greatly to increase.”[424]

The struggle was but a brief one, for a very few days afterwards a catastrophe occurred which speedily placed this wretched woman beyond the reach of worldly trouble. According to the count, certain agents of the Duke d’Orléans, finding themselves frustrated in their efforts to induce Madame de la Motte to quit England, conceived the idea of having her arrested, in the belief that, when they had her in their power, they could by promises, and the prospect of a brilliant revenge, prevail upon her to allow herself to be conducted to Paris. “Among these infamous agents,” says the count, “there was one who went before a justice of the peace and swore on the Scriptures that Madame de la Motte owed him a hundred guineas, when he was immediately furnished with the necessary order for her arrest. Armed with this document, the officers presented themselves at her house, and requested her to accompany them—she being ignorant all the while of even the name of the villain who had sworn to the debt. Even had the debt been real, no one had the right to arrest a married woman, and Madame de la Motte was sufficiently acquainted with the laws of the country to be aware of this circumstance. Still, it was necessary that she should furnish proofs of her marriage, which she could not do, as, when she quitted Paris, all her papers remained at the Bastille. These scoundrels, therefore, insisted upon carrying her off; whereupon she declared to them that, if they used violence, she would put herself under the protection of the passers-by, who would come to her rescue. She told them, however, that she was going to send for her lawyer, who would, if requisite, find the necessary bail, and she despatched her servant for that purpose, cautioning her beforehand, that if the lawyer was not at home, she was, on her return, to make her a certain sign, and to say that he was coming, so that she might settle within her own mind what course to pursue in this emergency. Angelica had no sooner left, than the countess, with the view of keeping her vile persecutors in a good humour, served them with some luncheon and a bottle of port wine. While they were seated at table she walked about the room, conversing with them, and looking out of the window to watch for the return of Angelica, who, seeing her mistress at the window, and not having found the lawyer at home, made her the sign agreed upon.

“Madame de la Motte, seizing a favourable moment, abruptly opened the door and double-locked the scoundrels inside the room. The window being open, one of them looked out to see whether she left the house. Her extreme anxiety, and the state of confusion she was in owing to this unjust aggression, were, no doubt, the reason of her not remarking the hackney-coaches stationed before the house, into one of which she might have got, and been driven in a few minutes into another county, when, in the event of her persecutors discovering her retreat, it would have been necessary for them to have procured a new writ before they could have again arrested her. But instead of adopting this very obvious course, and not, perhaps, imagining the fellows would be on the watch to see what became of her, she took refuge in a neighbouring house, the people belonging to which were known to her.

“In the meanwhile these infamous tyrants, by dint of kicking at the door of the room, succeeded in getting themselves released. They immediately made for the house which they had seen the countess enter, and demanded of the owner that she should be surrendered up to them. The owner replied that he knew no such lady, and refused to allow them to make a search. They, however, insisted, declaring that if Madame de la Motte were not there, they would take upon themselves all the consequences of the trespass. Thereupon they proceeded to search the house. Not finding the object of their search on the ground or first floors, they ascended to the second story, the proprietor following them and renewing his protestations. At last they arrived at a room, the door of which being locked they demanded to have it opened. In vain they were told that it was let to a lodger who always took his key with him when he went out; not doubting but that Madame de la Motte was concealed here, they threatened to burst the door open if the key were not immediately forthcoming.

“The countess, who was really in this room, had persuaded herself that a plot had been got up to carry her back to France, and there imprison her again. She was consequently in a most bewildered state. Opening the window, which looked into a yard, she got out and suspended herself by her hands to an iron bar which served as a guard, determined to precipitate herself to the ground if these fellows should succeed in breaking in the door. Unfortunately it was of common deal, and a few kicks sufficed to start the panels. The instant the countess caught sight of the head of one of her pursuers she let go her hold and fell with violence upon the pavement It was her misfortune not to have been killed on the spot: her thigh was broken in two places, her left arm was fractured, and one of her eyes was knocked out; in addition to which, her body was a mass of bruises. In this state she lived for several weeks, during which time I received from her a long letter giving me a detailed account of this tragical event.

“Thus died, at the age of thirty-four, a woman whose whole life was one long career of misery, but which might have ended happily had not the privilege of her birth, by over-exalting her imagination, developed beyond measure those sentiments of pride and ambition which conducted her to her fall.”[425]

The editor of “The Life of Jeanne de St. Remy de Valois, heretofore Countess de la Motte, written by herself,” furnished, in a supplement to that work, a few additional particulars of the melancholy termination of her career. He says, that “she received most of her injuries through falling against the trunk of a tree, and that, while the feelings of the surrounding spectators were agonized at the sight of the dreadful spectacle which her bleeding and mangled form presented, the sheriff’s officer, with a disgraceful apathy, was only intent to maintain the legality of his caption, and refused to surrender the almost lifeless body until he had good bail for its security.”[426]

Spite of the prominent place which the countess and her doings had recently occupied in the public mind of Europe, the English journals of the day notified the fact of her decease in such brief terms as the following:

“August 26, 1791.—Died at her lodgings, near Astley’s Riding School, Lambeth, the noted Countess de la Motte, of ‘Necklace’ memory, who lately jumped out of a two pair of stairs window, to avoid the bailiffs.”[427]

Of the last surviving representative of the royal house of Valois, Mademoiselle de Saint-Remi, the Countess’s youngest sister, a few meagre particulars have been preserved. In Madame de la Motte’s days of grandeur she was engaged to be married to a certain Paul François de Barras, nephew of the Count de Barras, and a particular friend of her brother’s, the young Baron de Valois, and who was subsequently better known as commandant of the Convention forces against the Robespierre faction on the 9th Thermidor, as the friend and patron of young Bonaparte, and chief of the Directory. “My disaster,” (her sentence in regard to the Necklace affair) naïvely observes the countess, “prevented the nuptials.”[428] In July, 1786, we find the Abbess of Jarcy, to which convent Mademoiselle de Saint-Remi had again retired, writing to the Baron de Breteuil on her behalf, and thanking him for the assistance which he had accorded to “virtue in distress.” A couple of months afterwards, when this assistance is required to be renewed, the baron is favoured with a second letter in the following terms:

“I consider my requests on behalf of Mademoiselle de Saint-Remi,” writes the abbess, “founded as much on justice as on charity. The innumerable examples of the goodness of our monarchs in such cases authorizes my prayers. And although the example of a foreign sovereign ought not to influence the will of our august master, I do not see that it is wrong of me to dwell upon what the Emperor, brother of the best of queens, has just granted to the wife and children of Count de Székély, condemned to the pillory, the galleys, and other punishments. His goods were confiscated, and the sovereign gave them back to his wife and children. He did more: he preserved to them, even to the last survivor, the perquisites which the culprit enjoyed as first lieutenant of the Hungarian _gardes nobles_.

“Is the position of Mademoiselle de Valois less deserving of pity? Alas! she deserves it much more. There remained some fortune to the Countess Székély, whereas our unfortunate is alone in the world. Lastly, she is of the blood of our kings—very respectable blood, M. le Baron, in the estimation of both you and I.

“Shall I tell you, M. le Baron—and why should I hide it any longer? Poison has twice failed to conduct the unhappy one to the tomb she longs for. Without the most prompt help—without the assistance of antidotes administered for twelve hours in succession, the unfortunate wretch would have expired in the most frightful torments: less frightful, however, than those which she is menaced with suffering without the alms which I claim for her, and which you cannot refuse—I do not hesitate to say it—to her extreme misfortunes.”[429]

Exactly one year subsequently, namely, in September, 1787, we find a certain Abbé Phaph interesting himself very warmly in the young lady’s affairs, and writing to the countess, who has only recently arrived in England, urging her to sign some document which he has prepared, the effect of which would be to give the sister a charge upon the De la Motte property at Bar-sur-Aube. This the countess very decidedly declines to do, and writes back requesting her sister to send her over “three gowns which she fetched away from the mantua-maker’s”[430] just after her arrest, and which she has ever since detained!

The next we hear of Mademoiselle de Saint-Remi is that she is living openly with the aforesaid abbé as his mistress.[431] In April, 1787, we find her engaged in a process against the domain for the restitution of the family papers and deeds of succession, which she stated were under the seals affixed to the effects of her sister; but orders having come from Versailles for all proceedings in the matter to be suspended, the suit had to be abandoned.[432] From this time we lose sight of Mademoiselle de Saint-Remi until January, 1794, the height of the Terror, when, caught up in the revolutionary vortex, she is sent to the Port Libre prison as a _suspect_. Here she is at first mistaken for her sister, until people call to mind that the countess has been dead some years.[433] Six months afterwards she is transferred to the Carmes, and in less than another month—namely, on the 22nd of August, three days before the arrest and execution of Robespierre—she has the good fortune to regain her liberty.[434] What subsequently became of her, and the precise date at which she died, are involved in obscurity. Beugnot speaks of her as having retired to some convent in Germany,[435] and a paragraph in Count de la Motte’s “Mémoires” would lead us to suppose that her death took place about the year 1817.[436]

But little is known of the future careers of the countess’s two Accomplices, the forger Villette, and the counterfeit queen D’Oliva. Villette, on being banished from France, proceeded to gratify that longing which he pretended he had to visit Italy where he seems to have lived for some years, apparently not caring to profit by the opportunity which the Revolution afforded him to return once more to the land of his birth. He published at Venice, in the year 1790, as his contribution to the lying literature of the Diamond Necklace affair, a small octavo volume, of less than one hundred pages, under the title of “Mémoire Historique des Intrigues de la Cour, et de se qui s’est passé entre la Reine, le Comte d’Artois, le Cardinal de Rohan, Madame de Polignac, Madame de la Motte, Cagliostro, etc.”[437] In this work he informs us that he forged the queen’s signature under the eyes of the cardinal—a prince who overawed him, and who had so many opportunities of benefiting him—and of Madame de la Motte, a woman whom he adored; a pension of six thousand livres a year being promised him for his compliance, one thousand crowns of which he received, the following day, on account. The words “_of France_,” were added, he says, by the cardinal’s express directions. Villette pretends that Cagliostro, the cardinal, and Madame de la Motte, were equally concerned in the plot; Cagliostro, whom at the trial he emphatically declared to be innocent of all share in the fraud, being the most guilty of all. The Necklace was obtained, he said, with the sole view of selling it, so that the trio might replenish their bankrupt exchequers, the cardinal having exhausted his resources in supplying Cagliostro with funds to carry on his experiments for the discovery of the philosopher’s stone, which experiments they hoped might turn out successful by the time the Necklace had to be paid for. Villette pronounces all the “Mémoires” put forth at the time of the trial to be merely so many romances, fabricated for the sole purpose of concealing the truth. Of the countess’s _liaisons_ he speaks in the most open terms. “Abandoned,” he says, “by her husband, a depraved libertine and gambler, she sought to captivate other men, and to render them slaves to her charms.” What these charms were, Villette himself shall tell. “Strong natural wit, a graceful figure, a white and transparent skin, and eyes bright and piercing.” He says that he possessed the countess’s entire confidence, and knew of all her intrigues, and particularly her _liaisons_ with the cardinal; he then proceeds to say that she was seduced in the first instance by the Marquis de Boulainvilliers, and that she afterwards admitted the Bishop of Langres to her embraces, that the Marquis d’Autichamp was her next lover, that she had a _liaison_ with the Count d’Artois even, and reckoned the Count de Dolomieu and M. de Coigny on the list of those she had ensnared. “I have described her,” concludes Villette, “as she was—amiable, pretty, and over-complaisant; too good not to have been a trifle weak, too passionate not to have been somewhat of a libertine. This woman, whom I loved to adoration, and who had loaded me with benefits, I dared to betray.”

The termination of the career of Rétaux de Villette would appear to have been even a more sorry one than that of the woman he so adored, if the statement is true that he died by the hands of the hangman, swung off on the leads of the Castle of Saint Angelo, at Rome.[438]

The Demoiselle d’Oliva married her old lover Beausire, the same who accompanied her to Brussels at the time of her flight. He was an offshoot of nobility, and, as we have already stated, was formerly attached to the household of the Count d’Artois. D’Oliva’s married life was but brief, and anything but happy, for she died, it is reported, in 1789, in the greatest misery.[439] Next year her husband became commandant of the National guard of the Temple section, but finding his influence rapidly declining, he retired to Choisy, near Paris, and managed to get appointed procureur of the commune; finally he pursued the despicable calling of _mouton_, or informer, and drew up the lists of proscription in the Luxembourg prison, when it was choke-full of persons _suspects_. Against the majority of these there was not a shadow of evidence, but as evidence must be forthcoming in some form or other, the poor wretches were accused of having plotted in prison. It was remarked that Beausire’s old acquaintances who had had the ill-luck to win money of him at play were certain to be on his list of victims, and it was said that he spoke privately to the public accuser to have them guillotined.[440] “This Plot in the Prison,” remarks Carlyle, “is now the stereotype formula of Tinville; against whomsoever he knows no crime, this is a ready-made crime. His judgment-bar has become unspeakable, a recognized mockery, known only as the wicket one passes through towards death. His indictments are drawn out in blank; you insert the names after. He has his _moutons_, detestable traitor jackals, who report and bear witness, that they themselves may be allowed to live—for a time.”[441]

Beausire was at the head of these _moutons_, was, in fact, the chief spy of the detestable Boyenval, who gloated over the number of victims he was instrumental in bringing to the guillotine. He said of Beausire, that he made use of him, but that Fouquier Tinville did not like him, and that he could have him guillotined whenever he pleased.[442] And it pleased Boyenval at last to put this covert threat of his into execution, and “D’Oliva’s husband was hurled in.”[443]

XLII.

1786–1793.

DUPE AND VICTIM.

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.”

Any mere wordy formula the cardinal was willing enough to swallow, but he could not tolerate sacrilegious hands being laid upon church property, and particularly church property that he was interested in. “Messieurs of the clergy,” said a wag of the time, “it is your turn to be shaved; if you wriggle too much you will be certain to get cut;” and cut the cardinal, and with him the unfortunate crown jewellers, certainly did get, for the latter’s security on the rich revenues of the Abbey of St. Waast, of which the nation had taken possession, was now only so much waste paper, and bankruptcy was the result. Shortly after the grand national oath-taking ceremony in the Champ de Mars, the cardinal was summoned by the Assembly to resume his functions as deputy within fifteen days, but instead of doing so, he wrote a letter, stating that as it was impossible for him to give his adhesion to the new civil constitution of the clergy, he placed his seat at the Assembly’s disposal. The cardinal was now looked upon as one “_suspect_,” and had ere long to retire to Ettenheim, a dependency of his Strasbourg bishopric, lying beyond the French frontier on the opposite bank of the Rhine. Here, in his capacity of prince of the German empire, he caused levies of troops to be made to swell the army under the command of his relative, the Prince de Condé, whom he aided in every possible way. These proceedings of his greatly exasperated the revolutionary party; he was constantly being denounced in the National Assembly, and on one occasion Victor de Broglie brought forward a proposition to indict him before the national high court; but the Assembly, knowing the cardinal to be beyond its reach, sensibly enough refused to entertain the proposal, although it was renewed again and again. It contented itself, on first hearing of the cardinal’s flight, with instructing the municipality of Strasbourg to seize and make an inventory of his effects, of which they were to retain custody until further orders.[446] “Deprived of his vast revenues,” says the cardinal’s biographer, “he lived a modest and frugal life, intent only on securing the happiness of his diocese, now reduced to a small patch of territory on the right bank of the Rhine.”[447] This life of virtuous restraint which the old spendthrift and debauchee, stripped of his fat benefices, was compelled to lead in his declining years, was perhaps as severe a punishment as could have been meted out to him. He died on the 16th of February, 1803, having attained an age only a little more than a year short of the allotted three score years and ten.

The cardinal and his “familiar” do not appear to have met again on this side of the grave. Cagliostro, as we have seen, had to make a rapid retreat to England, and here he remained for about a couple of years. Then he went to Switzerland, to Savoy, and finally to several of the chief cities of Italy. On December 27th, 1789, when the proceedings of the revolutionary party in France were exciting the utmost alarm in the minds of members of the sacred college, Cagliostro had the ill-luck to get arrested, denounced, it is said, by his wife as chief of a society of Illuminati. He was confined in the Castle of St. Angelo, and after fifteen months detention, was found guilty of practising freemasonry, and sentenced to death, which sentence was commuted to perpetual imprisonment in the Castle of St. Leo, where he is believed to have died in 1795. His wife was condemned to a life of religious seclusion in the Convent of Ste. Apolline.[448]

And what became of the Victim?—the Austrian she-wolf!—the Austrian tigress!—the Iscariot of France! Messalina, Brunehaut, Frédégonde, and Médicis! as she was indifferently called by her relentless persecutors? A more powerful pen than our own shall record her cruel fate:—