Chapter V: Appendix: Detailed Description of the Diamond Necklace 387 (2)

“The day after our marriage a grand dinner was given by Madame de Suremont. The entertainment was profusely elegant. There were two tables, one in the antechamber, and the other in the dining-room. Every apartment was open and very soon crowded; the health of the bride was an apology for drinking wine as though it had been water. When the company quitted the table, all were desirous to salute and wish me joy. The remainder of the day was spent in dancing.

“The banns of marriage had been published at Fontette, which made the peasants of that place curious to know the day. They came in great numbers to Bar-sur-Aube, with the intention of witnessing the ceremony, and remained there some days. Amongst them was a young peasant, a comely young fellow, who came to Madame de Suremont and inquired bluntly for Mademoiselle Filliette, a name by which my sister had formerly been known in the country. ‘I know no such person,’ replied she: ‘whom do you mean by Mademoiselle Filliette?’ ‘Why, madame,’ replied the clown, ‘the sister of mademoiselle who is just married. Please tell her I am Colas, of Fontette; she will recollect me.’

“Madame de Suremont communicated this to my sister, who, out of compassion for the unfortunate rustic, refused to see him lest such an interview should make him more unhappy. Durand, indeed, to detain my sister in the country, had promised her in marriage to this peasant, whose appearance was greatly in his favour, but the recognition of her birth by the people in the neighbourhood had kindled in the bosom of Marianne hopes of an alliance more consonant to her ideas, more consistent with her present station. Far from despising this poor creature, she wished to avoid giving him pain. She begged me, therefore, to speak to him: I did so. ‘Good day, my dear friend,’ said I, ‘what are your commands for my sister?’ ‘I wish, madame,’ replied he, ‘to have the honour of paying my respects to her. She is of the same age, we have stood sponsors together, and M. Durand, her godfather, promised me that I should marry her. But her fortune is changed; she is now Mademoiselle de Valois; and I am not quite such a fool as to think that she will have me for her husband, as she is descended from the blood-royal; but I wish to have the pleasure of seeing her in her fine clothes, for I am sure,’ continued he, bursting into tears, ‘she is very handsome!’[23] I could not help shedding a tear of pity for this honest rustic. His grief, however, was not to be alleviated; the presence of my sister would but have increased his misery; at least she thought so, and could not be prevailed upon to see him. Finding himself without hope, he went home again, murmuring at what he termed the false-heartedness of his mistress.

“Some few days after I accompanied my sister to Fontette, where, it being Sunday, we went to mass. All the peasants rose from their seats at our entrance, and desired the curate should do us honour, as the children of the Baron de Saint-Remi their late lord. We received the holy water and the consecrated bread in the seat of honour; the bells were rung, and every one testified their joy on our arrival. They crowded about the house where we were staying; we ordered them six livres a-piece, for which they testified their gratitude by drinking our healths, and the health of the Baron de Saint-Remi de Valois, and his safe return. They then conducted me to the mansion of my ancestors, and round the grounds of the patrimonial estate. This mansion, this noble estate, thought I to myself, might have been possessed by the descendants of those who acquired it by valour,[24] and enjoyed it with hospitality. I lamented the ravages of luxury: I thought of the credulity and easy temper of my father, who sacrificed everything to the extravagance of his wife. Had it not been for these he might have sustained the dignity of his ancestors, and his miserable offspring have maintained that position to which they were by birth entitled.”[25]

To provide herself with a suitable _trousseau_, Mademoiselle de Valois had been obliged to raise one thousand livres on a mortgage of her pension for two years; while, to defray the expenses incident to the wedding, M. de la Motte, on his part, sold for six hundred livres a horse and cabriolet which he had only bought a short time previously on credit at Lunéville, where his corps was doing garrison duty.[26]

We will close this chapter with a pair of portraits of Monsieur and Madame de la Motte, which their friend Beugnot has sketched for our benefit. “M. de la Motte,” observes his rival, “was an ugly man, but well made and skilled in all bodily exercises, whilst, despite his ugliness, the expression of his face was amiable and mild. He did not exactly lack talent, still what he possessed was frittered away on trifles. Destitute of all fortune, he was clever enough to get head over ears in debt, and only lived by his wits and on the trifling allowance of three hundred francs a year which his uncle, M. de Suremont, was obliged to make him to enable him to retain his position in the gendarmerie.”

With regard to Madame de la Motte, Beugnot says: “She was not exactly handsome, was short in stature, slender, and well formed. Her blue eyes were full of expression and over-arched with black eyebrows; her face rather long; her mouth wide, but adorned with fine teeth, and, what is the greatest attraction in such a face as hers, her smile was enchanting. She had a pretty hand, a very small foot, and a complexion of dazzling whiteness. When she spoke her mind exhibited no sign of acquired knowledge, but she had much natural intelligence, and a quick and penetrating understanding. Engaged in a perpetual conflict with society from the time of her birth, she had learned to disdain its laws, and had but little respect for those of morality.”

M. Beugnot adds the following anecdote:

“When I returned home that evening my father mentioned to me that fifteen or twenty years previously, whenever he went to collect his rents in the parish of Essoyes, the curé of Fontette never failed to tax his purse for the poor children of Jacques de Saint-Remi, who were huddled together in a dilapidated hovel with a trap-hole in front, through which soup, vegetables, broken victuals, and other charitable doles were passed by the neighbours.”[27]

VI.

1780–1782.

COUNTESS DE LA MOTTE.—IN BARRACKS AT LUNÉVILLE.—ON A FIFTH FLOOR IN PARIS.—ENSNARES THE GRAND ALMONER.

From the day of her marriage, in the summer of 1780, our heroine assumed the title of Countess de Valois de la Motte, though on ordinary occasions she dropped the former portion of it, retaining only the name of De la Motte, by which she afterwards became so notorious. The wedding did not take place a day too soon, for in the course of the same or following month the countess gave birth to male twins, that died a few days afterwards. Thereupon Madame de Suremont, glad of an excuse for getting rid of her new relation—the old lady used to say to Beugnot that “the most unhappy year of her life was the one she spent in the society of this demon,”—turned the newly-married couple out of her house.[28] They took refuge for a time with Madame de la Tour, a married sister of the count’s—the young gendarme following the example of his wife, had likewise assumed a title—but were finally obliged to rely on their own resources, which, as may be supposed, were of the narrowest. De la Motte himself had nothing but his sword, and the countess had not even her scanty pension to depend upon. Now commenced with them that life of shifts and expedients, which is certain in the long run to disappoint those who are unhappily reduced to enter upon it, which subverts the principles, destroys the best habits of even the firmest characters, and too frequently culminates in crime. By borrowing money from friends and neighbours so long as they were disposed to lend it, by occasional loans from money-lenders at exorbitant rates of interest, by running into debt with the tradespeople, and by certain small bounties received from Paris, to assist the descendants of Henri II., in answer to supplicatory letters written by the countess, the newly-married couple dragged on as best they could.

The count’s leave of absence having at length expired, he was summoned back to garrison duty at Lunéville, a dull, decaying, fortified town, composed of straight streets and regular buildings, where in subsequent years the treaty of peace was signed between France and Austria which gave to the former the coveted frontier of the Rhine. The palace built by Philip, duke of Lorraine, grandfather of Marie-Antoinette, was then, as now, a _caserne de cavalerie_, and it was to this barrack that Count de la Motte took his wife to share with him his incommodious quarters. Here madame’s “lively complexion” and “excess of vivacity,” as she styles them, were not long in exercising their sway over the more susceptible of her husband’s comrades. In September of the following year the count and his wife had determined upon proceeding to Paris to urge the Marchioness de Boulainvilliers to interest herself in their behalf, a project which was knocked on the head by the count’s commanding officer, the Marquis d’Autichamp,—whose too familiar intimacy with Madame de la Motte was the talk not merely of the corps, but of the town,[29] and who had himself contemplated escorting madame on her journey to the capital,—peremptorily refusing the count any further leave of absence. Just at this time intelligence reaches the De la Mottes that the Marquis and Marchioness de Boulainvilliers are at Strasbourg, only some threescore miles or so away. Commanding-officer d’Autichamp, we suppose, relents; for the count gets a few days’ leave, and to Strasbourg the pair hasten as fast as a French diligence of the eighteenth century will carry them, which is, however, not fast enough, for on their arrival they learn from the great charlatan of the age, Count Cagliostro, who just then happens to be showing off in the capital of Alsace, that the Marquis and Marchioness de Boulainvilliers have departed for Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan’s Palace at Saverne. There was nothing else but to give chase, so off the De la Mottes start, and on their arrival in the vicinity of the episcopal château, put up at some little inn, whence the countess writes to Madame de Boulainvilliers, apprising her that she is in the neighbourhood, and asking when she may be permitted to call upon her. The next day she is honoured by a visit from the marquis, who escorts her over to his wife. Some few days afterwards, while the marchioness and madame are taking a carriage drive together, they meet the Cardinal de Rohan, Grand Almoner of France, to whom Madame de Boulainvilliers introduces her _protégée_, and strongly recommends her to this powerful prelate’s kindly notice.[30]

On her return home to barrack quarters, if home indeed they could be called, the countess harped, day after day, upon her fancied claims to the three estates that formerly belonged to her family, and no wonder if she at length came to the conclusion that Paris and Versailles, rather than a dull garrison town like Lunéville, were the proper spheres for her enterprise and ambition. To Paris, therefore, she resolved to go; but, alas! how was she to obtain the means of defraying the expenses of her journey and of her sojourn in the capital? Commanding-officer d’Autichamp would willingly escort her there, and pay all travelling expenses, but just then her husband is jealous and cannot be brought to consent. Fortunately for the countess, one of her Bar-sur-Aube friends—the father of the M. Beugnot, of whom we have already spoken—came to the rescue with a loan of one thousand livres, and to her honour it may be recorded, that whenever afterwards she spoke of this service she was always much moved, and, what is perhaps more to her credit, during the period of her dishonest prosperity she paid the money, as she paid all the debts she had contracted at Bar-sur-Aube, her adopted home. However corrupt her general character may have been, she was certainly not wanting in gratitude.

This thousand livres she and her husband divided equally between them, and they then set forth in different directions it is true, but still with the same object at heart, namely, to procure the restitution of the Saint-Remi estates. The countess went to Paris to press her claims on the attention of those in power. The count resigned his post in the gendarmerie, never to do, from that hour forward, another day of honest work during the remainder of his long life, and betook himself to Fontette to search for evidence on the spot, and to ascertain the exact nature of the steps requisite to be taken to recover possession of this and the adjacent Saint-Remi domains. Arrived at his destination, he caused a _Te Deum_ to be chanted in the church, and, as the congregation were leaving, scattered handfuls of silver among the gaping crowd, who, on experiencing this mark of favour, did not hesitate to hail him as their lord; and lord of Fontette he was by courtesy, so long as his money lasted, which, unfortunately for the rustics of the place, was not long. His last livre dissipated, the count was only too glad to get back again to Bar-sur-Aube to such a home as his sister was able to offer him.[31]

The countess, on her part, so soon as she arrived in Paris, proceeded to set to work. She wrote at once to young Beugnot, who was then prosecuting his legal studies in the capital, informing him that she had a letter for him from his father, and asking him to call upon her. Beugnot lost no time in complying with her request, and found the purport of the letter was to urge him thoroughly to examine the countess’s claims to the Fontette, Essoyes, and other estates, and see if there was any real foundation for them. “I took the affair,” says Beugnot, “seriously in hand as my father desired me, and readily enough found the letters patent of Henri II. which conferred the domains in question on his natural son, but I could not trace the various deeds diverting the possession of them from the Saint-Remis into the hands of the different proprietors who were in nowise connected with the family. One of the latest of these, a M. Orceau de Fontette, superintendent of Caen, had exchanged the lands held by him with the king. This was a favourable circumstance for us in the prosecution of our claim, as the king had only to forego his hold upon the property to restore to the Saint-Remis one of the possessions of their forefathers.”[32]

The young lawyer now proceeded to compose a “Mémoire,” wherein, in true French style, he spoke of his client’s case as “one more insult of fortune to the Valois, the hard lot of a branch detached from that ancient tree which had so long covered with its royal shade France and other European states. I interspersed my composition,” says Beugnot, “with those philosophical reflections then so much in fashion, and asked the Bourbons to pay the natural debt of those from whom they had received so magnificent a heritage. I submitted my composition to M. Elie de Beaumont, a celebrated advocate, and also a man of taste. ‘It is a pity,’ remarked he, ‘that we cannot bring this business before the Parliament; it would make your reputation.’ Alas! I did not even receive for my labour the honours of print. People said it was entirely a matter for the royal favour, and that to print the ‘Mémoire’ would be contrary to the respect due to the king.”[33] Beugnot thereupon composed a new “Mémoire,” or rather petition to the crown, which was in due course presented, though without producing the result which the sanguine expectations of the countess and her advocate anticipated from it.

Early in November, 1781, either by previous invitation from the marchioness or of her own accord, Madame de la Motte presented herself at the Hôtel de Boulainvilliers, bent upon jogging the marchioness’s memory with reference to a commission in the dragoons which she had made a half promise to obtain for the count, her husband, and intending to say a few words respecting her own claim to the Saint-Remi estates, when, to her surprise and grief, she found her benefactress lying dangerously ill. She remained and tended her until her death, which took place in about three weeks; yet, strange to say, she was unable to forego her passion for intrigue even at a time like this, for she admits, while the marchioness was lying past hope of recovery, having had a _tête-à-tête_ interview with the marquis, on the length of which she was rallied by the gentlemen staying at the hôtel. During this interview the marquis, she tells us, made her “a downright proposal” to the effect that on his wife’s death she should reside with him as his mistress, he engaging to procure for her husband a post in some regiment which should “prevent him from troubling them too often.” All this she calmly listened to, and when the marchioness was dead still continued to reside under the same roof with the man who had made this disgraceful proposition to her, exposed, as she herself admits, to his daily persecutions. The old reprobate, too, was always upbraiding her, she says, with “loving other men better than him,” and openly accused her of carrying on an intrigue beneath his roof with the old Bishop of Langres, who visited her much more frequently than the marquis thought necessary or prudent.

After a while the count, who had been rusticating ever since his Fontette expedition at Bar-sur-Aube, turned up at the Boulainvilliers hôtel to look after his wife, when the marquis, in revenge, as madame says, for the contempt with which she invariably treated him, endeavoured to arouse the jealousy of her husband by accusing her—falsely, of course—with being too intimate with his son-in-law, and of sundry unbecoming familiarities with the count’s cousin, who had pawned his watch to defray the expense of a three-days’ frolic with the countess at Versailles. However, Count de la Motte, according to his wife, “had too much good sense to give any credit to these insinuations; he listened attentively, but did not believe a single iota of them.”[34]

While the countess was residing under the Boulainvilliers roof she was constantly on the look-out to push her own or her husband’s fortunes, and eventually succeeded in talking over the Baron de Crussol, son-in-law of the Marquis de Boulainvilliers, to procure M. de la Motte a post in the Count d’Artois’s body-guard. This necessitated the count’s removal to Versailles; so, turning their backs on the Hôtel de Boulainvilliers, where the marquis had for some time past adopted an unpleasant system of retrenchment in order to bring madame to “his way of thinking”—in other words, had placed the descendant of the house of Valois and her tall and hungry spouse on exceedingly short commons—the pair went forth in search of whatever Fortune might please to send them.

From certain hints dropped by the countess it is evident that she had grown disgusted with the avarice and meanness rather than with what she styles the “detested attentions” of the marquis, who, had he only loosened his purse-strings, and dispensed his bounty with a liberal hand, had been looked upon favourably enough, and possibly had been the means of saving Cardinal Prince de Rohan from getting entangled in the countess’s toils.

It is not to be supposed that at this epoch of her career Madame de la Motte had forgotten her introduction to this prelate, or that she omitted to remind him of it, and of Madame de Boulainvilliers’ recommendation of her to his notice and sympathy. Was he not, in fact, Grand Almoner of France, and, by virtue of his office, dispenser of the king’s and a nation’s bounties? and humiliating though she might pretend it to be for one who had the blood of the Valois in her veins to have to appeal to the servant of the sovereign instead of to the throne itself, the pill, if a trifle bitter, must nevertheless be swallowed.

Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan, at this time in his eight-and-fortieth year, is described as a tall, portly, handsome-looking man, with a slightly ruddy complexion, bald forehead, and almost white hair. There was a noble and easy bearing about him,[35] and his manners are said to have been singularly agreeable so long as he kept his temper, of late grown exceedingly choleric, under restraint. He was weak and vain, and credulous to a degree; anything but devout, and mad after women.[36] Unrestricted by his priestly office, he led a notoriously dissolute life, which scandalized even the loose moralists of that loose epoch; still, he was commonly looked upon as a good-enough sort of man so far as little acts of kindness and generosity were concerned, more especially, too, when the suppliant happened to be of the fair sex, and youthful, and a beauty withal. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that he responded favourably to the countess’s first and second appeals. This gave her hope; and, the better to profit by the grand almoner’s liberality, and to secure his influence in support of her claims, she took an apartment in Paris during the summer of 1782 within a short distance of his hôtel. It was a poor sort of a lodging, consisting merely of two ill-furnished rooms on the topmost _étage_ at the Hôtel de Reims, in the Rue de la Verrerie, a narrow, ill-paved, irregularly-built street—devoted at the present day, not to glass factories or warehouses, as its name would imply, but to grocery, soap, candle and dried fruit stores, and to locksmiths’ shops, every one of which hangs out its monster red or golden key by way of sign—running from the Rue des Lombards into the Rue de Bercy, which intersects the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, where the Hôtel de Strasbourg, or Palais-Cardinal, as it was sometimes called, in which for the moment all the countess’s hopes are centred, was situated.

This hôtel built in the year 1712 by Cardinal Constantine de Rohan, uncle of the grand almoner, on a portion of the gardens of the Hôtel de Soubise, is now the National Printing Office, and internally retains no traces of what it was when Prince Louis de Rohan lived here in state befitting the dignity of a prince of the German empire and a cardinal of the Holy Roman Church. The entrance gateway and the buildings forming the external boundaries of the court in front of the hôtel are, with the exception of some evident alterations, much the same as they were in the days when the Countess de la Motte was a frequent visitor at the Palais-Cardinal. The court itself is divided by parallel ranges of buildings at right angles with the principal front, and a gateway on the right-hand side leads to what was evidently the stable-court, where a noble bas-relief by Couston, representing the watering of the horses of the sun, with the animals full life-size, may be seen over one of the arched entrances to the stables—those stables where the horse of one of the cardinal’s heyducs dropped down dead on a memorable occasion of which we shall by-and-by have to speak.

The principal façade of the De Rohan hôtel has undergone only some slight alteration since the grand almoner’s time, but it is far different with the interior; the grand staircase has been removed, and the magnificent _salons de réception_ have been converted into _bureaux_ for the officials attached to the national printing establishment. In the principal waiting-room are four paintings by Boucher, said to have formed part of the original decorations of the Palais-Cardinal: one represents Mars attiring for the wars, with Venus holding his shield and Cupid handing him his helmet; another shows Mars reposing, with Venus, who looks wonderfully like a French marchioness of the eighteenth century, with even a scantier allowance of drapery than usual, reclining beside him on a cloud; a third portrays Juno with her peacock, the immortal Jove facing her, and Boreas and Æolus at his feet, blowing as though they would burst; while in the fourth subject we have Neptune ruling the waves with his trident, and a trio of lusty sea-gods spurting water out of long conch-shaped shells.

The garden front of the Palais-Cardinal is far more elegant than the one which looks upon the court; being decorated with lofty columns surmounted with enriched capitals, and having sundry emblems as well as the armorial bearings of the house of Rohan sculptured on the projections of the façade. Only a small portion of the palace garden now remains to it, the chief part being covered over with long ranges of offices in which the workpeople attached to the national printing establishment ply their several callings.

The Countess de la Motte was woman of the world enough to know that much may be accomplished by personal solicitation when written applications are of little or no avail. The Cardinal de Rohan too had a reputation for gallantry; and as for the countess herself, she tells us in her “Memoirs” that “her face, if not exactly handsome, had a certain piquancy about it which, combined with her vivacity (Beugnot admits her smile was perfectly enchanting), supplied in her the want of beauty so far as to lay her open to the importunities of designing men.” She therefore sought an audience of the grand almoner, and, finding that this would be accorded her, called upon young Beugnot the day before to beg three things of him—his carriage, his servant to follow her, and himself to accompany her. “All these,” said she, “are indispensable, since there are only two good ways of asking alms—at the church door, and in a carriage.” “I did not,” observes Beugnot, “raise any difficulties as to the first two points, but I peremptorily refused my arm, as I could only have presented myself with her before the Cardinal de Rohan in the character of her advocate, after his eminence had been notified of my coming, and had given his permission.”[37] Madame was, therefore, constrained to present herself at the cardinal’s hôtel without any other escort beyond the footman lent to her by her friend.

At the first interview Madame de la Motte had with the cardinal, the latter, as might have been expected from his well-known character for gallantry, proved incapable of resisting the countess’s artful allurements, and she, bent on completing the conquest which she felt she had made, was careful on the occasion of subsequent visits to the Hôtel de Strasbourg, to pay the utmost attention to her toilet—decking herself out in her finest feathers, putting on her most coquettish airs, and making the magnificent saloons of the Rue Vielle-du-Temple redolent with the odour of her perfumes.[38]

VII.

1783.

OSCILLATES BETWEEN PARIS AND VERSAILLES.—SENDS OUT BEGGING LETTERS AND PETITIONS.—FAINTS IN MADAME’S SALLE D’ATTENTE.—DESPAIR.

At the time the countess was engaged in setting her snares for the Cardinal de Rohan, she dined one day with our young Bar-sur-Aube advocate, who saw that she was in most excellent spirits, which every now and then exhaled in malicious remarks respecting their common acquaintances. “I tried in vain,” says Beugnot, “to lead her to more serious talk. Irritated at last, I threatened to abandon her entirely to her folly. She answered me gaily that she no longer had need of me. My brow contracted; she saw that she was likely to lose me, and took the trouble to explain to me that I had been exceedingly useful to her in unravelling the particulars of her claim, in composing ‘mémoires’ and petitions for her—in a word, in all the duties of an advocate—but that she had now arrived at a point where she required counsel of a different kind. She wanted some one who could point out to her the way of getting at the queen and the _contrôleur-général_, and who knew equally well what was necessary to be done as to be left undone—in a word, one who was alike capable of concocting a good intrigue, and of carrying it successfully through. It was necessary that I should now hear from her lips, without making an ugly grimace with my own, that in an affair of this kind she looked upon me as the most foolish of men; she had, indeed, already taken several steps without asking my advice. Her husband’s condition, she went on to say, was one of ridicule to all the world, and consequently an obstacle to her advancement. She had made him enter as supernumerary into the Count d’Artois’ body-guard, which would give him a sort of standing, which the gendarmerie did not. She had found means, moreover, to get him to Versailles to perform his duties there, and where, at least, he would not be so sorry a sight as he was in the country. She observed that she was about to reside at Versailles herself, in order to secure an opportunity of getting at the queen, and of interesting her majesty in her favour. This was the first time,” remarks Beugnot, “that she pronounced the name of her sovereign in my presence.”[39]

At Versailles, which at this period was crowded with intriguers and adventurers, living for the most part by their wits, the countess resided, first of all with the widow Bourgeois, in the Place Dauphine, whence she speedily removed to the Hôtel de Jouy, in the Rue des Récollets, a long narrow street leading on to the immense Place d’Armes, in front of the château. Some of its houses—built in strict accordance with the edict promulgated by the _grand monarque_ at the time a new Versailles was springing up in the neighbourhood of his vast palace, namely, only a single storey high, with attics, and roofed with slate—evidently date back to the days of Louis XIV. The Hôtel de Jouy, where the countess had her quarters, is now an ordinary dwelling-house, lofty and narrow, with a certain air of respectability about it, situated at the far end of the street (No. 23),[40] in an opposite direction to the château.

Having next to nothing to live upon, it is not to be wondered at that the De la Mottes were soon deeply in debt The countess, it is true, converted her apartment into a kind of office, whence she periodically sent forth letters of supplication to the nobility for relief, and petitions to the crown praying for the restoration of the Saint-Remi domains; but although she urged her suit with audacious pertinacity, the result seems to have fallen far short of her expectations. Fortunately for her there was always the Cardinal de Rohan to fall back upon, and the snares which she laid for him appear to have been set to some purpose, for ere six months had gone by, Madame de la Motte had so far improved her acquaintance with the grand almoner, who even assisted her in the composition of her petitions and memorials,[41] as to become convinced—in accordance with the rule she had laid down, that alms could be only effectively asked for at the church-door or from a carriage—that a more respectable lodging was indispensable to enable her to profit by the opportunities which this intercourse seemed to open out to her. There were, moreover, other and most pressing reasons for quitting the Hôtel de Reims. The De la Mottes were fifteen hundred and eighty francs in debt to their landlord, who had latterly not only lodged, but boarded them; in addition to which the countess had quarrelled with the landlady, and had attempted, it was said, to throw her downstairs.[42] The result was a police case, and their ejectment from the premises. A “spacious _appartement_” the rent of which was twelve hundred francs, was therefore hired by them in Paris, in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Gilles (No. 13), at that time a quiet and very respectable street leading out of the Rue Saint-Louis, now the Rue Turenne, and consisting entirely of private houses, within sight, too, of the Place Royale, where three centuries ago stood the ancient Palais des Tournelles, at the tournament in front of which Madame de la Motte’s royal ancestor, Henri de Valois, lost his life, and almost in a direct line (in an opposite direction to the Rue de la Verrerie) with the cardinal’s hôtel, from which it was distant only a couple of short streets, or some five or six minutes’ walk. Owing to their straitened means the De la Mottes were unable to furnish their new _appartement_ until the month of May, 1783, and in the meantime madame, when not at Versailles, was obliged to live _au cinquième_ with the mother of her _femme de chambre_,[43] and yet she pretends that at this time she kept five servants, male and female, and a couple of carriages.[44]

This was mere vain boasting. She was not yet in a position to ask alms from a carriage, but was still obliged to send her begging letters through the post, or be herself the bearer of them. One of these missives, written at this particular epoch, and evidently addressed to some person in an official position—possibly to M. d’Ormesson, the then controller-general, or to M. de Breteuil, minister of the king’s household—has been preserved, and furnishes a fair specimen of her style of appeal to persons in power—a little flattery, more or less hypocrisy, allusions to her high descent, and a covert threat or two. We extract its main passages, which we have translated as closely as the bad handwriting and worse spelling of the original document admitted of our doing.

“You have done me the honour, sir, of informing me that you
have caused to be remitted to M. Lenoir several notes which I
have sent you; but I believed that you, sir, would have had the
goodness to oblige me, who am more sensible than any one of
the confidence which the king has in you. You are too just to
see any harm in there being granted me so small a sum as has,
to my knowledge, just been accorded to a person who is not so
much to be pitied as I, nor with so much right. I cannot think
who it is that has usurped the place due to my misfortunes....
I know that M. de Forge [intendant of the royal fisheries and
forests, of which one or more of the Valois estates was part]
is very much opposed to my having the estate which I ask by
right; still I cannot conceive that it matters to him whether
I or another am tenant of the king.... I have the honour of
assuring you that I had yesterday only a single livre (franc),
consequently I may well hope to improve my fortunes.... It
is you, sir, and your good faith that console me. I am very
sensible that you are not unmindful of my misfortunes. I
believe that you told me you would speak to M. de Vergennes.
I have inquired if this matter is under his control, and am
assured it is on you alone that it depends. I recommend myself,
therefore, to your kindness.... It is not my intention to offer
a menace to any one in declaring that I shall end by throwing
myself at the feet of the king, and acquainting him with all
my misfortunes. If you, sir, cannot lend me your assistance,
I beg you to have the goodness to cause to be returned to
me the documents which I have had the honour to send you. I
shall see, on the day of the audience, whether it will not be
possible for me to change my lot, and for my efforts to get
me accorded the trifling sum I have asked. M. Lenoir sent me
yesterday a safe conduct, which M. Amelon requested of him on
my behalf, for a large sum which I have owed these two years
past, but which has not yet reduced me to sell my furniture,
and thereby cause scandals which would assuredly have been
aimed at me. Nevertheless, there is no help for it; I shall
be forced to make away with it so that I may live. God has not
yet determined my fate, and, if Providence does not show pity
on me, people will have to reproach themselves at seeing me
come to a most miserable end. I am not ashamed to tell you,
sir, that I am going out into the world to beg. I have borrowed
from the Baron de Clugny, of the Ministry of Marine, three
hundred livres to enable me to live, which, counting on your
goodness, I have promised to return him in a week’s time. No
one, sir, has so much reason to complain as I have—my husband
without a post, my sister for a long time on my hands, has, of
course, contributed to my debts. People may do as they please
with me; still, I say it is frightful to abandon a relation of
a king, whom he has himself recognised, and who is in the most
frightful position. You will, doubtless, sir, consider me very
unreasonable, but I cannot keep myself from complaining, since
not even the smallest grace is accorded me. I am no longer
surprised that so many people are driven into crime, and I can
say, moreover, that it is religion alone that keeps me from
doing wrong....

“I have the honour to be, with all the attachment of which you
are deserving, Sir,

“Your very humble, very obedient Servant,

“COUNTESS DE VALOIS DE LA MOTTE.

“Paris, May 16th, 1783.”[45]

Unless she desired to have a couple of strings to her bow, we can hardly imagine the “safe conduct” referred to in the foregoing letter being required by Madame de la Motte, since in her Memoirs she tells us that the Countess de Provence interested herself to procure for her an _arrêt de surséance_, or writ under the king’s sign manual, which not only protected the person named in it from arrest, but saved him or her from being harassed by suits at law as well. Madame de la Motte at the same time obtained a “safe conduct” for her husband, the count. Convenient documents, both of these, for individuals of their stamp. The count’s “safe conduct” was not procured before there was pressing need of it, for at this time the ex-gendarme was hiding from his creditors in a little _auberge_ at Brie-Comte-Robert,[46] famous now-a-days for its beautiful roses, a score or so of miles from Paris on the Lyons road, and close to the Abbey of Jarcy, where his sister-in-law, Mademoiselle de Saint-Remi, afterwards went to reside. The chances are that he had already lost his post in the Count d’Artois’ body-guard, although Madame de la Motte pretended that the countess was her protectress, and that the count used to notice her “in a particular manner” whenever she went to church at Versailles—a notice which, by the way, it has been insinuated, subsequently ripened into a too familiar intimacy.[47]

The furniture which, on the guarantee of a Jew, the De la Mottes eventually succeeded in obtaining for their new _appartement_ in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Gilles, was far from splendid, and it was, moreover, every now and then being sent to some neighbour, notably to Burlandeux, the count’s barber, to save it from being taken in execution,[48] and not unfrequently to the pawnbrokers to provide the family with meat and bread.[49] The countess of course kept up her intimacy with the cardinal, on whose liberality, or call it charity if you will, she could to a certain extent depend. If we believe the cardinal’s statement, the donations he bestowed upon her at this period were far from being of that prodigal character which the countess afterwards asserted them to have been, and were more consistent with his character of priest and grand almoner than that of lover and man of gallantry, which latter Madame de la Motte openly insinuated was the nature of the cardinal’s then relations towards her. The cardinal asserted that four or five louis at a time, and at irregular and somewhat distant intervals, was the extent of the benefactions she received from him; but he was forced to admit that he had given her twenty-five louis on one occasion, and it eventually oozed out that he had also made himself personally liable to a Jew money-lender of Nancy for five thousand five hundred livres (francs), a debt contracted by the count when he was stationed at Lunéville, and which amount the cardinal of course eventually had to pay.[50] These facts would seem to prove that at this period the countess had succeeded in ensnaring her victim, preparatory to making him, as she afterwards did, her dupe and then her instrument.

Madame de la Motte was very much in the habit of exaggerating the amount of the charitable gifts bestowed upon her by members of the royal family and some few of the French nobility, and even claimed to have received certain apocryphal sums from persons of distinction who never once assisted her. The reason for this will be apparent enough in the course of our narrative. In the memorials and reports published in 1786 are various disclaimers on the part of people of rank, among others the Duke de Chartres (afterwards Orléans Égalité), the Duke de Penthièvre, the Duke de Choiseul, the _contrôleur-général_, &c., showing that these exceedingly liberal benefactors, as the countess had made them out to be, had either given nothing at all, or else that a huge disparity existed between the sum really given and the amount pretended to have been received. Her friend, Beugnot, moreover, speaks at this period of sundry treats of an evening on the Boulevards, consisting of cakes and beer, a beverage for which she had a particular liking, while, as regards cakes, she would devour two or three dozen of these at a sitting, making it evident that she had dined but lightly on these occasions, if, indeed, she had dined at all.[51] She, however, most astonished Beugnot by the voracity of her appetite when she dined with him, as she every now and then did, at the “_Cadran bleu_” a noted tavern in the Champs Élysées, whence on a memorable occasion, some eight years later, five hundred and odd Marseillais, who had marched up to Paris in defence of their fellow “patriots,” and whose march inspired the composition of the world-renowned Marseillaise hymn, rushed forth on the grenadiers of the Filles Saint-Thomas section, and drove them pell-mell over the drawbridge of the Tuileries. Other friends of the countess’s tell, too, of frequent loans of ten, fifteen, or twenty livres at a time, all of which is tolerable evidence of semi-starvation and penury rather than of an abundance or even a sufficiency of means.

Spite, nevertheless, of the limited nature of their resources, there is no doubt but that when the De la Mottes had regularly settled down in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Gilles, they made pretensions to something like display. They borrowed, for instance, a service of silver plate of a friend—a M. de Vieilleville; and according to the countess’s own statement, M. de Calonne, at one of the interviews she succeeded in obtaining with him just after his appointment to the office of _contrôleur-général_, plainly told her that she was only “shamming poverty,” and commenced twitting her respecting her hôtel at Paris, her cabriolet, her coach, her travelling-carriage, and her servants in livery. To convince Calonne that whatever might be her style of living, she was nevertheless in great pecuniary difficulties, she took him one day the tickets for numerous articles of furniture pledged by her at the Mont de Piété, and by this ruse succeeded in securing some small amount of official sympathy, which developed itself in a gift of six hundred livres from the royal treasury, on the express condition, however, that she was to make no further appeals.

Soon after the countess had become regularly resident in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Gilles, she was a frequent attendant at mass at a convent of Minimes, on the opposite side of the way, which has long since been demolished, and barracks for gendarmerie erected on its site, but the remembrance of which is still preserved in the nomenclature of several of the adjacent streets. A certain Father Loth having his eye upon so interesting an addition to the common fold, made her an offer of a key by means of which she might let herself into the chapel to the ten o’clock mass, attended, as he explained to her, only by persons of her own condition. The countess accepted the offer, and a kind of acquaintanceship sprang up between Father Loth and her, which resulted in the former becoming a constant visitor at the De la Mottes, and insinuating himself into the confidence of the family; and subsequently, when brighter days dawned upon them, officiating as a sort of steward of their household.

Although the countess went constantly to Versailles, in the hope of obtaining by some lucky chance access to the queen, she seems to have been baffled in all her efforts. She had scraped acquaintance with Desclos, one of the queen’s pages, at a man-midwife’s at Versailles,[52] and was on gossiping terms with the gatekeeper of the Little Trianon, but could make no further advance at court, until by a lucky chance she one day succeeded in penetrating into the apartments of one of the princesses. Here, whilst waiting among other visitors for her turn to be introduced, she suddenly fell down like a person fainting from weakness, and otherwise exhibited symptoms of great suffering. Her poverty being known, there was instantly a rumour afoot that sheer hunger was the cause of this debility. The incident produced considerable excitement in the court circle, and news reaching the ears of the Countess de Provence that a lady of rank had fainted in the _salle d’attente_, from lack of sustenance, she flew to her assistance, and after treating her with all the tenderness that humanity dictated, gave her some twelve or fifteen louis to relieve her necessities. The countess, much affected by the occurrence, is said to have mentioned it on the following day to Marie-Antoinette, who was about to yield to the impression it made upon her sensibility; but Louis XVI., who had received so many of Madame de la Motte’s petitions, and had been sufficiently bored thereby, had conceived a strong prejudice against both her and her pretensions, and pronounced her swoon to be a mere ruse to extort money. The result was that the queen closed her purse-strings, and Madame de la Motte took little or nothing by her move. Most persons in her situation, after this signal failure, would have considered their struggle for court favour as fairly concluded, but it was far from being so with her. She was one of those indomitable spirits gifted with a pertinacity which no mere rebuff could check, no disappointment discourage.

For some time past the countess had made a point of laying siege to one controller-general after another—first to M. Joly de Fleury, then to M. d’Ormesson, and finally to M. de Calonne, in whose antechamber she was a constant attendant, and whom she so pestered with her petitions and memorials and personal appeals for relief, spite of the understanding come to when the six hundred livres were given to her, that she became at length a kind of terror to the minister, who showered gold around him with easy facility from a bankrupt exchequer, while, as a courtier said, “All the world held out its hand, but I held out my hat.” To rid himself of the countess’s importunities, and urged by Madame Elisabeth and the Countess de Provence (who since the fainting scene had taken some kind of interest in her) to do something towards her relief, M. de Calonne obtained an augmentation of seven hundred livres (twenty-eight pounds) to the De la Motte pension. Instead, however, of feeling in any degree grateful for this act of favour, the countess tells us that when the minister communicated the intelligence to her she indignantly refused this “pitiful addition,” as she called it, “to her income.” Visions of the restoration of the Essoyes, Fontette and Verpilière estates had been floating before her eyes, and in the heat of her passion she exclaimed, “I will oblige you, sir, to speak of my demands to the king. Tell him, sir, that I will fix myself in this house”—the palace of Versailles—“until he thinks proper to provide me with another home.” And the irate countess in accordance with her threat did actually remain for several hours, but at last took her departure, because, as she naïvely remarks, her further stay there “would have answered no purpose.”[53]

It must have been about this period that the countess, harassed by pecuniary difficulties, and determined to exhaust every chance of relief that suggested itself, ventured upon an appeal to Madame Dubarry, the late king’s banished mistress, who clung as close upon the skirts of the Court as she dared do, residing in her charming pavilion at Louveciennes, within eye-shot of Versailles. Thither Madame de la Motte drove over one day ostensibly to offer herself as _dame de compagnie_ to the dowager queen, as she used ironically to style the once all-powerful favourite of Louis the Well-Beloved; but Madame Dubarry, judging from the absurd pretensions she put forward with regard to her name and birth, thought her little fitted for the post she sought to fill, and told her that she was not at that moment in want of a companion, adding sarcastically that if she were, she was not great lady enough to engage one of so high a quality as a descendant of the house of Valois. Nothing disconcerted, the countess called a second time a few days afterwards, and made a pitiable appeal to the Dubarry to support her claims at court, shedding floods of tears as she spoke. But as soon as her back was turned, “La Faiblesse,” as Marie-Antoinette was accustomed to style the Dubarry, whose heart was none of the most susceptible, bored by the countess’s melting display, and caring not a straw for the house of Valois or any of its bastard descendants, flung both petition and memoir, which the countess had presented to her, into the fire.[54]

The countess now addressed herself to the well-known favourite of Marie-Antoinette, the Duchess de Polignac, whose influence over her royal mistress, whenever she chose to exercise it, was believed to be supreme. The duchess, however, got rid of her once for all with this freezing reply: “Madame the duchess is too much engaged for other persons to oblige Madame de la Motte in any claim which she may have to make of the king or the queen, who are already fatigued with numberless applications.” The descendant of the house of Valois was cut to the quick at the treatment she received at the hands of “this imperious woman, whose haughty demeanour sufficiently characterises her grovelling extraction. Was this the woman,” she exclaims, “whom in my humble station of mantua-maker’s apprentice I had so frequently waited upon from Madame Boussel’s to obtain payment, and who then instead of money could only pay me with courtesy and fair promises? Is this she who before the smile of royal favour no tradesman chose to trust, and even her mantua-maker refused to work for any longer, and who had not even a dress in which she could be presented at Court?”[55]

Sick at heart, weary almost unto death, the wretched woman saw no escape from the pecuniary embarrassments that threatened to overwhelm her, except in suicide. Providing herself, she tells us, with a couple of loaded pistols she bent her steps towards a wood about a league distant from Versailles, and passing through the park, came to a large and deep pit, which had formerly been a stone quarry. Here she prepared to carry her resolution into effect, and had placed one of the pistols to her right ear when thoughts of her husband stayed her hand. Flinging herself on the ground she wept long and bitterly, and then offered up a fervent prayer. On becoming more calm she returned home, still however mourning her unhappy fate.[56]

VIII.

1781–1783.

THE DIAMOND NECKLACE AGAIN.—STILL NOT SOLD.