Chapter VI: Appendix: Detailed Description of the Diamond Necklace 387 (3)

While the events narrated in the last chapter have been transpiring, let us see how it has fared with our friends the crown jewellers and their Diamond Necklace. M. Bassenge, after scouring Europe through, and ascending and descending principal and back staircases innumerable, and dancing wearying attendance in court saloons and antechambers, has returned home without effecting a sale. “Not a crowned head of them can spare the eighty thousand pounds. The age of Chivalry is gone, and that of Bankruptcy is come. A dull deep-presaging movement rocks all thrones: Bankruptcy is beating down the gate, and no chancellor can barricade her out. She will enter, and the shoreless fire-lava of Democracy is at her back. Well may kings a second time ‘sit still with awful eye,’ and think of far other things than necklaces.”[57]

Bassenge’s mission having been without result, let us turn to M. Böhmer, and see what kind of luck has attended his efforts. On the 22nd of October, 1781, the Queen of France gave birth to a dauphin. Böhmer, who felt this to be a favourable opportunity for him to renew his application, flew to the palace with his casket under his arm, and saw the king, at that moment the happiest man in the land. Louis XVI. received the jeweller with much condescension, and taking the casket from him, carried it to the queen, telling her, with animated looks, that he had got a present for her. But Marie-Antoinette had no sooner recognised the gorgeous gem which she had formerly rejected than she refused to receive it, even at the king’s hands; nor could the most earnest solicitations on his part abate in the smallest degree the feeling of antipathy with which, guided by her prophetic instincts, she seems to have regarded the fatal jewel.

“Is it,” asked she, “that Böhmer may take girls covered with diamonds to the opera, that you would pay him for his folly in manufacturing this Necklace?”

While uttering these words the queen was greatly excited. Her nurse felt her pulse, and finding it very high begged the king not to insist further. Louis XVI. withdrew completely disconcerted.[58]

Now Böhmer, the crown jeweller, was a Saxon, and we all know that the Saxons are a persevering race who do not readily desist from a pursuit. Besides, he had gained a step; the king had as good as sanctioned the purchase; he was won over, and in due time the queen might be brought to relent and consent to become the possessor of the most splendid set of brilliants in the world. Moreover she was known at one time to have entertained a woman’s partiality for costly jewels. What could be the reason of her present antipathy? Was it natural in one so young and handsome? Was it consistent? Was it, indeed, sincere?

This persecution of Marie-Antoinette, which had begun in 1774, was continued for ten years; and every time the palace guns announced a new _accouchement_ the indefatigable Böhmer, his casket under his arm, was the first to carry his loyal congratulations to the feet of his sovereign. In due time the crown jeweller became noted for this kind of loyalty, so that whenever he was met with in the streets of Versailles, certain wags used to point him out and ask each other, “_Serait-ce la Reine qui accouche?_”

Madame Campan, in her well-known work, assures us that this persistent Saxon was for a long time the plague of the queen’s life. She relates, among other instances of Böhmer’s persecution, that he one day presented himself before her majesty, who had the young princess her daughter with her at the time, in a state of unusual excitement. Throwing himself at the queen’s feet, he burst into tears, and exclaimed that he could put off his creditors no longer, that he was a ruined man unless she took compassion on him and became the purchaser of his Necklace, and that if she rejected his appeal he would throw himself into the Seine, and so put an end to his misery. The queen reproved him mildly for his rash threat, but at the same time told him that if he were madman enough to put an end to his existence, it would not be she who was responsible for the misfortune. She reminded him that she had not given the order for the jewel, and advised him to extricate himself from his difficulties by taking the Necklace to pieces and disposing of the diamonds piecemeal.[59]

Mademoiselle Bertin, the queen’s milliner, asserts that at the time she was engaged in preparing the wedding trousseau of the bride of the Infant of Portugal, M. de Souza, the Portuguese ambassador, confided to her that he was commissioned by his sovereign to buy for the future Infanta the most magnificent present which could be met with in all Paris, and that he had decided upon purchasing the crown jewellers’ Diamond Necklace. Mademoiselle Bertin mentioned the circumstance to Marie-Antoinette the following day, while engaged with her at her toilette.

“I am very glad of it,” observed the queen. “I shall send for Böhmer, and will certainly thank M. de Souza for having relieved me of this hateful Necklace.”

When Böhmer entered, the queen took up a book and read for some minutes before speaking, as her habit was when she wished to evince her displeasure, which, on this occasion, must have been the result either of inexplicable caprice or feminine jealousy at a foreign princess becoming the possessor of that jewel to which the negotiations and travels of Böhmer and Bassenge had given a kind of European celebrity, and which had caused such a sensation among queens and women. At length, laying down her book and casting on Böhmer a severe glance, she observed:

“I am very glad to hear, sir, that you have sold your Necklace.”

“My Necklace, madame!” replied the astonished Böhmer.

“Yes, your Necklace, that M. de Souza is about to send to Lisbon.”

Böhmer having given an emphatic denial to the story, the queen, we are told, cast on Mdlle. Bertin a withering look as if to reproach her for having needlessly alarmed her.

There was a reception that day, and when M. de Souza appeared, the queen, contrary to all the rules of court etiquette, went straight up to him and said, briskly:

“I have to inform you, M. de Souza, that you will not have the Necklace; it is sold.”

M. de Souza appearing astonished,

“You will not have it, sir,” continued she, in a tone of triumph. “I am sorry for it.” Saying which she returned to her ladies.[60]

Thus matters stood at the close of 1783, ten years after the order for this ill-fated jewel had been given by the infatuated lover of Madame Dubarry. Although all France was at this time wildly rejoicing over the recently concluded peace between France and England, there was gloom and depression at the Grand Balcony in the Rue Vendôme, for creditors were still urgent and even threatening, and the question again arose: “What is now to be done?”

IX.

1784.

SOI-DISANT CONFIDANT OF THE QUEEN.—AT VERSAILLES AND LITTLE TRIANON.

In the preceding chapters we have measured the period between the year 1756, when Jeanne de Saint-Remi, now Countess de la Motte of her own creation, was born, and the close of the year 1783, when she had reached the age of twenty-seven years. We have witnessed the destitution of her early days, the dependence of her youth on the kind bounty of a noble benefactress, and the career of adventure and precarious means suddenly plunged into to avoid a life of religious seclusion. We have seen her making her escape from flagrant shame by an improvident marriage; have seen the opening of her conjugal life darkened by a new term of penury and privation, mitigated only by a system of constant appeals for charity. We have also seen that a long and patient probation in the same course had proved barren and abortive in the end, her condition being then precisely the same as it was in the beginning. We can readily conceive that her name and her pretensions had at length come to be regarded as little else than a by-word and a nuisance, and that the time was at hand when the former would have no other influence beyond provoking indignation and contempt.

The family resources proved so far insufficient, that early in the year 1784 household goods and wearing apparel were alike in pawn at the Mont de Piété, which is hardly to be wondered at, as the winter was one of unprecedented severity. Heavy and constant falls of snow rendered any kind of traffic through the streets of Paris impracticable. The Seine, too, was frozen over, so that the transport of provisions and firewood to the capital was entirely stopped.[61] The times were of the hardest: the winter extended far into the year, and in the month of April the countess solicited and obtained permission to alienate her own and her brother’s pension—the sister, we presume, was obstinate, and would not dispose of hers, hence her being sent adrift to shift for herself, and becoming an inmate of the Abbey of Jarcy—to a goldsmith and money-lender, named Grenier, for the sum of nine thousand livres.[62] This amount, however, was insufficient to liquidate the whole of their debts, and at midsummer the countess was forced to borrow three hundred livres from Father Loth to pay her quarter’s rent.[63] The two pensions utterly gone, beggary and open vagrancy loom in the distance, for the cardinal’s gifts, however handsome they may have been at this period, go but a small way now that ever-increasing debt is supplemented by habitual extravagance. In a few months more the wretched adventurers will be forced to quit their “spacious _appartement_” in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Gilles, and go forth into the streets and highways, and in the name of Valois again implore charity of the passing stranger. What remedy—what desperate remedy could be devised to prevent this?

The countess’s interview with the Countess de Provence, after the fainting scene, had made some little noise, and reports were spread to the effect that Madame Elisabeth, the king’s sister, had since received her on several occasions, and had promised to support her claim for the recovery of the Valois estates, and to recommend her case again to the queen. We have no means of judging whether these reports were true, but as Madame Campan admits Madame Elisabeth to have been the countess’s “protectress,” there was in all probability some real foundation for them. Shortly afterwards, however, other reports, which were undoubted fabrications, got into circulation. The purport of these was, that Madame de la Motte had been honoured by the notice of Marie-Antoinette, that she was received privately at the Petit Trianon, and was rising rapidly in the royal favour. To give an air of probability to this assertion, the countess, who had contrived to scrape acquaintance with the gatekeeper of the Trianon, managed to be seen occasionally stealing out from thence, as though returning from one of these pretended interviews with royalty.

No sooner did it get bruited abroad that the Countess de la Motte had credit at court than she was applied to by that busy and motley group of suitors—some of them in search of places and appointments, others in quest of patronage for new inventions, or on the look-out for opportunities to submit new schemes of taxation and finance, and others again seeking redress of real or fancied grievances—who gather together in the vicinage of royalty. The daring woman saw her chance, and entering boldly on a career of imposture, began to traffic on a credit that had no foundation, and to sell an influence which she could not exercise. This new vocation bid fair to prove a much readier source of emolument than her state petitions for relief. People came to her of their own accord, waited in _her_ antechamber for an interview, conjured and supplicated _her_ to lend them her protection, and in the meantime to permit them to show their gratitude by anticipation, and in a substantial form.

In this new line of business she was assisted by an old acquaintance and former comrade of her husband’s in the _gendarmerie_, one Rétaux de Villette, son of a late director-general of excise at Lyons, and at this time about thirty years of age. Villette left Lyons when a lad, and accompanied his mother to Troyes, where he completed his education. His sister having married a captain of artillery, and being himself inclined to a military career, he followed his brother-in-law to the schools of Douai and Bapaume, and when this latter establishment was suppressed, entered the _gendarmerie_, where he formed a sort of intimacy with M. de la Motte—an intimacy which was afterwards renewed at Bar-sur-Aube, whither his mother had removed from the neighbouring town of Troyes. Villette having exhausted the paternal patrimony, had come to Paris to push his fortunes. His ambition was to obtain a sub-lieutenancy in the marshalsea, still he was not averse to turning his hand to anything that offered itself. He was not deficient in talent, and had a certain facility of expression; for he wrote smartish articles in the _Gazette_, could compose pleasing enough verses, and was a very fair musician.[64] Nevertheless he was one of those indolent, careless men, without the slightest forethought, who cannot follow any regular calling, because they are only stirred into activity by sudden caprices, and who too often serve no other purpose beyond replenishing the world’s stock of rascaldom, and doing their best to save it from dying out. Finding that he was a suppliant for court favour, Madame de la Motte first of all persuaded him that she could advance his interests, then that she would procure for him some better post than a sub-lieutenancy in the marshalsea, and finally engaged him as her secretary, and by dint of “her piquant face, her bright and piercing eyes, her white and transparent skin, her fine teeth, her enchanting smile, her pretty hand and little foot, her graceful manner, and natural wit,” soon enrolled him as one of her lovers.[65]

We will here let the countess give her own account of her pretended intimacy with Marie-Antoinette, an intimacy which it is impossible to believe in for a single moment, since those who lived in the queen’s service and society were unanimous in maintaining that the countess was never once admitted to the queen’s presence, nor seen in the company of any lady of her court.

“One day,” she observes, “as I was paying my court to Madame (the Countess de Provence), I was attacked with a sudden indisposition (the fainting fit of which we have already spoken), which made some noise at the palace; the queen, having become acquainted with the incident, deigned to evince some interest in me; her majesty even sent for Madame Patri, the principal _femme de chambre_ of Madame, to ascertain the particulars.

“Nothing can escape the eyes of courtiers. They remarked from that hour, that her majesty always distinguished me by a gracious look, whenever I appeared in her presence. The cardinal (de Rohan) surpassed everybody in giving full rein to his conjectures.

“As I had received his benefits, the most natural gratitude linked me to his fate ... for him I had no secrets; he had none for me ... his ambition was to be prime minister, mine to be a lady of influence at Fontette....

“Nothing could equal the astonishment into which I was thrown one day, when having placed myself in the line of the queen’s passage, her majesty condescended to honour me with one of those smiles which are so hard to be resisted. I remember that the next moment, having chanced to raise my eyes towards him (the cardinal), I saw his own sparkle with delight. ‘Do you know, countess,’ said he, ‘that my fortune is made? it is in your hands along with your own.’... He told me I ought not to hesitate to throw myself at the queen’s feet on the 2nd of February, during the procession of the blue ribbons (the order of the Holy Ghost).... Accustomed to be guided entirely by him, I promised to do what he enjoined me.

“The important day arrived.... I went to the palace in full dress, and waited in one of the saloons for the return of the procession. When the queen was passing, I flung myself at her feet, and delivering my petition, said to her, in a few words, that I was descended from the house of Valois; that as such I had been acknowledged by the king; that the fortune of my ancestors not having been transmitted to me along with their title, I had no other resource than the king’s munificence; that having found every one of the avenues leading to her majesty unrelentingly closed against me, despair had driven me at last to take the present step.

“The queen raised me up with kindness, took my petition, and, perceiving that I trembled, deigned to bid me be of good cheer. She then passed on, telling me to be at ease, and assured me that due attention should be paid to the object of my request.”

In the first private interview she pretends to have had with the queen, the countess relates that Marie-Antoinette said to her:

“‘I have read your memorial, the object of which is to urge the minister to act and bestir himself with respect to the property which belonged to your house. Having some private reasons not to second your views ... I cannot reconcile the desire I may have to serve you publicly, with the inclination I feel to see you in private ... but I shall still be able to render you indirectly the services you wish to obtain from me.’... Her majesty concluded by presenting me with a purse.”[66]

A few days afterwards, she tells us, she was summoned to repair to the Little Trianon, between eleven and twelve o’clock at night! when she received fresh proofs of the queen’s generosity. “She presented me at parting,” says the countess, “with a pocket-book containing ten thousand livres (francs) on the _caisse d’escompte_, and concluded by saying: ‘We shall meet again.’”[67] Madame de la Motte then goes on to state that it is needless to tire the reader with a repetition of the frequent interviews she had with the queen, of whose munificence on these occasions she received numerous proofs. “The Cardinal de Rohan,” she says, “marked her growing favour, and insisting that his fortune was in her hands, conjured her to let no opportunity slip of mentioning his name to his sovereign.”

Let us turn now to the other side of the picture, and see what is said by persons likely to be well informed, as well as by Marie-Antoinette herself, respecting this pretended intimacy.

Lacretelle, whose truth and honesty are beyond question, says “the Countess de Valois never had the least access to this princess,” and that “one cannot read this libel (the countess’s Memoirs) without being convinced that the queen never had any kind of communication with these creatures, whose presence would have defiled the throne.”[68]

The Baron de Besenval speaks of the countess in his Memoirs as “one of those creatures who live by intrigue and the sale of their charms.”[69] Was such a person likely to have been received privately at the Trianon? The Baron de Besenval was a regular visitor there himself, and would have heard of this strange and familiar intercourse if it had ever existed.

What does Madame Campan, first _femme de chambre_ to the queen, who enjoyed the confidence of her royal mistress, and was, moreover, constantly in her company, and who, biased though she may seem to be in her favour, invariably speaks what she believes to be the truth—what does she say respecting this tissue of invention?

“Neither the queen herself, nor any lady about her, ever had the slightest connection with the swindler, and during her prosecution she could only point out one of the queen’s servants (a man named Declos or Leclos), a page of the queen’s chamber, to whom she pretended she had delivered Böhmer’s Necklace ... Declos,[70] on being confronted with the woman La Motte, proved that she had never seen him but once, which was at the house of the wife of a surgeon-accoucher at Versailles, and that she had not given him the Necklace.” Madame Campan further states that the countess “had never even been able to make her way into the room appropriated to the queen’s women.” The same lady also furnishes this additional piece of testimony:

“The queen,” she says, “in vain endeavoured to call to mind the features of this person, whom she had so often heard spoken of as an intriguing woman, who came frequently on Sundays to the gallery at Versailles; and at the time when all France was taken up with the prosecution against the cardinal, and the portrait of the Countess de la Motte-Valois was publicly sold, her majesty desired me one day when I was going to Paris to buy her the engraving, which was said to be a tolerable likeness, that she might ascertain whether she could recollect in it any person whom she had seen in the gallery.”[71]

Marie-Antoinette herself, when questioned by Louis XVI. on the subject of this intimate acquaintance, assured the king that she had never seen the woman. In a few simple words she repeats her denial when confronted with the Cardinal de Rohan, immediately preceding his arrest. And in a private letter to her sister, written at a time when the affair of the Diamond Necklace was making a great noise throughout Europe, Marie-Antoinette thus denies all previous knowledge of her pretended confidant:

“I have never seen this woman La Motte; it seems she is an adventuress of the lowest class, with a good address and a bold air; she has been seen two or three times on the back staircase of the Cour des Princes; this is a scheme agreed on to deceive her dupes and to spread the belief that she is received in my closet. The Duke de Nivernois on this occasion told me that an adventuress from Paris had made her fortune in the days of Madame de Maintenon by seating herself twice a week on the stairs; one day she found the drawing-room of that lady open; she went in, and seeing no one near she walked up to the balcony over the Place d’Armes, thus proclaiming to every one that she was in favour with Madame de Maintenon. We are surrounded in this place by persons of that class.”[72]

Again, at the very last, only a few hours before her head was severed from her body by the guillotine, she still firmly repudiated all knowledge of any such individual. Let us refer to the report in the _Moniteur_ of the “_Procès de Marie-Antoinette_,” and see what transpired in reference to the matter.

“_The president to the accused_: Was it not at the Little Trianon that you first met with the woman La Motte?

“_The accused_: I never once saw her.

“_The president_: Was she not your victim in the business of the famous Necklace?

“_The accused_: She could not have been, since she was unknown to me.

“_The president_: So then you persist in denying that you were acquainted with her?

“_The accused_: Mine is not a system of denial; what I have said is the truth, and that I will persist in.”

Of course it was the truth; had it not been, Fouquier Tinville had abundant means of proving the contrary; all France in these days was overrun with spies and informers. The public accuser had really no facts to allege against the prisoner in regard to Madame de la Motte, and confessed he had not when ordered to bring the queen to trial. Had there been the least particle of evidence to prove Marie-Antoinette’s intimacy with so abandoned a woman, the attorney-general of the Revolutionary Tribunal would have been only too glad to have brought it forward. He had not far to go, for among the witnesses actually produced were the Count d’Estaing, formerly in command at Versailles, who knew both the queen and the countess, and was a frequent dinner-guest of the latter in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Gilles; and Renée Sévin, for six years under-_femme de chambre_ to Marie-Antoinette, yet to neither of these did he put a single question upon the subject. Again, there was Reine Millot, another old servant at Versailles, “_bonne citoyenne, excellente patriote_,” who did her best to sacrifice her unhappy mistress, deposing that the Count de Coigny had told her that the queen had sent two hundred million francs to her brother, the Emperor Joseph, to enable him to make war upon the Turks, and that she would end by ruining France; and further, that she knew from different people that the queen had conceived the design of assassinating the Duke d’Orléans, which when the king heard of, he ordered her to be immediately searched, and two pistols being found upon her, he commanded her to remain in her own apartment for the space of fifteen days.[73] A witness such as this would have been only too eager to repeat all the scandal current at Versailles respecting the Countess de la Motte and the queen. Moreover, Count de la Motte himself was known to be living at Bar-sur-Aube at the time of the queen’s trial, and could have been readily enough produced, only Fouquier Tinville was perfectly well aware that he could depose to nothing in the slightest degree incriminatory of her whose death, though already determined on, the revolutionary party would have been glad enough to have justified on such a poor pretence even as complicity in the Necklace fraud.

X.

1772–1774.

HIS EMINENCE CARDINAL, COMMENDATOR, GRAND ALMONER, PRINCE-BISHOP LOUIS-RENÉ-ÉDOUARD DE ROHAN.

Among the tribe of solicitors who put faith in the report of Madame de la Motte’s intimacy with Marie-Antoinette, and sought to turn it to their own advantage, certainly by far the most sanguine of them all, was her “friend” and benefactor, Louis-René-Édouard de Rohan, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, Bishop and Prince of Strasbourg, Prince of Hildesheim, Landgrave of Alsace, Grand Almoner of France, Commander of the Order of the Holy Ghost, Commendator of St. Waast d’Arras, Superior-general of the Royal Hospital of the Quinze-Vingts, Abbé of the Chaise-Dieu, Master of the Sorbonne, Member of the French Academy, &c., &c. The very man who had been wont to bestow alms upon a descendant of the house of Valois was now almost ready to cringe to the former recipient of his bounty for favour and support. This dissolute and intriguing prelate, who was destined to attain such unenviable notoriety through his connection with the Countess de la Motte, was born on the 27th of September, 1734, and at this period was consequently verging on his fiftieth year. He was, as we have already mentioned, a tall, stout, handsome-looking man, with a fresh-coloured complexion, bald forehead, and whitish grey hair. His manners were amiable; he was fluent in conversation, and though his talents, as the upshot proves, were of a very inferior order, still he was not deficient in that dexterity which goes a long way towards fitting a man for the conduct of public business—he having, with the help of his shrewd secretary, the Abbé Georgel, rather cleverly filled the post of Ambassador at the court of Vienna for between two and three years. He had been sent to that court in January, 1772, to supersede the Baron de Breteuil, thereby making a mortal enemy of that minister, now in high favour with the sovereign. But this was not all. He had also incurred the dislike, and even hatred, of the Queen of France, partly in consequence of having repeated to the Empress Maria Theresa certain scandals current at the French court respecting the unbecoming levity of her daughter, then dauphiness—who, by-the-way, by virtue of his office of coadjutor at Strasbourg, he had had to receive on the occasion of her first entry into France—and partly in consequence of a letter written by him in an unguarded moment, wherein he reflected strongly on the duplicity of the empress with respect to Poland. In this letter he remarked that “Maria Theresa stands, indeed, with a handkerchief in one hand, weeping for the woes of Poland, but with a sword in the other, ready to cut Poland into sections, and take her share,”[74] an observation in which there was not only point, but far too much truth for it to pass unregarded. This letter was read and laughed over by Louis XV., and by him repeated to the Countess Dubarry at one of her _petits soupers_, and the countess, in her turn, gossiped about it, until at length the affair became a court joke and reached the ears of the dauphiness, who, whilst repressing her indignation at the time, did not fail to treasure up the circumstance in her memory.

In spite of the queen’s aversion, which, by-the-way, was fully shared by Louis XVI., the cardinal, whose ambition led him to covet the office of prime minister, fondly hoped, sooner or later, to recover his ground. When therefore he heard, as very good care was taken he very quickly should hear, that a lady who stood in certain tender relations towards himself, and was under certain pecuniary obligations to him, was in favour with the queen, the credulous dotard suspected neither deception nor exaggeration in the report; which perhaps was hardly surprising, for Nature, we are told, had given the _soi-disant_ new favourite a frank and honest face in spite of her proficiency in the arts of deceit. “Without possessing the full splendour of beauty,” observes the Abbé Georgel, “the Countess de la Motte was gifted with all the graces of youth, her countenance was intelligent and attractive, and she expressed herself with fluency; moreover, the _air of truth that pervaded her recitals invariably carried conviction along with it_.” The cardinal, only too ready to be blinded and deluded, counselled his _protégée_ how to proceed in order to retain and improve the position which he imagined she had already acquired, intending, without doubt, to avail himself of her interest to recover the good opinion of the queen, whose deep-rooted prejudice against him was the bane of his life.

Madame Campan speaks of the cardinal as a spendthrift, and a man of the most immoral character, whose mission to Vienna opened under the most unfavourable auspices, in consequence of the nature of the reputation which preceded his arrival at that court. “In want of money, and the house of Rohan being unable to make him any considerable advances, he obtained a patent which authorised him to borrow the sum of six hundred thousand livres (twenty-four thousand pounds) upon his benefices; nevertheless he ran into debt for upwards of another million, and thought to dazzle the city and court of Vienna by the most indecent, and, at the same time, the most ill-judged extravagance. He formed a suite of eight or ten gentlemen of names sufficiently high sounding, twelve pages equally well-born, a crowd of officers and servants, together with a company of chamber musicians, and various other retainers. But this idle pomp did not last; embarrassment and distress soon showed themselves; his people, no longer receiving pay, abused the ambassadorial privileges, and smuggled with so much effrontery that Maria Theresa, to put a stop to it without offending the court of France, was compelled to suppress the privileges in this respect of the entire diplomatic corps.”[75]

In those days an ambassador was not only required to be an adept in duplicity, but he was expected, by means of bribery, or other modes of corruption more or less dishonourable, to make himself master of all the secrets of the court to which he was accredited. The cardinal proved himself in this respect equal to the mission with which he was intrusted. At the commencement of the year 1774 he discovered that the Austrian minister, Prince von Kaunitz, had succeeded in purchasing keys of the ciphers in which the despatches that passed between the French king and himself and the ambassadors at Constantinople, Stockholm, Dantzic, and St. Petersburg were written. He also discovered that the court of Vienna had obtained copies of and had deciphered all the despatches sent by the Duke d’Aiguillon to the various representatives of the court of Versailles throughout Northern Europe. He learnt, too, that the main work of interception was done at Liege, Brussels, Frankfort, and Ratisbon. At these places copies of despatches were taken and forwarded to what was styled the “Cabinet of Decipherers,” a department of which Baron Peckler was the head.[76]

How it was that the cardinal came to make this important discovery and to profit largely by it, as he eventually managed to do, is quite a piece of romance. The Abbé Georgel, at that time secretary to the French embassy at Vienna, shall tell the story in his own words.

“Returning one evening to the hôtel, the porter gave me a note carefully sealed up, and addressed to me. I read in it as follows:—‘Be to-night, between eleven and twelve, at a particular place upon the ramparts, and you will be informed of matters of the very highest importance.’ An anonymous note of this tenor, sent so mysteriously, and the unseasonable hour appointed, might have appeared to some persons altogether dangerous and suspicious. But I was not aware that I had any enemies, and, desirous not to have to reproach myself with having missed an opportunity that might never occur again of promoting the king’s service, I determined to attend at the appointed place. But I took some prudential precautions, by placing within a certain distance, where they could not be seen, two persons on whom I could rely, to come to my assistance upon a signal agreed on. I found at the place of meeting a man wrapped in a cloak, and masked. He put some papers into my hands, and said in a feigned undertone: ‘You have my confidence; I will therefore contribute to the success of M. the Prince de Rohan’s embassy. These papers will inform you of the very essential services which it is in my power to render you. If you approve of them, come again to-morrow to’ another place which he mentioned, ‘and bring me a thousand ducats.’ On my return to the Hôtel de France, I hastened to examine the papers confided to me. Their contents gave me the most agreeable surprise. I saw that we had it in our power to procure twice a week copies of all the discoveries made by the secret cabinet of Vienna, which was the best served cabinet in Europe. This secret cabinet possessed in the highest degree the art of deciphering quickly the despatches of ambassadors and of the governments with whom they corresponded. I was convinced by the deciphering of our own despatches and the despatches of our court to us—even those written in the most complicated and the newest ciphers—that this cabinet had found means to intercept and obtain copies of the despatches of several European courts, through the treachery and audacity of the frontier directors and postmasters, bribed for that purpose.

“Furnished with these documents and armed with unquestionable proofs of their authenticity, I instantly went post haste to communicate them to the ambassador. I laid before him the samples of the political magazine, from which we might supply ourselves. The Prince de Rohan felt the value of it, especially to himself personally, inasmuch as this important discovery must necessarily efface the unpleasant impressions which the Duke d’Aiguillon had not failed to make upon the king’s mind, by representing to him that Prince Louis, too frivolous, and too much taken up with the pursuits of pleasure, was not so watchful at Vienna as the service of the state required.

“I met the masked man the following night, and gave him the thousand ducats: when he handed to me other papers of increasing interest, and during my whole stay at Vienna he faithfully performed his promise. Our meetings took place twice a week, and always about midnight. The ambassador wisely decided that the occupation arising from this discovery should be confined to him and to myself, with an old secretary whose discretion we knew would stand any trial. The secretary was employed in copying for our court the papers of the masked man, to whom we were obliged to return them.

“A courier extraordinary was at once despatched to Versailles with the first-fruits of our newly-discovered treasure. He was ordered not to go to bed on his way, and to carry about his person the special packet of secret despatches to the very end of his journey. A separate letter communicated the manner in which this disclosure had been made to us. Our courier returned promptly, the bearer of a despatch from the Duke d’Aiguillon, which contained this acknowledgment of the cardinal’s services: ‘I sincerely and feelingly share,’ said the minister, ‘both in the satisfaction with which the king acknowledges your services, and the credit which this discovery throws upon your mission.’ From the time of this discovery an extraordinary courier was sent off to Versailles every fortnight with new communications, and always with the same precautions as before.”[77]

Soulavie tells us it was through the Austrian ambassador at Versailles, who, like the rest of his fraternity, had a whole host of traitorous officials in his pay, that the court of Vienna got scent of what was going on. The Prince von Kaunitz, suspecting that the treachery was perpetrated in his office, had the locks of his cabinet changed, and made a point of intrusting all the most important despatches to no one except his private secretary. He even went the length of having one of his clerks, of whom he entertained some suspicion, drowned in the Danube; but all was of no avail; the masked man, according to the Abbé Georgel, redoubled his zeal at each succeeding interview.

Two months after the death of Louis XV. the cardinal was superseded in his post. He had hurried off to pay his court to the new king at Compiègne, where he was not long in becoming acquainted with the fact that the queen was his avowed enemy. He obtained an audience of Louis XVI., but it was brief, and by no means satisfactory. The king listened for a few minutes to the cardinal’s explanations, and then abruptly said, “I will let you know my pleasure.” As for Marie-Antoinette, she positively declined to receive him, although he had a letter from her mother the empress to deliver. The only notice she took of him was to desire that this letter might be sent to her. As a last resource he addressed a written communication to the king, which Louis XVI. did not condescend to answer. The cardinal had now no longer any doubt that his disgrace was determined upon.

Although his downfall was really to be ascribed to the joint animosity of Maria Theresa and her daughter, the grounds publicly put forward for it were these. “First, the public gallantries (at Vienna) of Prince Louis with women of the court and others of less distinction; secondly, his surliness and haughtiness towards other foreign ministers, which it was stated would have been attended with more serious consequences if the empress herself had not interfered; thirdly, his contempt for religion in a country where it was particularly necessary to show respect for it (he had been seen frequently to dress himself in clothes of different colours, assuming the hunting uniforms of various noblemen whom he visited, with so much publicity that one day in particular, during the _Fête Dieu_, he and all his legation, in green uniforms laced with gold, broke through a religious procession which impeded them, in order to make their way to a hunting party at the Prince von Paar’s); and fourthly, the immense debts contracted by him and his people, which were tardily and only in part discharged.”[78]

After the cardinal’s return to Paris from his Viennese mission, although his manners may have mended somewhat, his morals remained as loose as ever. He is reported to have kept up in different quarters of the city various small establishments to which, it is said, he was in the habit of retiring to emulate in secret the vices of the Roman emperors. His conduct in public appears to have been hardly more reputable, for one day the king when hunting with the Count d’Artois in the neighbourhood of Fontainebleau, came upon Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan with a handsome young abbé, his hair elegantly dressed and powdered, seated beside him in his carriage. The king remarked to his brother that the abbé only required a little rouge to pass for a woman, but the more quick-sighted Count d’Artois had already discovered that the pretended abbé was a woman in disguise—none other, in fact, than one of the cardinal’s mistresses—the notorious Marquise de Marigny.[79]

XI.

1784.

PRETENDED MEDIATOR BETWEEN THE CARDINAL AND THE QUEEN.—A FORGER ON THE PREMISES.—BILLETS-DOUX BORDERED WITH “VIGNETTES BLEUES.”

Before the close of spring in the year 1784, the Countess de la Motte has effectually built up her grand fabrication. Although she neglects no opportunity of giving out that the queen desires this pretended intimacy to be kept a profound secret, yet, like most other profound secrets, it becomes pretty generally known; the imposture is established as a reality, and the Grand Almoner of France has been caught in the net. This singularly credulous individual, weighed down with places and honours, but ambitious of more, is led to believe, quite as much by his own folly as the countess’s craft, that a channel has at length been opened for his reinstatement in the queen’s favour, and his elevation to the office of prime minister. All the machinery set in motion by the impostor and her confederates to make money by the abuse of the queen’s name is now directed with both energy and skill upon the Prince de Rohan, whose paternal hand is employed to diffuse the charities of a kingdom upon those suppliants who best understand how to represent their wants, and whose own annual revenue exceeds a million of livres (£40,000).

Gradually, step by step, the vigilant schemer advances, her dupe’s fancy and conceit outstepping the measured tread of the inventor, whose falsehoods are not poured forth fast enough to fill the wide throat of this insatiable gull. First she assures him that she has spoken and interceded for him with the queen, who listened to her with attention but evident suspicion; but that after having heard of several instances of his benevolence to herself and other persons, the royal prejudice had given way. The cardinal of course takes heart at this assurance, and waits resignedly for the happy progress of a negotiation which had opened so promisingly. The countess thus describes this pretended interview with Marie-Antoinette in her Memoirs:

“In one of my interviews with her majesty, the queen inquired how I had supported myself before I was introduced to her. This was the moment for naming my benefactor, but it required some caution, lest the queen should discover that I was deeper in his confidence and counsels than it was proper for me to appear. I attempted, if possible, to avoid giving the least cause for suspicion, and expatiated largely, in general terms, on the cardinal’s beneficence, charity, and benevolence; enumerated the services he had rendered to almost every one that applied; that from his generosity he had acquired the esteem he merited; and spoke with a grateful warmth of the favours he had heaped upon me.

“Her majesty regarded me with a curious and penetrating eye: she paused for some minutes, and appeared buried in thought. This was the first moment of my mentioning the cardinal’s name, and I had an opportunity of reading in her majesty’s face such a degree of aversion that gave me a very unfavourable omen of success: the strength of her antipathy I was then first acquainted with. At length, awakening from her reverie, she expressed her surprise at the information I had given her. She did not think the cardinal capable of such actions.”[80]

In due time the grand almoner is informed that majesty has at last relented, having been of course won over by the countess’s continuous praises of him, and by her assurances that he was far less culpable than he was represented to be by his enemies; that he was full of penitence and remorse for any errors he might have committed; that her majesty’s aversion to him was his constant affliction; and that his health was yielding to this sorrow.

“I am authorised by the queen,” the countess one day calmly said to him, “to request you to furnish her with a written explanation of the faults imputed to you.”

In compliance with this demand, the cardinal delivered to Madame de la Motte a lengthy exculpatory statement, the main purport of which was to accuse his niece, the Princess de Guéménée, of having intrigued to add to his disgrace at court while pretending to act as intercessor on his behalf. From time to time the princess appears to have allured him with specious promises of his ultimate restoration to royal favour, and the kind of return she exacted for her pretended good offices may be judged of from the following passage, which, as will presently appear, Madame de la Motte did not fail to note and profit by: “The princess was sensible of the excessive joy she gave me,[81] and availed herself of it _to request of me the loan of a pretty considerable sum_. I would have parted with my whole fortune, thinking myself too happy in being useful to a woman to whom I was so greatly beholden. The easy compliance she had met with enticed her to make further demands, which I could not refuse, she always knowing how to accompany them with hopes, with soothing promises, and at the same time with difficulties she would find ways to overcome.”[82] It is inconceivable how, after feeling convinced that he had been the dupe of one designing woman, the cardinal could have been such a dotard as to have been again deluded by an _intrigante_ who used precisely the same arts, and who exacted from him precisely the same kind of return. Such, however, was the case.

About three weeks after the delivery of his written justification into the hands of Madame de la Motte, the grand almoner received a note, bordered with “_vignettes bleues_” and purporting to be written by Marie-Antoinette. This stated that she had read with indignation of the manner in which he had been deceived by his niece, assured him that she had forgotten all that had passed, and desired him never again to make the slightest allusion to a matter so unpleasant—a convenient way of tabooing a subject, the discussion of which might have proved extremely embarrassing to the countess, and have sooner or later exposed the fraud then being practised upon the cardinal. The note wound up with the following passage, the motive of which the reader will be at no loss to divine: “The account which the countess has given me of your behaviour towards her has made a stronger impression on me than all that you have written to me. I hope that you will never forget that it is to her you are indebted for your pardon.”[83]

The plot thickens: all at once we find ourselves in deeper water. Before we had false rumours and reports; now we have forged letters. The cardinal having received the first one as genuine, what is to prevent the success of others? Nothing, it would seem, so long as the countess exercises her customary discretion. Letters and replies thereupon follow each other in quick succession, amounting in course of time to something like a couple of hundred in number. Of these the countess pretended she preserved copies of thirty-one, which she subsequently printed by way of appendix to her autobiography. Judging from these samples, the communications which, according to her assertions, passed between the queen and the cardinal, were not merely tender and familiar, but occasionally touched upon subjects that were positively indelicate.[84]

It is needless to inform the reader that, so far as the letters attributed to Marie-Antoinette are concerned, they were one and all of them vile fabrications. They were penned, in fact, by the prospective sub-lieutenant of the marshalsea, of whom we have already spoken, Rétaux de Villette, who was attached to the countess in the double capacity of “_cavalier servente_” and secretary, and whose chief occupation seems to have consisted in forging letters on gilt-edged paper, or paper bordered with blue flowers (_vignettes bleues_). His _cabinet de travail_ was madame’s bedchamber, and he worked at a little table by the bedside, on which was a writing-case with a stock of note-paper, such as the queen was known to be in the habit of using.[85] Monsieur de Villette resided regularly under the De la Motte roof, for Jeanne de Saint-Remi, Countess de Valois de la Motte, having considerable traffic in forgery, found it necessary to keep a forger on the premises, just as other people find it requisite to keep a secretary or a clerk.

If we glance behind the scenes, we cannot help being impressed by this daring woman’s strength of mind, which enables her to work so calmly and leisurely while all the time the wolf is at the door. Not only has she her idle husband and herself to support, but there is at times her brother, whose pension she has sold, and her “secretary,” and she not possessed of a single sou of regular income! To add to all this, she is in debt to the landlord, the tax-gatherer, and the tradespeople; duns are calling upon her every hour—duns are even waiting in the ante-room while she is dictating forged letters to Villette. Her own pension and that of her brother being utterly gone, the family have literally no bread to eat but that of charity, and the bread of charity is so scanty and bitter that the descendant of the house of Valois has become a liar and a forger, and is preparing to become a thief, in order to add to and sweeten it. And all this while, with her thread of life drawn, so to speak, to a single hair, she is the emblem of composure, advancing “stealthily, steadfastly, with Argus eye and ever-ready brain—with nerve of iron, on shoes of felt!” whilst Cardinal Prince de Rohan, her father in years, who lives in palaces surrounded by every luxury, holds one of the highest offices in the state, is superior of numerous important religious establishments and seigneur of countless manors, and has a revenue of upwards of a million livres, is feverish with impatience.

According to his usual practice, the Cardinal, with Versailles and the Little Trianon closed against him, is spending the sultry summer-time in retirement at his stately palace of Saverne, a huge building of red sandstone in the Italian style of architecture, for the most part newly erected by himself in place of a former edifice consumed by fire a few years previously. At Saverne the Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan exercises all the authority of a petty sovereign, and keeps up a well-nigh regal state. Gentlemen of high birth do not disdain his service; and such is the prodigality that rules in his establishment, that he has no less than fourteen _maîtres d’hôtel_ and twenty-five _valets de chambre_![86] Situated at the foot of the eastern slope of the Vosges, and almost within sight of the valley of the Rhine, Saverne has its upper and lower towns, in the former of which are situated the cathedral, the _chancellerie_, the _hôtel de la régence_, the ancient château, and, adjoining this last, the palatial residence of the once all-powerful De Rohans. The principal front of this vast building looked over charming gardens, laid out in the French style, with handsome terraces and arcades, geometrically-shaped beds of brilliant flowers, trees trimmed to pattern, green shady alleys, trellises covered with vines, arbours, statues, fountains, rivulets, broad sheets of water, islands, grottos, and kiosques, while beyond all this extended a beautiful park, at the outskirts of which was a pheasantry, bounded by a dense forest, whose glades in the pleasant autumn months were alive with _piqueurs_ and packs of dogs and sportsmen in the great gold uniform of the cardinal, while the huntsman’s horn might be heard incessantly resounding.

The palace, on the garden side, presented one long façade ornamented with fluted Corinthian pilasters and richly-carved cornices and mouldings, and having countless windows of a uniform character. Its somewhat unpleasing regularity was broken by a projecting centre part with a row of open columns and balustrades, which formed a kind of gallery, handsomely decorated in its different stages with ornamental friezes, statues and bas-reliefs, and having the elaborately-sculptured armorial bearings of the family of De Rohan and its many alliances prominently displayed at either end.[87]