[The production of ‘Le Mariage de Figaro’, by Beaumarchais, upon the
stage at Paris, so replete with indecorous and slanderous allusions to
the Royal Family, had spread the prejudices against the Queen through the
whole kingdom and every rank of France, just in time to prepare all minds
for the deadly blow which Her Majesty received from the infamous plot of
the diamond necklace. From this year, crimes and misfortunes trod
closely on each others’ heels in the history of the ill-starred Queen;
and one calamity only disappeared to make way for a greater.
The destruction of the papers which would have thoroughly explained the
transaction has still left all its essential particulars in some degree
of mystery; and the interest of the clergy, who supported one of their
own body, coupled with the arts and bribes of the high houses connected
with the plotting prelate, must, of course, have discoloured greatly even
what was well known.
It will be recollected that before the accession of Louis XVI. the
Cardinal de Rohan was disgraced in consequence of his intrigues; that all
his ingenuity was afterwards unremittingly exerted to obtain renewed
favour; that he once obtruded himself upon the notice of the Queen in the
gardens of Trianon, and that his conduct in so doing excited the
indignation it deserved, but was left unpunished owing to the entreaties
of the best friends of the Queen, and her own secret horror of a man who
had already caused her so much anguish.
With the histories of the fraud every one is acquainted. That of Madame
Campan, as far as it goes, is sufficiently detailed and correct to spare
me the necessity of expatiating upon this theme of villany. Yet, to
assist the reader’s memory, before returning to the Journal of the
Princesse de Lamballe, I shall recapitulate the leading particulars.
The Cardinal had become connected with a young, but artful and
necessitous, woman, of the name of Lamotte. It was known that the
darling ambition of the Cardinal was to regain the favour of the Queen.
The necklace, which has been already spoken of, and which was originally
destined by Louis XV. for Marie Antoinette--had her hand, by divorce,
been transferred to him--but which, though afterwards intended by Louis
XV. for his mistress, Du Barry, never came to her in consequence of his
death--this fatal necklace was still in existence, and in the possession
of the crown jewellers, Boehmer and Bassange. It was valued at eighteen
hundred thousand livres. The jewellers had often pressed it upon the
Queen, and even the King himself had enforced its acceptance. But the
Queen dreaded the expense, especially at an epoch of pecuniary difficulty
in the State, much more than she coveted the jewels, and uniformly and
resolutely declined them, although they had been proposed to her on very
easy terms of payment, as she really did not like ornaments.
It was made to appear at the parliamentary investigation that the artful
Lamotte had impelled the Cardinal to believe that she herself was in
communication with the Queen; that she had interested Her Majesty in
favour of the long slighted Cardinal; that she had fabricated a
correspondence, in which professions of penitence on the part of De Rohan
were answered by assurances of forgiveness from the Queen. The result of
this correspondence was represented to be the engagement of the Cardinal
to negotiate the purchase of the necklace secretly, by a contract for
periodical payments. To the forgery of papers was added, it was
declared, the substitution of the Queen’s person, by dressing up a girl
of the Palais Royal to represent Her Majesty, whom she in some degree
resembled, in a secret and rapid interview with Rohan in a dark grove of
the gardens of Versailles, where she was to give the Cardinal a rose, in
token of her royal approbation, and then hastily disappear. The
importunity of the jewellers, on the failure of the stipulated payment,
disclosed the plot. A direct appeal of theirs to the Queen, to save them
from ruin, was the immediate source of detection. The Cardinal was
arrested, and all the parties tried. But the Cardinal was acquitted, and
Lamotte and a subordinate agent alone punished. The quack Cagliostro was
also in the plot, but he, too, escaped, like his confederate, the
Cardinal, who was made to appear as the dupe of Lamotte.
The Queen never got over the effect of this affair. Her friends well
knew the danger of severe measures towards one capable of collecting
around him strong support against a power already so much weakened by
faction and discord. But the indignation of conscious innocence
insulted, prevailed, though to its ruin!
But it is time to let the Princesse de Lamballe give her own impressions
upon this fatal subject, and in her own words.]
“How could Messieurs Boehmer and Bassange presume that the Queen would
have employed any third person to obtain an article of such value,
without enabling them to produce an unequivocal document signed by her
own hand and countersigned by mine, as had ever been the rule during my
superintendence of the household, whenever anything was ordered from the
jewellers by Her Majesty? Why did not Messieurs Boehmer and Bassange
wait on me, when they saw a document unauthorised by me, and so widely
departing from the established forms? I must still think, as I have
often said to the King, that Boehmer and Bassange wished to get rid of
this dead weight of diamonds in any way; and the Queen having
unfortunately been led by me to hush up many foul libels against her
reputation, as I then thought it prudent she should do, rather than
compromise her character with wretches capable of doing anything to
injure her, these jewellers, judging from this erroneous policy of the
past, imagined that in this instance, also, rather than hazard exposure,
Her Majesty would pay them for the necklace. This was a compromise which
I myself resisted, though so decidedly adverse to bringing the affair
before the nation by a public trial. Of such an explosion, I foresaw the
consequences, and I ardently entreated the King and Queen to take other
measures. But, though till now so hostile to severity with the Cardinal,
the Queen felt herself so insulted by the proceeding that she gave up
every other consideration to make manifest her innocence.
“The wary Comte de Vergennes did all he could to prevent the affair from
getting before the public. Against the opinion of the King and the whole
council of Ministers, he opposed judicial proceedings. Not that he
conceived the Cardinal altogether guiltless; but he foresaw the fatal
consequences that must result to Her Majesty, from bringing to trial an
ecclesiastic of such rank; for he well knew that the host of the higher
orders of the nobility, to whom the prelate was allied, would naturally
strain every point to blacken the character of the King and Queen, as the
only means of exonerating their kinsman in the eyes of the world from the
criminal mystery attached to that most diabolical intrigue against the
fair fame of Marie Antoinette. The Count could not bear the idea of the
Queen’s name being coupled with those of the vile wretches, Lamotte and
the mountebank Cagliostro, and therefore wished the King to chastise the
Cardinal by a partial exile, which might have been removed at pleasure.
But the Queen’s party too fatally seconded her feelings, and prevailed.
“I sat by Her Majesty’s bedside the whole of the night, after I heard
what had been determined against the Cardinal by the council of
Ministers, to beg her to use all her interest with the King to persuade
him to revoke the order of the warrant for the prelate’s arrest. To this
the Queen replied, ‘Then the King, the Ministers, and the people, will
all deem me guilty.’
“Her Majesty’s remark stopped all farther argument upon the subject, and
I had the inconsolable grief to see my royal mistress rushing upon
dangers which I had no power of preventing her from bringing upon
herself.
“The slanderers who had imputed such unbounded influence to the Queen
over the mind of Louis XVI. should have been consistent enough to
consider that, with but a twentieth part of the tithe of her imputed
power, uncontrolled as she then was by national authority, she might,
without any exposure to third persons, have at once sent one of her pages
to the garde-meuble and other royal depositaries, replete with hidden
treasures of precious stones which never saw the light, and thence have
supplied herself with more than enough to form ten necklaces, or to have
fully satisfied, in any way she liked, the most unbounded passion for
diamonds, for the use of which she would never have been called to
account.
“But the truth is, the Queen had no love of ornaments. A proof occurred
very soon after I had the honour to be nominated Her Majesty’s
superintendent. On the day of the great fete of the Cordon Bleu, when it
was the etiquette to wear diamonds and pearls, the Queen had omitted
putting them on. As there had been a greater affluence of visitors than
usual that morning, and Her Majesty’s toilet was overthronged by Princes
and Princesses, I fancied in the bustle that the omission proceeded from
forgetfulness. Consequently, I sent the tirewoman, in the Queen’s
hearing, to order the jewels to be brought in. Smilingly, Her Majesty
replied, ‘No, no! I have not forgotten these gaudy things; but I do not
intend that the lustre of my eyes should be outshone by the one, or the
whiteness of my teeth by the other; however, as you wish art to eclipse
nature, I’ll wear them to satisfy you, ma belle dame!’
“The King was always so thoroughly indulgent to Her Majesty, with regard
both to her public and private conduct, that she never had any pretext
for those reserves which sometimes tempt Queens as well as the wives of
private individuals to commit themselves to third persons for articles of
high value, which their caprice indiscreetly impels them to procure
unknown to their natural guardians. Marie Antoinette had no reproach or
censure for plunging into excesses beyond her means to apprehend from her
royal husband. On the contrary, the King himself had spontaneously
offered to purchase the necklace from the jewellers, who had urged it on
him without limiting any time for payment. It was the intention of His
Majesty to have liquidated it out of his private purse. But Marie
Antoinette declined the gift. Twice in my presence was the refusal
repeated before Messieurs Boehmer and Bassange. Who, then, can for a
moment presume, after all these circumstances, that the Queen of France,
with a nation’s wealth at her feet and thousands of individuals offering
her millions, which she never accepted, would have so far degraded
herself and the honour of the nation, of which she was born to be the
ornament, as to place herself gratuitously in the power of a knot of
wretches, headed by a man whose general bad character for years had
excluded him from Court and every respectable society, and had made the
Queen herself mark him as an object of the utmost aversion.
“If these circumstances be not sufficient adequately to open the eyes of
those whom prejudice has blinded, and whose ears have been deafened
against truth, by the clamours of sinister conspirators against the
monarchy instead of the monarchs; if all these circumstances, I repeat,
do not completely acquit the Queen, argument, or even ocular
demonstration itself, would be thrown away. Posterity will judge
impartially, and with impartial judges the integrity of Marie Antoinette
needs no defender.
“When the natural tendency of the character of De Rohan to romantic and
extraordinary intrigue is considered in connection with the associates he
had gathered around him, the plot of the necklace ceases to be a source
of wonder. At the time the Cardinal was most at a loss for means to meet
the necessities of his extravagance, and to obtain some means of access
to the Queen, the mountebank quack, Cagliostro, made his appearance in
France. His fame had soon flown from Strasburg to Paris, the magnet of
vices and the seat of criminals. The Prince-Cardinal, known of old as a
seeker after everything of notoriety, soon became the intimate of one who
flattered him with the accomplishment of all his dreams in the
realization of the philosopher’s stone; converting puffs and French paste
into brilliants; Roman pearls into Oriental ones; and turning earth to
gold. The Cardinal, always in want of means to supply the insatiable
exigencies of his ungovernable vices, had been the dupe through life of
his own credulity--a drowning man catching at a straw! But instead of
making gold of base materials, Cagliostro’s brass soon relieved his blind
adherent of all his sterling metal. As many needy persons enlisted under
the banners of this nostrum speculator, it is not to be wondered at that
the infamous name of the Comtesse de Lamotte, and others of the same
stamp, should have thus fallen into an association of the Prince-Cardinal
or that her libellous stories of the Queen of France should have found
eager promulgators, where the real diamonds of the famous necklace being
taken apart were divided piecemeal among a horde of the most depraved
sharpers that ever existed to make human nature blush at its own
degradation!
[Cagliostro, when he came to Rome, for I know not whether there had been
any previous intimacy, got acquainted with a certain Marchese Vivaldi, a
Roman, whose wife had been for years the chere amie of the last Venetian
Ambassador, Peter Pesaro, a noble patrician, and who has ever since his
embassy at Rome been his constant companion and now resides with him in
England. No men in Europe are more constant in their attachments than
the Venetians. Pesaro is the sole proprietor of one of the moat
beautiful and magnificent palaces on the Grand Canal at Venice, though he
now lives in the outskirts of London, in a small house, not so large as
one of the offices of his immense noble palace, where his agent transacts
his business. The husband of Pesaro’s chere amie, the Marchese Vivaldi,
when Cagliostro was arrested and sent to the Castello Santo Angelo at
Rome, was obliged to fly his country, and went to Venice, where he was
kept secreted and maintained by the Marquis Solari, and it was only
through his means and those of the Cardinal Consalvi, then known only as
the musical Abbe Consalvi, from his great attachment to the immortal
Cimarosa, that Vivaldi was ever allowed to return to his native country;
but Consalvi, who was the friend of Vivaldi, feeling with the Marquis
Solari much interested for his situation, they together contrived to
convince Pius VI. that he was more to be pitied than blamed, and thus
obtained his recall. I have merely given this note as a further warning
to be drawn from the connections of the Cardinal de Rohan, to deter
hunters after novelty from forming ties with innovators and impostors.
Cagliostro was ultimately condemned, by the Roman laws under Pope Pius
VI., for life, to the galleys, where he died.
Proverbs ought to be respected; for it is said that no phrase becomes a
proverb until after a century’s experience of its truth. In England it is
proverbial to judge of men by the company they keep. Judge of the
Cardinal de Rohan from his most intimate friend, the galley-slave.]
“Eight or ten years had elapsed from the time Her Majesty had last seen
the Cardinal to speak to him, with the exception of the casual glance as
she drove by when he furtively introduced himself into the garden at the
fete at Trianon, till he was brought to the King’s cabinet when arrested,
and interrogated, and confronted with her face to face. The Prince
started when he saw her. The comparison of her features with those of
the guilty wretch who had dared to personate her in the garden at
Versailles completely destroyed his self-possession. Her Majesty’s
person was become fuller, and her face was much longer than that of the
infamous D’Oliva. He could neither speak nor write an intelligible reply
to the questions put to him. All he could utter, and that only in broken
accents, was, ‘I’ll pay! I’ll pay Messieurs Bassange.’
“Had he not speedily recovered himself, all the mystery in which this
affair has been left, so injuriously to the Queen, might have been
prevented. His papers would have declared the history of every
particular, and distinctly established the extent of his crime and the
thorough innocence of Marie Antoinette of any connivance at the fraud, or
any knowledge of the necklace. But when the Cardinal was ordered by the
King’s Council to be put under arrest, his self-possession returned. He
was given in charge to an officer totally unacquainted with the nature of
the accusation. Considering only the character of his prisoner as one of
the highest dignitaries of the Church, from ignorance and inexperience,
he left the Cardinal an opportunity to write a German note to his
factotum, the Abbe Georgel. In this note the trusty secretary was
ordered to destroy all the letters of Cagliostro, Madame de Lamotte, and
the other wretched associates of the infamous conspiracy; and the traitor
was scarcely in custody when every evidence of his treason had
disappeared. The note to Georgel saved his master from expiating his
offence at the Place de Grave.
“The consequences of the affair would have been less injurious, however,
had it been managed, even as it stood, with better judgment and temper.
But it was improperly entrusted to the Baron de Breteuil and the Abbe
Vermond, both sworn enemies of the Cardinal. Their main object was the
ruin of him they hated, and they listened only to their resentments. They
never weighed the danger of publicly prosecuting an individual whose
condemnation would involve the first families in France, for he was
allied even to many of the Princes of the blood. They should have
considered that exalted personages, naturally feeling as if any crime
proved against their kinsman would be a stain upon themselves, would of
course resort to every artifice to exonerate the accused. To criminate
the Queen was the only and the obvious method. Few are those nearest the
Crown who are not most jealous of its wearers! Look at the long civil
wars of York and Lancaster, and the short reign of Richard. The downfall
of Kings meets less resistance than that of their inferiors.
“Still, notwithstanding all the deplorable blunders committed in this
business of De Rohan, justice was not smothered without great difficulty.
His acquittal cost the families of De Rohan and De Conde more than a
million of livres, distributed among all ranks of the clergy; besides
immense sums sent to the Court of Rome to make it invalidate the judgment
of the civil authority of France upon so high a member of the Church, and
to induce it to order the Cardinal’s being sent to Rome by way of
screening him from the prosecution, under the plausible pretext of more
rigid justice.
“Considerable sums in money and jewels were also lavished on all the
female relatives of the peers of France, who were destined to sit on the
trial. The Abbe Georgel bribed the press, and extravagantly paid all the
literary pens in France to produce the most Jesuitical and sophisticated
arguments in his patron’s justification. Though these writers dared not
accuse or in any way criminate the Queen, yet the respectful doubts, with
which their defence of her were seasoned, did indefinitely more mischief
than any direct attack, which could have been directly answered.
“The long cherished, but till now smothered, resentment of the Comtesse
de Noailles, the scrupulous Madame Etiquette, burst forth on this
occasion. Openly joining the Cardinal’s party against her former
mistress and Sovereign, she recruited and armed all in favour of her
protege; for it was by her intrigues De Rohan had been nominated
Ambassador to Vienna. Mesdames de Guemenee and Marsan, rival pretenders
to favours of His Eminence, were equally earnest to support him against
the Queen. In short, there was scarcely a family of distinction in
France that, from the libels which then inundated the kingdom, did not
consider the King as having infringed on their prerogatives and
privileges in accusing the Cardinal.
“Shortly after the acquittal of this most artful, and, in the present
instance, certainly too fortunate prelate, the Princesse de Conde came to
congratulate me on the Queen’s innocence, and her kinsman’s liberation
from the Bastille.
“Without the slightest observation, I produced to the Princess documents
in proof of the immense sums she alone had expended in bribing the judges
and other persons, to save her relation, the Cardinal, by criminating Her
Majesty.
“The Princesse de Conde instantly fell into violent hysterics, and was
carried home apparently, lifeless.
“I have often reproached myself for having given that sudden shock and
poignant anguish to Her Highness, but I could not have supposed that one
who came so barefacedly to impress me with the Cardinal’s innocence,
could have been less firm in refuting her own guilt.
“I never mentioned the circumstance to the Queen. Had I done so, Her
Highness would have been forever excluded from the Court and the royal
presence. This was no time to increase the enemies of Her Majesty, and,
the affair of the trial being ended, I thought it best to prevent any
further breach from a discord between the Court and the house of Conde.
However, from a coldness subsisting ever after between the Princess and
myself, I doubt not that the Queen had her suspicions that all was not as
it should be in that quarter. Indeed, though Her Majesty never confessed
it, I think she herself had discovered something at that very time not
altogether to the credit of the Princesse de Conde, for she ceased going,
from that period, to any of the fetes given at Chantilly.
“These were but a small portion of the various instruments successfully
levelled by parties, even the least suspected, to blacken and destroy the
fair fame of Marie Antoinette.
“The document which so justly alarmed the Princesse de Conde, when I
showed it to her came into my hands in the following manner:
“Whenever a distressed family, or any particular individual, applied to
me for relief, or was otherwise recommended for charitable purposes, I
generally sent my little English protegee--whose veracity, well knowing
the goodness of her heart, I could rely--to ascertain whether their
claims were really well grounded.
[Indeed, I never deceived the Princess on these occasions. She was so
generously charitable that I should have conceived it a crime. When I
could get no satisfactory information, I said I could not trace anything
undeserving her charity, and left Her Highness to exercise her own
discretion.]
“One day I received an earnest memorial from a family, desiring to make
some private communications of peculiar delicacy. I sent my usual
ambassadress to inquire into its import. On making her mission known,
she found no difficulty in ascertaining the object of the application. It
proceeded from conscientious distress of mind. A relation of this family
had been the regular confessor of a convent. With the Lady Abbess of
this convent and her trusty nuns, the Princesse de Conde had deposited
considerable sums of money, to be bestowed in creating influence in
favour of the Cardinal de Rohan. The confessor, being a man of some
consideration among the clergy, was applied to, to use his influence with
the needier members of the Church more immediately about him, as well as
those of higher station, to whom he had access, in furthering the
purposes of the Princesse de Conde. The bribes were applied as intended.
But, at the near approach of death, the confessor was struck with
remorse. He begged his family, without mentioning his name, to send the
accounts and vouchers of the sums he had so distributed, to me, as a
proof of his contrition, that I might make what use of them I should
think proper. The papers were handed to my messenger, who pledged her
word of honour that I would certainly adhere to the dying man’s last
injunctions. She desired they might be sealed up by the family, and by
them directed to me.--[To this day, I neither know the name of the
convent or the confessor.]--She then hastened back to our place of
rendezvous, where I waited for her, and where she consigned the packet
into my own hands.
“That part of the papers which compromised only the Princesse de Conde
was shown by me to the Princess on the occasion I have mentioned. It was
natural enough that she should have been shocked at the detection of
having suborned the clergy and others with heavy bribes to avert the
deserved fate of the Cardinal. I kept this part of the packet secret
till the King’s two aunts, who had also been warm advocates in favour of
the prelate, left Paris for Rome. Then, as Pius VI. had interested
himself as head of the Church for the honour of one of its members, I
gave them these very papers to deliver to His Holiness for his private
perusal. I was desirous of enabling this truly charitable and Christian
head of our sacred religion to judge how far his interference was
justified by facts. I am thoroughly convinced that, had he been sooner
furnished with these evidences, instead of blaming the royal proceeding,
he would have urged it on, nay, would himself have been the first to
advise that the foul conspiracy should be dragged into open day.
“The Comte de Vergennes told me that the King displayed the greatest
impartiality throughout the whole investigation for the exculpation of
the Queen, and made good his title on this, as he did on every occasion
where his own unbiassed feelings and opinions were called into action, to
great esteem for much higher qualities than the world has usually given
him credit for.
“I have been accused of having opened the prison doors of the culprit
Lamotte for her escape; but the charge is false. I interested myself, as
was my duty, to shield the Queen from public reproach by having Lamotte
sent to a place of penitence; but I never interfered, except to lessen
her punishment, after the judicial proceedings. The diamonds, in the
hands of her vile associates at Paris, procured her ample means to
escape. I should have been the Queen’s greatest enemy had I been the
cause of giving liberty to one who acted, and might naturally have been
expected to act, as this depraved woman did.
“Through the private correspondence which was carried on between this
country and England, after I had left it, I was informed that M. de
Calonne, whom the Queen never liked, and who was called to the
administration against her will--which he knew, and consequently became
one of her secret enemies in the affair of the necklace--was discovered
to have been actively employed against Her Majesty in the work published
in London by Lamotte.
“Mr. Sheridan was the gentleman who first gave me this information.
“I immediately sent a trusty person by the Queen’s orders to London, to
buy up the whole work. It was too late. It had been already so widely
circulated that its consequences could no longer be prevented. I was
lucky enough, however, for a considerable sum, to get a copy from a
person intimate with the author, the margin of which, in the handwriting
of M. de Calonne, actually contained numerous additional circumstances
which were to have been published in a second edition! This publication
my agent, aided by some English gentlemen, arrived in time to suppress.
“The copy I allude to was brought to Paris and shown to the Queen. She
instantly flew with it in her hands to the King’s cabinet.
“‘Now, Sire,’ exclaimed she, ‘I hope you will be convinced that my
enemies are those whom I have long considered as the most pernicious of
Your Majesty’s Councillors--your own Cabinet Ministers--your M. de
Calonne!--respecting whom I have often given you my opinion, which,
unfortunately, has always been attributed to mere female caprice, or as
having been biassed by the intrigues of Court favourites! This, I hope,
Your Majesty will now be able to contradict!’
“The King all this time was looking over the different pages containing
M. de Calonne’s additions on their margins. On recognising the
hand-writing, His Majesty was so affected by this discovered treachery of
his Minister and the agitation of his calumniated Queen that he could
scarcely articulate.
“‘Where,’ said he, I did you procure this?’
“‘Through the means, Sire, of some of the worthy members of that nation
your treacherous Ministers made our enemy--from England! where your
unfortunate Queen, your injured wife, is compassionated!’
“‘Who got it for you?’
“‘My dearest, my real, and my only sincere friend, the Princesse de
Lamballe!’
“The King requested I should be sent for. I came. As may be imagined, I
was received with the warmest sentiments of affection by both Their
Majesties. I then laid before the King the letter of Mr. Sheridan, which
was, in substance, as follows:
“‘MADAME,
“‘A work of mine, which I did not choose should be printed, was published
in Dublin and transmitted to be sold in London. As soon as I was
informed of it, and had procured a spurious copy, I went to the
bookseller to put a stop to its circulation. I there met with a copy of
the work of Madame de Lamotte, which has been corrected by some one at
Paris and sent back to the bookseller for a second edition. Though not
in time to suppress the first edition, owing to its rapid circulation, I
have had interest enough, through the means of the bookseller of whom I
speak, to remit you the copy which has been sent as the basis of a new
one. The corrections, I am told, are by one of the King’s Ministers. If
true, I should imagine the writer will be easily traced.
“‘I am happy that it has been in my power to make this discovery, and I
hope it will be the means of putting a stop to this most scandalous
publication. I feel myself honoured in having contributed thus far to
the wishes of Her Majesty, which I hope I have fulfilled to the entire
satisfaction of Your Highness.
“‘Should anything further transpire on this subject, I will give you the
earliest information.
“‘I remain, madame, with profound respect, Your Highness’ most devoted,
“‘very humble servant,
“‘RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN.’
[Madame Campan mentions in her work that the Queen had informed her of
the treachery of the Minister, but did not enter into particulars, nor
explain the mode or source of its detection. Notwithstanding the parties
had bound themselves for the sums they received not to reprint the work,
a second edition appeared a short time afterwards in London. This, which
was again bought up by the French Ambassador, was the same which was to
have been burned by the King’s command at the china manufactory at
Sevres.]
“M. de Calonne immediately received the King’s mandate to resign the
portfolio. The Minister desired that he might be allowed to give his
resignation to the King himself. His request was granted. The Queen was
present at the interview. The work in question was produced. On
beholding it, the Minister nearly fainted. The King got up and left the
room. The Queen, who remained, told M. de Calonne that His Majesty had
no further occasion for his services. He fell on his knees. He was not
allowed to speak, but was desired to leave Paris.
“The dismissal and disgrace of M. de Calonne were scarcely known before
all Paris vociferated that they were owing to the intrigues of the
favourite De Polignac, in consequence of his having refused to administer
to her own superfluous extravagance and the Queen’s repeated demands on
the Treasury to satisfy the numerous dependants of the Duchess.
“This, however, was soon officially disproved by the exhibition of a
written proposition of Calonne’s to the Queen, to supply an additional
hundred thousand francs that year to her annual revenue, which Her
Majesty refused. As for the Duchesse de Polignac, so far from having
caused the disgrace, she was not even aware of the circumstance from
which it arose; nor did the Minister himself ever know how, or by what
agency, his falsehood was so thoroughly unmasked.”
NOTE:
[The work which is here spoken of, the Queen kept, as a proof of the
treachery of Calonne towards her and his Sovereign, till the storming of
the Tuileries on the 10th of August, 1792, when, with the rest of the
papers and property plundered on that memorable occasion, it fell into
the hands of the ferocious mob.
M. de Calonne soon after left France for Italy. There he lived for some
time in the palace of a particular friend of mine and the Marquis, my
husband, the Countess Francese Tressino, at Vicenza.
In consequence of our going every season to take the mineral waters and
use the baths at Valdagno, we had often occasion to be in company with M.
de Calonne, both at Vicenza and Valdagno, where I must do him the justice
to say he conducted himself with the greatest circumspection in speaking
of the Revolution.
Though he evidently avoided the topic which terminates this chapter, yet
one day, being closely pressed upon the subject, he said forgeries were
daily committed on Ministers, and were most particularly so in France at
the period in question; that he had borne the blame of various
imprudencies neither authorized nor executed by him; that much had been
done and supposed to have been done with his sanction, of which he had
not the slightest knowledge. This he observed generally, without
specifying any express instance.
He was then asked whether he did not consider himself responsible for the
mischief he occasioned by declaring the nation in a state of bankruptcy.
He said, “No, not in the least. There was no other way of preventing
enormous sums from being daily lavished, as they then were, on herds of
worthless beings; that the Queen had sought to cultivate a state of
private domestic society, but that, in the attempt, she only warmed in
her bosom domestic vipers, who fed on the vital spirit of her
generosity.” He mentioned no names.
I then took the liberty of asking him his opinion of the Princesse de
Lamballe.
“Oh, madame! had the rest of Her Majesty’s numerous attendants possessed
the tenth part of that unfortunate Victim’s virtues, Her Majesty would
never have been led into the errors which all France must deplore!
“I shall never forget her,” continued he, “the day I went to take leave
of her. She was sitting on a sofa when I entered. On seeing me, she
rose immediately. Before I could utter a syllable, ‘Monsieur,’ said the
Princess, ‘you are accused of being the Queen’s enemy. Acquit yourself
of the foul deed imputed to you, and I shall be happy to serve you as far
as lies in my power. Till then, I must decline holding any communication
with an individual thus situated. I am her friend, and cannot receive any
one known to be otherwise.’
“There was something,” added he, “so sublime, so dignified, and
altogether so firm, though mild in her manner, that she appeared not to
belong to a race of earthly beings!”
Seeing the tears fall from his eyes, while he was thus eulogising her
whose memory I shall ever venerate, I almost forgave him the mischief of
his imprudence, which led to her untimely end. I therefore carefully
avoided wounding his few gray hairs and latter days, and left him still
untold that it was by her, of whom he thought so highly, that his
uncontradicted treachery had been discovered.