St. Cloud is purchased for the Queen.--Libelous Attacks on her.--Birth of
the Duc de Normandie.--Joseph presses her to support his Views in the Low
Countries.---The Affair of the Necklace.--Share which the Cardinal de
Rohan had in it.--The Queen's Indignation at his Acquittal.--Subsequent
Career of the Cardinal.
Marie Antoinette had long since completed her gardens at the Trianon, but
the gradual change in the arrangements of the court had made a number of
alterations requisite at Versailles, with which the difficulty of finding
money rendered it desirable to proceed slowly. It was reckoned that it
would be necessary to give up the greater part of the palace to workmen
for ten years; and as the other palaces which the king possessed in the
neighborhood of Paris were hardly suited for the permanent residence of
the court, the queen proposed to her husband to obtain St. Cloud from the
Duc d'Orléans, giving him in exchange La Muette, the Castle of Choisy, and
a small adjacent forest. Such an arrangement would have produced a
considerable saving by the reduction of the establishments kept up at
those places, at which the court only spent a few days in each year. And
as the duke was disposed to think that he should be a gainer by the
exchange, it is not very easy to explain how it was that the original
project was given up, and that St. Cloud was eventually sold to the crown
for a sum of money, Choisy and La Muette being also retained.
St. Cloud was bought; and Marie Antoinette, still eager to prevent her own
acquisition from being too costly, proposed to the king that it should he
bought in her name, and called her property; since an establishment for
her would naturally lie framed on a more moderate scale than that of any
palace belonging to the king, which was held always to require the
appointment of a governor and deputy-governors, with a corresponding staff
of underlings, while she should only require a porter at the outer gate.
The advantage of such a plan was so obvious that it was at once adopted.
The porters and servants wore the queen's livery; and all notices of the
regulations to be observed were signed "In the queen's name.[1]" Yet so
busy were her enemies at this time, that even this simple arrangement,
devised solely for the benefit of the people who were intimately concerned
in every thing that tended to diminish the royal expenditure, gave rise to
numberless cavils. Some affirmed that the issue of such notices in the
name of the queen instead of in that of the king was an infringement on
his authority. One most able and influential counselor of the Parliament,
Duval d'Esprémesnil, who in more than one discussion in subsequent years
showed that in general he fully appreciated the principles of
constitutional government, but who at this time seems to have been
animated by no other feeling than that of hatred for the existing
ministers, even went the length of affirming that there was "something not
only impolitic but immoral in the idea of any palace belonging to a queen
of France.[2]" But when the arrangements had once been made, Marie
Antoinette not unnaturally thought her honor concerned in not abandoning
it in deference to clamor so absurd, as well as so disrespectful to
herself; and St. Cloud, to which she had always been partial, continued
hers, and for the next five years divided her attention with the Trianon.
But though she herself disregarded all such attacks with the calm dignity
which belonged to her character, her friends were not free from serious
apprehensions as to the power of persistent detraction and calumny. It was
one of the penalties which the nation had to pay for the infamies which
had stained the crown during the last three centuries, that the people had
learned to think that nothing was too bad to say and to believe of their
kings; and Marie Antoinette seemed as yet a fairer mark than usual for
slanderous attack, because her position was weaker than that of a King.[3]
It depended on the life of her husband and of a single son, who was
already beginning to show signs of weakness of constitution. It was
therefore with exceeding satisfaction that in the autumn of 1784 her
friends learned that she was again about to become a mother. They prayed
with inexpressible anxiety that the expected child should prove a son; and
on the 27th of March, 1785, their prayers were granted. A son was born,
whom his delighted father at once took in his arms, calling him "his
little Norman," and, saying "that the name alone would bring him
happiness," created Duke of Normandy. No prophecy was ever so sadly
falsified; no king's son had ever so miserable a lot; but no forebodings
of evil as yet disturbed his parents. Their delight was fully shared by
the body of the people; for the cabals against the queen were as yet
confined to the immediate precincts of the court, and had not descended to
infect the middle classes. It was with difficulty when, after her
confinement, she paid her visit to Paris to return thanks at Notre Dame
and St. Geneviève, that the citizens could he prevented from unharnessing
her horses and dragging her coach in triumph through the streets.[4] And
their exultation was fully shared by the better-intentioned class of
courtiers, and by all Marie Antoinette's real friends, who felt assured
that the birth of this second son had given her the security which had
hitherto been wanting to her position.
Meanwhile, she was again led to interest herself greatly in foreign
politics, though in truth she hardly regarded any thing in which her
brother's empire was interested as foreign, so deep was her conviction
that the interests of France and Austria were identical and inseparable,
and so unwearied were her endeavors to make her husband's ministers see
all questions that concerned her brother's dominions with her eyes.
Throughout the latter part of 1784, and the earlier months of 1785,
Joseph, who was always restless in his ambition, was full of schemes of
aggrandizement which he desired to carry out through the favor and
co-operation of France. At one moment he projected obtaining Bavaria in
exchange for the Netherlands, at another he aimed at procuring the opening
of the Scheldt by threatening the Dutch with instant war if they resisted.
But, as all these schemes were eventually abandoned, they would hardly
require to be mentioned here, were it not for the proofs which his
correspondence with his sister affords of his increasing esteem for her
capacity, and his evident conviction of her growing influence in the
French Government, and for the light which some of her answers to his
letters throw on her relations with the ministers, which had perhaps some
share in increasing the annoyance that the affair of "the necklace," as
will be presently mentioned, caused her before the end of the year. Her
difficulties with Louis himself were the same as she had already described
to her brother on former occasions. "It was impossible to induce him to
take a strong line, so as to speak resolutely to M. de Vergennes in her
presence, and equally so to prevent his changing his mind afterward;[5]"
while she distrusted the good faith of the minister so much that, though
she resolved to speak to him strongly on the subject, she would not do so
till she could discuss the question with him "in the presence of the king,
that he might not be able to disfigure or to exaggerate what she said."
Yet she did not always find her precautions effectual. Louis's judgment
was always at the mercy of the last speaker. She assured her brother that
"he had abundant reason to be contented with the king's personal feelings
on the subject. When he received the emperor's letter, he spoke to her
about it in a way that delighted her. He regarded Joseph's demands as
just, and his motives as most reasonable. Yet--she blushed to own it even
to her brother--after he had seen his minister, his tone was no longer the
same; he was embarrassed; he shunned the subject with her, and often found
some new objection to weaken the effect of his previous admissions."
At one time she even feared a rupture between the two countries. Vergennes
was urging the king to send an army of observation to the frontier; and,
if it were sent, the proximity of such a force to the Austrian troops in
the Netherlands would, to her apprehension, be full of danger. There was
sound political acuteness in her remark that the dispatch of an army of
observation was not "in itself a declaration of war, but that when two
armies are so near to one another an order to advance is very soon
executed;" and, with a shrewd perception of the argument which was most
likely to influence the humane disposition of her husband, she pressed
upon him that "the delays and shuffling of his ministers might very
probably involve him in war, in spite of his own intentions." However,
eventually the clouds which had caused her anxiety were dissipated; the
mediation of France had even some share in leading to a conclusion of
these disputes in a manner in which Joseph himself acquiesced; and the
good understanding between the two crowns, on which, as Marie Antoinette
often declared, her happiness greatly depended, was preserved, or, as she
hoped, even strengthened, by the result of these negotiations.
But on one occasion of real moment to the personal comfort and credit of
the queen, Louis behaved with a clear good sense, and, what was equally
important, with a firmness which she gratefully acknowledged,[6] and
contrasted remarkably with the pusillanimous advice that had been given by
more than one of the ministers. That the affair in which he exhibited
these qualities should for a moment have been regarded as one of political
importance, is another testimony to the diseased state of the public mind
at the time; and that it should have been possible so to use it as to
attach the slightest degree of discredit to the queen, is a proof as
strange as melancholy how greatly the secret intrigues of the basest cabal
that ever disgraced a court had succeeded in undermining her reputation,
and poisoning the very hearts of the people against her.[7]
Boehmer, the court jeweler, had collected a large number of diamonds of
unusual size and brilliancy, which he had formed into a necklace, in the
hope of selling it to the queen, whose fancy for such jewels had some
years before been very great. She had at one time spent sums on diamond
ornaments, large enough to provoke warm remonstrances from her mother,
though certainly not excessive for her rank; and Louis, knowing her
partiality for them, had more than once made her costly gifts of the kind.
But her taste for them had cooled; her children now engrossed far more of
her attention than her dress, and she was keenly alive to the distress
which still prevailed in many parts of the kingdom, and to the
embarrassments of the revenue, which the ingenuity of Calonne did not
relieve half so rapidly as his rashness encumbered it. Accordingly, her
reply to Boehmer's application that she would purchase his necklace was
that her jewel-case was sufficiently full, and that she had almost given
up wearing diamonds; and that if such a sum as he asked, which was nearly
seventy thousand pounds, were available, she should greatly prefer its
being spent on a ship for the nation, to replace the _Ville de Paris_,
whose loss still rankled in her breast.
The king, who thought that she must secretly wish for a jewel of such
unequalled splendor, offered to make her a present of the necklace, but
she adhered to her refusal. Boehmer was greatly disappointed; he had
exhausted his resources and his credit in collecting the stones in the
hope of making a grand profit, and declared loudly to his patrons that he
should be ruined if the queen could not be induced to change her mind. His
complaints were so unrestrained that they reached the ears of those who
saw in his despair a possibility of enriching themselves at his expense.
There was in Paris at the time a Countess de la Mothe, who, as claiming
descent from a natural son of Henri II., had added Valois to her name, and
had her claim to royal birth so far allowed that, as she was in very
destitute circumstances, she had obtained a small pension from the crown.
Her pension and her pretensions had perhaps united to procure her the hand
of the Count de la Mothe, who had for some time been discreditably known
as one of the most worthless and dangerous adventurers who infested the
capital. But her marriage had been no restraint on a life of unconcealed
profligacy, and among her lovers she reckoned the Cardinal de Rohan, who,
as we have already seen, was as little scrupulous or decent as herself.
As, however, the cardinal's extravagance had left him with little means of
supplying her necessities, Madame La Mothe conceived the idea of swindling
Boehmer out of his necklace, and of making de Rohan an accomplice in the
fraud. The one thing which in the transaction is difficult to determine is
whether the cardinal was her willing and conscious assistant, or her dupe.
That his capacity was of the very lowest order was notorious, but he was a
man who had been bred in courts; he knew the manner in which princes
transacted their business, and in which queens signed their names. He had
long been acquainted with Marie Antoinette's figure and gestures and
voice; while, unhappily, there was nothing in his character which was
incompatible with his becoming an accomplice in any act of baseness.
What followed was a drama of surprises. It was with as much astonishment
as indignation that Marie Antoinette learned that Boehmer believed that
she had secretly bought the necklace, which openly and formally she had
refused, and that he was looking to her for the payment of its price. And
about a fortnight later it was like a thunder-clap that a summons came
upon the Cardinal de Rohan, who had just been performing mass before the
king and queen, to appear before them in Louis's private cabinet, and that
he found himself subjected to an examination by Louis himself, who
demanded of him with great indignation an explanation of the circumstances
that had led him to represent himself to Boehmer as authorized to buy a
necklace for the queen. Terrified and confused, he gave an explanation
which was half a confession; but which was too complicated to be
thoroughly intelligible. He was ordered to retire into the next room and
write out his statement. His written narrative proved more obscure than
his spoken words. In spite of his prayers that he might be spared the
degradation of being arrested while still clad in his pontifical habits,
he was at once sent to the Bastile. A day or two afterward Madame La Mothe
was apprehended in the provinces, and Louis directed that a prosecution
should be instantly commenced against all who had been concerned in the
transaction.
For the queen's name had been forged. The cardinal did not deny that he
had represented himself to Boehmer as employed by her for the purchase of
the jewel which, as he said, she secretly coveted, and for the payment of
its price by installments. But, as his justification, he produced a letter
desiring him to undertake the business, and signed "Marie Antoinette de
France." He declared that he had never suspected the genuineness of this
letter, though it was notorious that such an addition to their Christian
names was used by none but the sons and daughters of the reigning
sovereign, and never by a queen. And eventually his whole story was found
to be that Madame La Mothe had induced him to believe that she was in the
queen's confidence, and also that the queen coveted the necklace and was
resolved to obtain it; but that she was unable at once to pay for it; and
that, being desirous to make amends to the cardinal for the neglect with
which she had hitherto treated him, she had resolved on employing him to
make arrangements with Boehmer for the instant delivery of the ornament,
and for her payment of the price by installments.
This was strange enough to have excited the suspicions of most men. What
followed was stranger still. Not content with forging the queen's
handwriting, Madame La Mothe had even, if one may say so, forged the queen
herself. She had assured the cardinal that Marie Antoinette had consented
to grant him a secret interview; and at midnight, in the gardens of
Versailles, had introduced him to a woman of notoriously bad character
named Oliva, who in height resembled the queen, and who, in a conference
of half a minute, gave him a letter and a rose with the words, "You know
what this means." She had hardly uttered the words when Madame La Mothe
interrupted the pair with the warning the Countesses of Provence and
Artois were approaching. The mock queen retired in haste. The cardinal
pressed the rose to his heart; acted on the letter; and protested that he
had never doubted that he had seen the queen, and had been acting on her
commands in obtaining the necklace from Boehmer and delivering it to
Madame La Mothe, though he now acknowledged that he had been imposed upon,
and offered to pay the jeweler for his property.
There were not wanting those who advised that this offer should be
accepted, and that the matter should be hushed up, rather than that a
prince of the Church should be publicly disgraced by a prosecution for
fraud. But Louis and Marie Antoinette both rightly judged that their duty
as sovereigns of the kingdom forbade them to compromise justice by
screening dishonesty. It was but two years before that a great noble, the
most eloquent of all French orators, had singled out Marie Antoinette's
love of justice as one of her most conspicuous, as it was one of her most
noble, qualities; and the words deserve especially to be remembered from
the melancholy contrast which his subsequent conduct presents to the
voluntary tribute which he now paid to her excellence. In 1783, the young
Count de Mirabeau, pleading for the restitution of his conjugal rights,
put the question to the judges at Aix before whom he was arguing, "Which
of you, if he desired to consecrate a living personification of justice,
and to embellish it with all the charms of beauty, would not set up the
august image of our queen?"
She and her husband might well have felt they were bound to act up to such
a eulogy. Some of their advisers also, and especially the Baron de
Breteuil and the Abbé de Yermond, fortified their decision with their
advice; being, in truth, greatly influenced by a reason which they forbore
to mention, namely, by their suspicion that the untiring malice of the
queen's enemies would not have failed to represent that the suppression of
the slightest particle of the truth could only have been dictated by a
guilty consciousness which felt that it could not bear the light; and that
the queen had forborne to bring the cardinal into court solely because she
knew that he was in a situation to prove facts which would deservedly
damage her reputation.
It is impossible to doubt that the resolution which was adopted was the
only one consistent with either propriety or common sense. However
plausible may be the arguments which in this or that case may be adduced
for concealment, the common instinct of mankind, which rarely errs in such
matters, always conceives a suspicion that it is dictated by secret and
discreditable motives; and that he who screens manifest guilt from
exposure and punishment makes himself an accomplice in the wrong-doing, if
he was not so before. But, though Louis judged rightly for his own and his
queen's character in bringing those who were guilty of forgery and robbery
to a public trial, the result inflicted an irremediable wound on one great
institution, furnishing an additional proof how incurably rotten the whole
system of the Government must have been, when corruption without shame or
disguise was allowed to sway the highest judicial tribunal in the country.
The Parliament of Paris, constantly endeavoring throughout its whole
history to encroach upon the royal prerogative, had always founded its
pretensions on its purity and disinterestedness. Since its
re-establishment at the beginning of the present reign, it had advanced
its claim to the possession of those virtues more loudly than ever; yet
now, in the very first case which came before it in which a noble of the
highest rank was concerned, it was made apparent not only that it was
wholly destitute of every quality which ought to belong to a judicial
bench, of a regard for truth and justice, and even of a knowledge of the
law; but that no one gave it credit for them, and that every one regarded
the decision to be given as one which would depend, not on the merits of
the case, but on the interest which the culprits might be able to make
with the judges.[8]
The trial took place in May of the following year. We need not enter into
its details; the denials, the admissions, the mutual recriminations of the
persons accused. In the fate of the La Mothes and Mademoiselle Oliva no
one professed to be concerned; but the friends of the cardinal were
numerous, rich, and powerful; and for months had been and still were
indefatigable in his cause. Some days before the trial, the attorney-
general had become aware that nearly the whole of the Parliament had been
gained by them; he even furnished the queen with a list of the names of
those judges who had promised their verdict beforehand, and of the means
by which they had been won over. And on the decisive morning the cardinal
and his friends made a theatrical display which was evidently intended to
overawe those members of the Parliament who were yet unconvinced, and to
enlist the sympathies of the public in general. He himself appeared at the
bar in a long violet cloak, the mourning robe of cardinals; and all the
passages leading to the hall of justice were lined by his partisans, also
in deep mourning; and they were not solely his own relations, the nobles
of the different branches of his family, the Soubises, the Rohans, the
Guimenées; but though, as princes of the blood, the Condés were nearly
allied to the king and queen, they also were not ashamed to swell the
company assembled, and to solicit the judges as they passed into the court
to disregard alike justice and their own oaths, and to acquit the
cardinal, whatever the evidence might be which had been, or was to be,
produced against him. They were only asking what they had already assured
themselves of obtaining. The queen's signature was indeed declared to be a
forgery, and the La Mothes, Mademoiselle Oliva, and a man named Retaux de
Villette, who had been the actual writer of the forged letters, were
convicted and sentenced to the punishment which the counsel for the crown
had demanded. But the cardinal was acquitted, as well as a notorious
juggler and impostor of the day, called Cagliostro, who had apparently
been so entirely unconnected with the transaction that it is not easy to
see how he became included in the prosecution; and permission was given to
the cardinal to make his acquittal public in any manner and to any extent
which he might desire.[9]
The subsequent history of the La Mothes was singular and characteristic.
The countess, who had been sentenced to be flogged, branded, and
imprisoned for life, after a time contrived, it is believed by the aid of
some of the Rohan family, to escape from prison. She fled to London, where
for some time she and her husband lived on the proceeds of the necklace,
which they had broken up and sold piecemeal to jewelers in London and
other cities; but they were soon reduced to great distress. After the
Revolution had broken out in Paris, they tried to make money by publishing
libels on the queen, in which they are believed to have obtained the aid
of some who in former times had been under great personal obligations to
Marie Antoinette. But the scheme failed: they were overwhelmed with debt;
writs were issued against them, and in trying to escape from the sheriff's
officers, the countess fell from a window at the top of a house, and
received injuries which proved fatal.
A most accomplished writer of the present day, who has devoted much care
and ability to the examination of the case, has pronounced an opinion that
the cardinal was innocent of dishonesty,[10] and limits his offense to
that of insulting the queen by the mere suspicion that she could place her
confidence in such an unworthy agent as Madame La Mothe, or that he
himself could be allowed to recover her favor by such means as he had
employed. But his absolute ignorance of the countess's schemes is not
entirely consistent with the admitted fact that, when he was arrested, his
first act was to send orders to his secretary to burn all the letters
which he had received from her on the subject; and unquestionably neither
Louis nor Marie Antoinette doubted his full complicity in the conspiracy.
Louis at once deprived him of his office of grand almoner, and banished
him from the court, declaring that "he knew too well the usages of the
court to have believed that Madame La Mothe had really been admitted to
the queen's presence and intrusted with such a commission.[11]" And Marie
Antoinette gave open expression to her indignation at the acquittal "of an
intriguer who had sought to ruin her, or to procure money for himself, by
abusing her name and forging her signature," adding, with undeniable
truth, that still more to be pitied than herself was a "nation which had
for its supreme tribunal a body of men who consulted nothing but their
passions; and of whom some were full of corruption, and others were
inspired with a boldness which always vented itself in opposition to those
who were clothed with lawful authority.[12]"
But her magnanimity and her sincere affection for the whole people were
never more manifest than now even in her first moments of indignation.
Even while writing to Madame de Polignac that she is "bathed in tears of
grief and despair," and that she can "hope for nothing good when
perverseness is so busy in seeking means to chill her very soul," she yet
adds that "she shall triumph over her enemies by doing more good than
ever, and that it will be easier for them to afflict her than to drive her
to avenging herself on them.[13]" And she uses the same language to her
sister Christine, even while expressing still more strongly her
indignation at being "sacrificed to a perjured priest and a shameless
intriguer." She demands her sister's "pity, as one who had never deserved
such injurious treatment;[14] but who had only recollected that she was
the daughter of Maria Teresa--to fulfill her mother's exhortations, always
to show herself French to the very bottom of her heart;" but she concludes
by repeating the declaration that "nothing shall tempt her to any conduct
unworthy of herself, and that the only revenge that she will take shall he
to redouble her acts of kindness."
It is pleasing to be able to close so odious a subject by the statement
that the disgrace which the cardinal had thus brought upon himself may be
supposed in some respects to have served as a lesson to him, and that his
conduct in the latter days of his life was such as to do no discredit to
the noble race from which he sprung.
A great part of his diocese as Bishop of Strasburg lay on the German side
of the Rhine; and thither,[15] when the French Revolution began to assume
the blood-thirsty character which has made it a warning to all future
ages, he was fortunate to escape in safety from the fury of the assassins
who ruled France. And though he was no longer rich, his less fortunate
countrymen, and especially his clerical brethren, found in him a liberal
protector and supporter.[16] He even levied a body of troops to re-enforce
the royalist army. But, when the First Consul wrung from the Pope a
concordat of which he disapproved, he resigned his bishopric, and shortly
afterward died at Ettenheim,[17] where, had he remained but a short time
longer, he, like the Duke d'Enghien, might have found that a residence in
a foreign land was no protection against the ever-suspicious enmity of
Bonaparte.