_THE DIAMOND NECKLACE_
_From April 27, 1784, to August 15, 1785_
AS the summer of 1784 broadened through May and June it led on the Queen
to every grace of life, and at last, as it might have been imagined, to
security. The season itself was fruitful and serene: the establishment
of prestige abroad—so often a forerunner of evil to European nations—was
now triumphantly achieved. There was now about the Court an air of
solidity and permanence which the visit of foreign princes continued to
confirm, and this air (thanks to Calonne’s largesse) seemed less
poisoned by that financial ill-ease which had turned even the last
victories of the American War into doubtful and anxious things.
Marie Antoinette had entered into that content and calm which often
introduces middle age after a youth tormented by an inward insecurity.
Her inheritance was sure. Her children had not yet betrayed the doom of
their blood. The legend of her follies meant daily a little less,
because daily it became more and more of a legend worn by time,
dangerous only if its set formula should be filled with life and reality
by some new scandal. The violence of her youth now seemed exorcised; her
fulness of feature, which had shocked the taste of Louis XV.’s Court,
accorded with these her later functions of authority. She was indeed in
that full flower of womanhood which later so perturbed the memories of
Burke and lent one famous passage of sincerity to his false political
rhetoric.
As Marie Antoinette so entered at last into maturity, and, it would
seem, into peace, the comedy which was to bring upon her every
humiliation entered upon the Stage of this World. In the waters below
her, Jeanne de La Motte de Valois, fishing for goldfish, struck and
landed her Cardinal.
[Illustration:
MARIE ANTOINETTE
AFTER THE PAINTING BY MADAME VIGEE LE BRUN
]
Gustavus of Sweden, Northerner and Flibbertigibert, the same that had
slung diamond necklaces round the Du Barry’s little dog and the same
that had despised the Dauphine, was at Court in the early days of that
June, and saw the Queen now a woman; his affections were immediately
moved. There was a touch of flirtation between them; on her side also a
real friendship which for years continued in correspondence—for the
softness of the North never failed to soothe and to relieve this
Austrian woman caught in the hardness of French rules and the pressure
of French vitality. He had come as the “Comte de Haga,” and she feasted
him well. That new toy, a balloon, was sent up to amuse him—she had it
called by her name—and he was shown all that Trianon could show by day
or by night. She was the more gracious from the awkwardness of Louis,
who came ill-dressed to meet Gustavus and who was slow with him. She
gave him deference. She consented, at one great supper of hers, to stand
with her women and supervise all, while he was seated. Only she would
not dance with him; she said she danced no more....
Meanwhile accompanying the King of Sweden and ever at his side, Fersen
was come again to Versailles.
Fersen was now a man. War had made him. Marie Antoinette could silently
watch in him a very different carriage and a new alertness of the
visage, but his eyes still bore the tender respect that she had known
and remembered.
He was now for some years to come and go between Versailles and the
world. He was a colonel of French Horse, and his place was made....
The King of Sweden went down well; the Court was full of him. The Queen
surpassed herself in well-receiving him.
The month of June was filled with this sincere and pleasing gaiety; but
all that June, far off, the La Motte was going and coming in her secret
ways, talking to the Cardinal of letters to her “from the Queen,”
assuring him that these letters gave proof of his growing favour. She
did more and boldly; she affected to _show_ him those royal letters!
There was a soldier of sorts, cynical, ramshackle, hard up, like all her
gang, Rétaux de Villette by name; he it was who wrote these letters
whenever the La Motte might ask him—so much a time. They must have
amused him as he wrote them! He was at no pains to disguise his hand; he
wrote straight out to his “dear heart,” the Countess de La Motte Valois,
anything she asked him to write—especially praise of Rohan—and when he
had written it (at so much a time) he would boldly sign “Marie
Antoinette” with a flourish; and the La Motte would show the letter to
Rohan, and Rohan (that is the amazing and simple truth) would believe
them to be the Queen’s!
If the Cardinal had any doubts at all they were easily dispersed.
Cagliostro, who enjoyed the Illumination of the Seventh House and had
powers from the other world, most strongly reassured him—for a fee; the
seen and unseen powers all combined to reassure the fatuous Rohan, and
he was ready, as June ended, to believe not only that he was in favour
with the Queen but in very peculiar favour indeed, and that all this
show of avoidance and silence upon her part was a mask necessary to
conceal a deeply-rooted tenderness. She might turn her head away when
the Grand Almoner passed on his rare and pompous occasions of
ecclesiastical office in the galleries of Versailles. She might refuse
to speak to him a single word. She might, whenever she deigned to speak
of him to others, speak with complete contempt and disgust. She might
(as she had and did) successfully prevent the smallest honour or moneys
coming to him. But, oh! he saw it all! It was but a mask to hide her
great love—and, sooner or later, he would have his reward for such long
and patient waiting!
He in his turn wrote—constantly. To the letters the La Motte showed
him—dainty scented notes on little dainty sheets of gilded blue (but
written, alas! by such rough hands)—he would answer, with imploring,
respectful, adoring lines, handed to the La Motte, that she might give
them to her great and high friend. Now he could understand why
Cagliostro had promised him in oracular enigmas that “glory would come
to him from a correspondence,” and that “full power with the Government”
was immediately awaiting him. He was ready to assume it.
July was empty enough for the Queen. Her guest was gone; there was
little doing at Versailles. Her amusements, especially her theatre, she
had deliberately given up, determined to let the legend against her die.
She waited through the dull month a little worried. Her brother the
Emperor was still fussing about his diplomatic quarrel, the opening of
the Scheldt, and the rest of it; she was anxious for him and for peace.
Henry of Prussia would soon be visiting Versailles, there intriguing (as
she dreaded) against her Austrian House. But, on the whole, the month of
July 1784 was a dull month for her. It was not dull for the La Mottes.
The male La Motte in early July sauntered, on those fine sunny days, in
the Palais Royal. He was looking for something; he was looking for a
face and a figure not too unlike those of the Queen of France. It was
not a difficult thing to find; the type was common enough, and in the
first days of his search he found it. The woman was a woman of the town,
young, with a swelled heart, as it were, and no brains; she was timid,
she was ready to swallow anything offered her. He followed her with
gallantry, and found that her professional name was d’Oliva; her true
name the more humble one of Le Quay. For a week or so this new lover of
hers went on like any other, he appeared and reappeared most naturally;
but when the week was over and he had grown most familiar to her—and
perhaps with his birth and high accent most revered—La Motte confided to
her great and flattering news. _There was a great Lady at Court who
sought her aid in a matter of vast importance_, and that great Lady
spoke perhaps for a Lady greater still. The grandeur of the position was
left to brew, and on the 22nd of July, when it was already dusk, the
great Lady (who was the female La Motte) swept into the poor girl’s
humble lodgings—a vision of the Court and the high world; she told the
wide-eyed hussy things that seemed too lofty for human ears. _The Queen
had need of her._
For herself, said the La Motte, she was the Queen’s one great, near
friend (she showed a letter—one of the famous letters), and if the
d’Oliva would do as she was begged to do, the gratitude of the Queen
would far excel in effect the paltry 400 _pounds_ that _she_, La Motte,
would give. Come, would she help the Queen?
Oh yes! the d’Oliva would help the Queen! She would come next day to
Versailles!
Why, then, all was well.... And that very night, posthaste, the
interview over, Madame de La Motte galloped off to Versailles to take a
room with her maid.
For the Queen the dreary month was ending—there was no trouble upon her
horizon. She had written again to Sweden; she asked for, and obtained,
the reversion of the See of Albi for a friend of the King of Sweden’s.
There was no other news.
History does not show perhaps one situation more wonderfully unlike the
common half-happenings, complexities and reactions of real life, nor one
more wonderfully fulfilling the violent and exact, simple, and
pre-arranged ironies of drama, than the contrast of that night: the
Queen in the palace, ignorant of any ill save the old and dwindling
tales against her, listless after a summer month of idleness and of
restraint—and coming right up at her, down the Paris road, the woman who
was to destroy her altogether.
The La Motte and her maid got in to Versailles very late. They took
rooms at the Belle Image. Next day La Motte and Rétaux, the soldier,
came, bringing the poor girl d’Oliva with them; and after a short walk
in the town, during which she was left in the hotel with that “great
Lady,” before whom she trembled, they told the d’Oliva that they had
seen the Queen and that all was well. They waited till the morrow. On
the evening of that morrow, the 24th of July, Madame de La Motte warned
the d’Oliva that the time was come. She dressed her all in white,
magnificently; she gave her a letter and a rose, and said: “To-night we
go into the Park together, and there you will see for a moment a great
Lord. Give him this letter and that rose, and say these words: ‘You know
my meaning!’ You will have no more to do.” It was about eleven, a dark
night and no moon, when the two women went together into the vast
gardens of the palace.
As you stand in the centre of the great façade of Versailles and look
westward down a mile of formal lawn and water, there lie to your left in
the palace what were the Queen’s rooms, and to your left in the gardens
a large grove called “the Queen’s Grove,” in which are the trees that
can be seen nearest to her windows or to be reached most quickly from
what were her private doors.
Near and within this grove, by an appointment which the La Motte had
sworn him to observe, paced and repaced the Cardinal. The La Motte had
told him he would see the Queen.
In an enormous cloak of dark mysterious blue that covered his purple to
the heels, in a broad soft hat that flapped down and hid his face, this
fool of magnitude paced the gardens of Versailles and waited for the
delicious hour. Behind him as he paced followed respectfully a man of
his—one Planta, a sort of insignificant noble. The hour came. The_La
Motte found the Cardinal. She led him along a path among the high
trees—and there for a moment, near a hornbeam hedge that grew there, he
saw dimly a woman in white, showing tall and vague in the darkness. This
figure held forward to him in some confusion a rose, and said very low,
“You know my meaning!” Rohan seized the hem of the white dress and
kissed it passionately, but before another word could pass a man came
forward at speed and whispered as in an agony: “Madame! D’Artois is
near—Madame!” The La Motte said “Quick!...” The thing in white slipped
back into the shadow of a bush, the Cardinal was hurried away—but his
life had reached its summit! He had heard dear words from the lips of
the Queen!...
Marie Antoinette was asleep perhaps, or perhaps chatting, muffled, with
Polignac’s wife, or perhaps, more likely, by her children’s nursery
beds, watching their repose and questioning their nurse in the wing of
the great palace hard by. A hundred yards away, in the darkness of the
grove outside, that scene had passed which set the train of her destiny
alight; and the explosion caused by it ruined all that creviced society
of Versailles and cast it down, casting down with it the Queen.
There existed at that time necklace. Fantastic stories have been told of
its value; of those sovereigns to whom it was offered, and who, with a
sigh, had been compelled to refuse it. It may very likely have been
offered to Marie Antoinette (with her old passion for jewels) some years
before, in ’79, after the birth of her first child. It may be that the
King would have given her the expensive thing—£64,000 was the price of
it—it may be he had never seen it. At any rate, all the world knew that
the unrivalled necklace existed, and had for some years existed as the
property of two Court jewellers who worked in partnership, Boehmer and
Bassange, and that they could not find a purchaser. The reader should
remember this necklace, for though it will not be before him till six
months after this July of ’84, yet, but for the scene in the “Queen’s
Grove,” Rohan would never have handled it, and had Rohan never handled
it, there would not have arisen that enormous scandal that came so
opportune to new rumours and new angers, and in the end dragged down the
Queen.
* * * * *
With August came Prince Henry of Prussia and all the bother of him. The
Emperor was pressing the Dutch more and more. France was half inclined
to prevent that pressure, in spite of the Austrian Alliance. France was
determined, at any rate, to prevent Austria, allied or not, from
strengthening herself upon the North and East. England, to keep the
Scheldt shut, was more than half inclined to prevent that pressure, in
spite of Holland’s attitude during the American War. Prussia stood by to
gain—and part of Prussia’s chance was the opportunity of feeling and
influencing Louis XVI.’s Cabinet.
Prince Henry came, as Frederick’s brother, to feel and to influence; to
see how much could be done by way of separating Vienna from Versailles.
It was a strain on the Queen. What could she know of these intrigues and
counter-intrigues? She saw things, now as ever, few and plain; she saw a
Prussian attempt to separate her House and the House into which she had
married. Therefore Prince Henry’s visit was a difficulty to her. She
solved it as one might expect of her character, by avoiding him. She
wrote to the King of Sweden a little too familiarly, and assured him
that she had hardly seen the visitor: she “was at Trianon continually,
with intimates only.” Paris thought much of him (for Prussia was then,
as now, efficient); she was very properly fatigued, but, improperly, she
did not conquer her fatigue. During all his stay he saw her perhaps not
half-a-dozen times, though he (as might be expected of his character or
of any of his descendants, ancestors, or collaterals) stayed on and on
and on.... He stayed steadily on in France till November!—and before
November enough had happened!
The little Dauphin was really ill. His mother was anxious. St. Cloud was
bought for him, in some vague hope that the “air” was better there—as
though the “air” of one suburb more than another could cure the rickets
of the Bourbons.
Next, it was known that the Queen was again with child. She wrote of it
(familiarly enough) to the King of Sweden.
More than this, war was apparent. The Emperor’s smouldering quarrel with
the Dutch had broken into flame; upon the 4th of October 1784 an
Imperial ship had sailed up the Scheldt to see if the Dutch would oppose
an entry. The Dutch did oppose it; they shot at the Imperial ship and
took it, and every ruler in Europe put his hand to the hilt of his
sword.
So far Marie Antoinette had done little at Versailles but be worried by
all this complex quarrel; a fortnight before the incident she had told
her brother that “really she was not so important at Versailles”; she
hoped it was a thing to shirk. Now that the guns had begun, she was in a
panic and made a call upon her old and natural violence. She effected
little: Vergennes and the tradition of French diplomacy were too much
for such tantrums, but the superficial aspect of her action was
striking. It was known that she continually saw the King, that she made
scenes, that she stormed. It was known that she was “Austrian” in all
this—if it was not understood by the people that she had failed. On the
contrary, when in the upshot a compromise was arranged, she appeared
once more in that most odious light—a woman sending French tribute to
Vienna.
For when the Emperor consented to the closing of the Scheldt (it was not
till February of the next year that he gave way), the French Cabinet,
which had firmly supported Holland, was gradually influenced to
guarantee the indemnity which the dignity of the Imperial Crown
demanded: it was close on ten million florins.[7] The Dutch refused so
large a sum. The Queen wrote, cajoled, insisted in favour of her
brother, her House and Austria. The French Foreign Office, true to its
tradition of taking material interests seriously, stood firm and backed
Holland steadily. At last the French agreed to take over and to pay as
sponsors for Holland one-half the sum demanded of the Dutch Government,
if thereby they might avoid war in Europe.
Footnote 7:
The fiction of the indemnity is entertaining. The Dutch were to
“yield” Maestricht as the equivalent to the Emperor’s granting the
closing of the Scheldt. The indemnity was to “redeem” Maestricht.
The payment was due to the Queen’s vigour or interference, and meanwhile
there had arisen one of those large and sudden affairs which give
everything around them a new meaning, which emphasise every coincident
evil, and draw together into their atmosphere every ill-will and every
calumny. Just before Marie Antoinette appeared before the populace as
one who was sending millions of French treasure to her foreign brother
came the explosion—in the interval of all this diplomacy and
negotiation—of what is called in history “The Affair of the Diamond
Necklace.” The truth with regard to that famous business is as follows:—
When the Cardinal de Rohan left the Park that midnight of July after the
rapture of a word from the ridiculous d’Oliva, he was fallen wholly in
the hands of the La Motte. _She_ it was, as he thought, who had done
this great thing for him. _She_ had given him the Queen; and he was now
entirely sure of his right to act for Marie Antoinette and to serve her.
The La Motte began by begging money of him for the Queen’s pet
charities. She obtained it: first, two or three thousand pounds at the
end of August. Rétaux wrote the letter: “It was for people whom she
wanted to help.” Rétaux signed it with his “Marie Antoinette”: and Rohan
paid. A few pounds of it went to the unhappy woman whom La Motte had
used, the rest to creditors or show. Much at the time when the Scheldt
business was at its height, just as Prince Henry was leaving and all
were talking of the Queen, in the autumn of 1784 a new letter came
(again from Rétaux’ hand) asking for _four thousand_. There was the
signature “Marie Antoinette,” there the beloved terms, and Rohan blindly
paid: his man took the money to the La Motte, “to give the Queen.” The
Cardinal was sure of his way now; he was a master; the Queen was under
obligations to him. The money was spent in a very lavish display by the
male and the female La Motte. They travelled with grandeur; they visited
in a patronising manner the earlier home of their poverty; they lived
high. With the end of the year 1784 more money was needed—and here
enters into history that diamond necklace which had so long been waiting
its cue to come upon the stage.
[Illustration:
PORTRAIT BUST OF THE DUKE OF NORMANDY, THE SECOND DAUPHIN,
SOMETIMES CALLED LOUIS XVII, WHO DIED IN THE TEMPLE
THIS BUST WAS BROKEN IN THE FALL OF THE PALACE,
AND HAS RECENTLY BEEN RECOVERED AND RESTORED TO VERSAILLES
]
The name of La Motte was now current—in the mouth alone and among the
populace, not at Court—for one who could do much. Bassange heard, from a
friend, of the La Mottes: of Madame de La Motte. He sent the friend to
see whether his white elephant of a necklace could be moved towards that
quarter. Madame de La Motte said wisely that she must see the jewels, a
day or two after Christmas. She saw them; for three weeks they were kept
on the hook. Upon the 21st of January 1785, a date that has appeared
before and will appear again in this history, she sent and told them
that the Queen would buy, but (in her usual manner) a “great lord” would
be the intermediary; and on the 24th, by the time it was full daylight,
the great lord came in the winter morning to do that little thing which
led to so much at last. It was the Cardinal de Rohan who came, handled
the jewels, bargained, promised four payments (at six-monthly intervals)
of £16,000 each, the first for the 1st of _August_ (the date should be
noted), and demanded delivery on the 1st of February. The jewellers
brought the gems on that day to his great palace in the Marais, and he
then told them frankly that the buyer behind him was the Queen.
They saw a signature, “Marie Antoinette de France”; they saw a part at
least of a letter, to the effect that she the Queen was not accustomed
to accommodation and therefore begged him to negotiate. They were
satisfied, left the necklace, and were gone. That night the Cardinal
gave it to Madame de La Motte at Versailles, or rather, hiding himself
in an alcove, saw it given to a man who acted the part of the Queen’s
messenger and who was, of course, Rétaux.
All this, I say, passed on the 1st of February 1785.
Next day, Candlemas—just two years after Madame de La Motte had made her
desperate effort to approach the Queen with a petition—Rohan and the
jeweller, one as Grand Almoner in the high religious function of the
day, the other as a man in the crowd, each watched the royal party go by
and noted the Queen; each missed the jewel that surely she should be
wearing on the morrow of its purchase, and each saw that it was not yet
worn. Each for different reasons wondered, but each for different
reasons was silent, and each determined, for different reasons, to wait.
Meanwhile the necklace was in the custody of the male La Motte ready for
its journey to London, the refuge of the oppressed.
Lent passed. On Easter Sunday the Queen’s third child—he who became the
Dauphin of the Imprisonment—was born. If, thought Rohan, the Queen had
purposely waited before putting on the necklace, in order to avoid a
coincidence of date between _his_ visit to the jewellers and _her_ first
wearing of the gem, surely a long enough space would have passed by the
time of the Relevailles, the ceremonial churching in Notre Dame which
followed the birth of every member of the Blood Royal. The Relevailles
approached. It was more than eight months since the Cardinal had been
given that rose at midnight, and he began to grow anxious. The necklace
haunted him.... Far off in London the male La Motte was selling, stone
by stone, the better part of it; the rest Rétaux was carefully disposing
of in Paris itself.
It was on May 24 that the Queen proceeded to Paris for the ceremony of
the Relevailles. All the antique grandeur was there and the crowds, but
over all of it and over the crowds a new and dreadful element of popular
silence. The guns saluted her through a silent air. In the streets of
the University the very wheels of her carriage could be heard, so hushed
was the crowd. The rich in the opera that evening cheered her, but going
in and coming out through popular thousands she heard no cheers. She
supped in the Temple with Artois, whose appanage the liberties of the
Temple were, and she could see through the night in his garden, as she
had seen so often before in his feasts and his receptions, the dimmer
and more huge from the blaze of light near by, that ominous great Tower
which, it is said, she had always dreaded and dreaded more acutely now
with an access of superstitious fear. “Oh! Artois, pull it down!”
The Grand Almoner was present at this high function; he watched her and
marvelled that the necklace should still be hidden away.
The next morning she could be certain how Paris had changed. There was
throughout its air a mixture of indifference and of dislike that
poisoned her society with it. Paris now thought of her fixedly as the
living extravagance of the Court. St. Cloud was at their gates to
reproach her, with its title of the “Queen’s Palace,” its printed
“Queen’s” orders on the gate. The Deficit was there to reproach her. Her
very economies, the lessened festivities, the abandoned journeys of the
Court, her rarer and more rare appearances in the capital, the lack of
noise in Trianon, were, in the public mouth, a consequence of past
excesses. The judgment was false, but it stood firm.
Her undue influence over the King and the councils of the King was
another legend, less false than that of gross extravagance. There was no
proof, but a crowd has more judgment than an isolated man, and the crowd
divined what we now know. They had divined it in this critical year
which saw France balancing on the verge of war with Austria, and which,
before its close, saw the payment of the Dutch indemnity by the French
to the Queen’s brother at Vienna. All her action for twelve months was
wholly Austrian in their eyes, and they were wholly right. It was in
such a popular atmosphere, so sullen and so prepared, full for a year
past of “Figaro’s” ironic laughter against a régime already hurrying to
its end, that the explosion of that summer was to come; for the 1st of
August was near, and with it the time for the first instalment upon the
necklace.
In June the Count de La Motte was back from London paying part of the
money he had received for the diamonds to a Paris banker—one Perregaux.
In July—on the mid-Tuesday of the month—Boehmer in his capacity of Court
Jeweller brought to Versailles certain jewels. He brought with him also
a letter which he gave to the Queen at mid-day as she came out of Mass;
he gave her the letter with mystery and with profound respect, and was
gone. The Queen read that note; it was incomprehensible to her. It
assured her of her jewellers’ unalterable devotion; it begged her to
believe that Boehmer and Bassange were willing to accept her “latest
proposals,” and it ended with their satisfaction that “_the finest set
of diamonds in the world should adorn the greatest and the best of its
Queens_.” Whether Marie Antoinette had even heard of the necklace in the
past we cannot tell, though probably, like all the rest of the world,
she had. Whether she had or not, the note was equally mysterious to her.
The Comptroller of the Household, the Baron de Breteuil, was told of the
little bother; he sent for Boehmer, asked him what on earth the note
meant, but he only received mysterious replies leading nowhere.
If it be asked by the reader why, seeing a complication of some sort
before her, Marie Antoinette did not at once order an investigation to
be pursued by the police, the answer is simple enough to any one
acquainted with her character: the annoyance bored her. Her instinct was
simply to avoid it. She may (some say so) have spared herself trouble
upon some theory that the jeweller was mad: anyhow, she spared herself
trouble.
If it be asked how the complication ever arose, why that enigmatical
letter was written, and why, once written and delivered, Boehmer should
have hesitated and equivocated meaninglessly in his answers to Breteuil,
the answer is simple when one hears what had just passed in that lower
world of duped Cardinal and intriguing, most impudent of adventurers,
rapscallions and spiritualists.
Madame de La Motte had been driving Rétaux of late to write more
frequently than ever his “Marie Antoinette” letters to the Cardinal. The
poor soldier was not a woman, he was not even a writer of fiction, and
he had been kept hard at it to force the note of love so often and in
such various ways; until at last, one letter had been ordered of him
saying, as the date of the first instalment approached, that “really the
price was too high.” Couldn’t the Cardinal, for her sake, get some £8000
off the price? If he could, the Queen would pay on the 1st of August,
not the £16,000 then due, but a full £28,000. The Cardinal read and
obeyed. The jewellers were agreeable. Hence Boehmer’s note of July 12th,
and hence (since he was convinced that the Queen, by the very method of
her purchase, desired secrecy above all things) his evasive replies to
De Breteuil.
Thus, in that world beneath of which she knew nothing, things were
coming to an issue against Marie Antoinette: one last event did all.
Upon the Saturday before the payment was due, the Cardinal (acting upon
a further letter) gave Boehmer something over £1000 and said to him that
it was free money—over and above the fixed price—to console him for the
unwelcome news that the first instalment could not be met quite
punctually. Come, the Queen would certainly pay on the 1st of October;
it was but two months to wait. He had seen it in a note of the Queen’s
which the Countess de La Motte had just shown him.
It is probable that even the Cardinal had become suspicious now—he says
as much himself—but his pride and his fear of exposure held him. As for
the jeweller, the interview of that Saturday broke his back; he was
distracted. On the Tuesday (or the Wednesday) the climax of the comedy
was reached. The Countess de La Motte met the two partners Boehmer and
Bassange together, and told them boldly that the signature “Marie
Antoinette de France” was a forgery—so there! In the stupefaction that
followed she added the quiet advice that for their money they must bleed
the Cardinal—“He had plenty”—and so left them.
Then followed that general scurry which is the note of embroglios as
they flare up towards their end. Bassange runs here, Boehmer runs there;
the one to Rohan in his Episcopal Palace, the other to those who can
help him with the Queen—notably to Madame Campan, who has left an
exaggerated and distorted account of the interview. To Bassange the
Cardinal (anything to gain time in the hurly-burly) swears the signature
is true; to Boehmer Madame Campan, with her solid, upper-servant face,
announces the redundant truth that he seems to have been let in. As for
the La Motte, she flies to Rohan, and he (anything to keep things dark
and to protect a witness to his incalculable stupidity of a coxcomb)
consents to hide her; he gives her asylum in his great house.
Next Boehmer goes to Versailles—at once—and implores the Queen to see
him. The Queen has really had her fill of this kind of thing; she
refuses. But next week she consents, and the revelations begin.
It was at such a moment, with such storms about her, in the full and
growing unpopularity of her Austrian influence in the affair of the
Dutch indemnity, in the full and growing renascence of the legend of her
extravagance, that Marie Antoinette had determined not only to play once
more in her theatre at Trianon—the chief reproach of the past, a legend
with the populace for unqueenly exposure, for lack of dignity, for
expense—not only to break her wise resolve, which had been kept for more
than a year, that her plays should cease, but actually to play another
piece by that same Beaumarchais whose wit was the spear-head of the
attack upon the old régime. The decision came neither of cynicism nor of
folly upon her part; it came of tragic ignorance.
It was while she was rehearsing her part of “Rosine” that she was
persuaded—probably by Madame Campan herself—to send for Boehmer and to
hear his tale. He came upon the 9th of August, Tuesday, by the Queen’s
command, to Trianon. At first he simply asked for the money he believed
his due. When he saw that Marie Antoinette neither understood why it
should be paid, nor for what, nor by whom, he told the whole story as he
had heard it. He was sent off to write down coherently and at length in
a clear memorandum the details of this amazing thing, and when he had
gone the Queen raved.
Each consequence and aspect of the abomination, as each successively
appeared to her, struck her with separate and aggravated blows. Her name
linked with a libertine whom, of all libertines, she most loathed—a man
who was the object of her dead mother’s especial contempt! The
half-truths that would come in; her love of jewellery—now long
conquered, but now widely remembered! Her secret debts—now long paid,
but already a fixed idea in the public mind! At the best that such a man
had thought it conceivable that she should be such a woman; at the worst
that the world might believe it!
Upon Friday the report of Boehmer came in. She mastered it that day and
the next, and on Sunday the 14th, the eve of the Assumption, she begged
her husband to spend all the day with her at Trianon. He willingly came.
They together—but surely at her initiative—determined on a public trial.
Mercy would have done what we do now in England when there is danger of
public scandal and the weakening of government; he would have paid the
La Motte woman something to be off. Vergennes was strongly in favour of
silence—as strongly as Downing Street would be to-day—for he was of the
trained diplomatic kind. The King’s honour, the Queen’s intense and
burning indignation against calumny persuaded them to risk publicity.
The course taken was, I repeat, not a course easy for my modern readers
to understand; we take it for granted in the modern world, and
especially in England, that a matter of this sort, involving, as it
were, all the social fabric, is best snuffed out. Thus the French
Foreign Office were willing to destroy the Pannizardi telegram, and
rather give a traitor the advantage of concealing damning evidence
against himself than to risk a rupture with Italy. Thus the English Home
Office allows criminals of a certain standing to go free rather than
endanger social influences whose secrecy is thought necessary to the
State; nor do we allow any to know what sums or how large are paid for
public honours, nor always to what objects secret subscriptions of
questionable origin—in Egypt, for instance—are devoted. Louis XVI. and
his wife at this critical moment decided otherwise and upon another
theory of morals. They decided to clear by public trial the honour of
the Crown. That decision, more than any other act, cost them their
thrones. It has preserved the truth for history.
* * * * *
The Feast of the Assumption has for centuries attracted the French by
its peculiar sanctity. Even during that phase of infidelity, which,
before the Revolution, covered all their intellect and still clings to
the bulk of their lower middle classes, the French maintained it. Even
to-day, when a fierce anti-Christian masonry has moulded groups of
artisans and intellectuals into ardent champions against the Faith, the
Assumption is universally observed. In the Court of Versailles, though
now but a ceremony, it was the noblest ceremony of the year.
It was warm noon upon that 15th of August. The Court in all its colours
stood ranked outside the Chapel Royal. The Grand Almoner, the Cardinal
de Rohan, taller than the prelates and the priests around him, stood
ready in procession to enter and to celebrate the Pontifical High Mass
as soon as the King and Queen might appear; but the King and Queen and a
Minister or two in attendance were waiting behind closed doors in Louis’
private room. The procession still halted: the Court was already
impatient: the doors still stood closed. They opened; a servant came out
and told the Cardinal that the King wished to see him a moment. The
servant and he went in together, and the doors shut behind the purple of
Rohan’s robes and the lace upon his wrists and shoulders.
The Court outside grew weary of waiting. A quarter of an hour, twenty
minutes passed; it was near the half-hour when those doors opened again
and the Head of the King’s Household, the Baron de Breteuil, appeared
with the Cardinal at his side. A lieutenant of the Guard happened to be
by. Breteuil summoned him and said aloud: “The King orders you not to
leave the Cardinal as you take him to his palace: you are answerable for
his person.”
So Rohan was arrested, and there is no record who sang Mass that day.
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