pecuniary difficulties, and determined to exhaust every chance of relief
that suggested itself, ventured upon an appeal to Madame Dubarry, the
late king’s banished mistress, who clung as close upon the skirts of the
Court as she dared do, residing in her charming pavilion at Louveciennes,
within eye-shot of Versailles. Thither Madame de la Motte drove over one
day ostensibly to offer herself as _dame de compagnie_ to the dowager
queen, as she used ironically to style the once all-powerful favourite
of Louis the Well-Beloved; but Madame Dubarry, judging from the absurd
pretensions she put forward with regard to her name and birth, thought
her little fitted for the post she sought to fill, and told her that she
was not at that moment in want of a companion, adding sarcastically that
if she were, she was not great lady enough to engage one of so high a
quality as a descendant of the house of Valois. Nothing disconcerted, the
countess called a second time a few days afterwards, and made a pitiable
appeal to the Dubarry to support her claims at court, shedding floods of
tears as she spoke. But as soon as her back was turned, “La Faiblesse,”
as Marie-Antoinette was accustomed to style the Dubarry, whose heart was
none of the most susceptible, bored by the countess’s melting display,
and caring not a straw for the house of Valois or any of its bastard
descendants, flung both petition and memoir, which the countess had
presented to her, into the fire.[54]
The countess now addressed herself to the well-known favourite of
Marie-Antoinette, the Duchess de Polignac, whose influence over her
royal mistress, whenever she chose to exercise it, was believed to be
supreme. The duchess, however, got rid of her once for all with this
freezing reply: “Madame the duchess is too much engaged for other
persons to oblige Madame de la Motte in any claim which she may have to
make of the king or the queen, who are already fatigued with numberless
applications.” The descendant of the house of Valois was cut to the
quick at the treatment she received at the hands of “this imperious
woman, whose haughty demeanour sufficiently characterises her grovelling
extraction. Was this the woman,” she exclaims, “whom in my humble station
of mantua-maker’s apprentice I had so frequently waited upon from Madame
Boussel’s to obtain payment, and who then instead of money could only
pay me with courtesy and fair promises? Is this she who before the smile
of royal favour no tradesman chose to trust, and even her mantua-maker
refused to work for any longer, and who had not even a dress in which she
could be presented at Court?”[55]
Sick at heart, weary almost unto death, the wretched woman saw no escape
from the pecuniary embarrassments that threatened to overwhelm her,
except in suicide. Providing herself, she tells us, with a couple of
loaded pistols she bent her steps towards a wood about a league distant
from Versailles, and passing through the park, came to a large and deep
pit, which had formerly been a stone quarry. Here she prepared to carry
her resolution into effect, and had placed one of the pistols to her
right ear when thoughts of her husband stayed her hand. Flinging herself
on the ground she wept long and bitterly, and then offered up a fervent
prayer. On becoming more calm she returned home, still however mourning
her unhappy fate.[56]
VIII.
1781–1783.
THE DIAMOND NECKLACE AGAIN.—STILL NOT SOLD.
While the events narrated in the last chapter have been transpiring,
let us see how it has fared with our friends the crown jewellers and
their Diamond Necklace. M. Bassenge, after scouring Europe through, and
ascending and descending principal and back staircases innumerable,
and dancing wearying attendance in court saloons and antechambers, has
returned home without effecting a sale. “Not a crowned head of them can
spare the eighty thousand pounds. The age of Chivalry is gone, and that
of Bankruptcy is come. A dull deep-presaging movement rocks all thrones:
Bankruptcy is beating down the gate, and no chancellor can barricade her
out. She will enter, and the shoreless fire-lava of Democracy is at her
back. Well may kings a second time ‘sit still with awful eye,’ and think
of far other things than necklaces.”[57]
Bassenge’s mission having been without result, let us turn to M.
Böhmer, and see what kind of luck has attended his efforts. On the
22nd of October, 1781, the Queen of France gave birth to a dauphin.
Böhmer, who felt this to be a favourable opportunity for him to renew
his application, flew to the palace with his casket under his arm, and
saw the king, at that moment the happiest man in the land. Louis XVI.
received the jeweller with much condescension, and taking the casket from
him, carried it to the queen, telling her, with animated looks, that he
had got a present for her. But Marie-Antoinette had no sooner recognised
the gorgeous gem which she had formerly rejected than she refused
to receive it, even at the king’s hands; nor could the most earnest
solicitations on his part abate in the smallest degree the feeling of
antipathy with which, guided by her prophetic instincts, she seems to
have regarded the fatal jewel.
“Is it,” asked she, “that Böhmer may take girls covered with diamonds to
the opera, that you would pay him for his folly in manufacturing this
Necklace?”
While uttering these words the queen was greatly excited. Her nurse
felt her pulse, and finding it very high begged the king not to insist
further. Louis XVI. withdrew completely disconcerted.[58]
Now Böhmer, the crown jeweller, was a Saxon, and we all know that the
Saxons are a persevering race who do not readily desist from a pursuit.
Besides, he had gained a step; the king had as good as sanctioned the
purchase; he was won over, and in due time the queen might be brought
to relent and consent to become the possessor of the most splendid set
of brilliants in the world. Moreover she was known at one time to have
entertained a woman’s partiality for costly jewels. What could be the
reason of her present antipathy? Was it natural in one so young and
handsome? Was it consistent? Was it, indeed, sincere?
This persecution of Marie-Antoinette, which had begun in 1774, was
continued for ten years; and every time the palace guns announced a
new _accouchement_ the indefatigable Böhmer, his casket under his arm,
was the first to carry his loyal congratulations to the feet of his
sovereign. In due time the crown jeweller became noted for this kind of
loyalty, so that whenever he was met with in the streets of Versailles,
certain wags used to point him out and ask each other, “_Serait-ce la
Reine qui accouche?_”
Madame Campan, in her well-known work, assures us that this persistent
Saxon was for a long time the plague of the queen’s life. She relates,
among other instances of Böhmer’s persecution, that he one day presented
himself before her majesty, who had the young princess her daughter with
her at the time, in a state of unusual excitement. Throwing himself at
the queen’s feet, he burst into tears, and exclaimed that he could put
off his creditors no longer, that he was a ruined man unless she took
compassion on him and became the purchaser of his Necklace, and that if
she rejected his appeal he would throw himself into the Seine, and so
put an end to his misery. The queen reproved him mildly for his rash
threat, but at the same time told him that if he were madman enough to
put an end to his existence, it would not be she who was responsible for
the misfortune. She reminded him that she had not given the order for
the jewel, and advised him to extricate himself from his difficulties by
taking the Necklace to pieces and disposing of the diamonds piecemeal.[59]
Mademoiselle Bertin, the queen’s milliner, asserts that at the time she
was engaged in preparing the wedding trousseau of the bride of the Infant
of Portugal, M. de Souza, the Portuguese ambassador, confided to her that
he was commissioned by his sovereign to buy for the future Infanta the
most magnificent present which could be met with in all Paris, and that
he had decided upon purchasing the crown jewellers’ Diamond Necklace.
Mademoiselle Bertin mentioned the circumstance to Marie-Antoinette the
following day, while engaged with her at her toilette.
“I am very glad of it,” observed the queen. “I shall send for Böhmer, and
will certainly thank M. de Souza for having relieved me of this hateful
Necklace.”
When Böhmer entered, the queen took up a book and read for some minutes
before speaking, as her habit was when she wished to evince her
displeasure, which, on this occasion, must have been the result either of
inexplicable caprice or feminine jealousy at a foreign princess becoming
the possessor of that jewel to which the negotiations and travels of
Böhmer and Bassenge had given a kind of European celebrity, and which had
caused such a sensation among queens and women. At length, laying down
her book and casting on Böhmer a severe glance, she observed:
“I am very glad to hear, sir, that you have sold your Necklace.”
“My Necklace, madame!” replied the astonished Böhmer.
“Yes, your Necklace, that M. de Souza is about to send to Lisbon.”
Böhmer having given an emphatic denial to the story, the queen, we are
told, cast on Mdlle. Bertin a withering look as if to reproach her for
having needlessly alarmed her.
There was a reception that day, and when M. de Souza appeared, the
queen, contrary to all the rules of court etiquette, went straight up to
him and said, briskly:
“I have to inform you, M. de Souza, that you will not have the Necklace;
it is sold.”
M. de Souza appearing astonished,
“You will not have it, sir,” continued she, in a tone of triumph. “I am
sorry for it.” Saying which she returned to her ladies.[60]
Thus matters stood at the close of 1783, ten years after the order for
this ill-fated jewel had been given by the infatuated lover of Madame
Dubarry. Although all France was at this time wildly rejoicing over the
recently concluded peace between France and England, there was gloom and
depression at the Grand Balcony in the Rue Vendôme, for creditors were
still urgent and even threatening, and the question again arose: “What is
now to be done?”
IX.
1784.
SOI-DISANT CONFIDANT OF THE QUEEN.—AT VERSAILLES AND LITTLE TRIANON.
In the preceding chapters we have measured the period between the year
1756, when Jeanne de Saint-Remi, now Countess de la Motte of her own
creation, was born, and the close of the year 1783, when she had reached
the age of twenty-seven years. We have witnessed the destitution of her
early days, the dependence of her youth on the kind bounty of a noble
benefactress, and the career of adventure and precarious means suddenly
plunged into to avoid a life of religious seclusion. We have seen her
making her escape from flagrant shame by an improvident marriage; have
seen the opening of her conjugal life darkened by a new term of penury
and privation, mitigated only by a system of constant appeals for
charity. We have also seen that a long and patient probation in the
same course had proved barren and abortive in the end, her condition
being then precisely the same as it was in the beginning. We can readily
conceive that her name and her pretensions had at length come to be
regarded as little else than a by-word and a nuisance, and that the
time was at hand when the former would have no other influence beyond
provoking indignation and contempt.
The family resources proved so far insufficient, that early in the year
1784 household goods and wearing apparel were alike in pawn at the Mont
de Piété, which is hardly to be wondered at, as the winter was one of
unprecedented severity. Heavy and constant falls of snow rendered any
kind of traffic through the streets of Paris impracticable. The Seine,
too, was frozen over, so that the transport of provisions and firewood
to the capital was entirely stopped.[61] The times were of the hardest:
the winter extended far into the year, and in the month of April the
countess solicited and obtained permission to alienate her own and her
brother’s pension—the sister, we presume, was obstinate, and would not
dispose of hers, hence her being sent adrift to shift for herself, and
becoming an inmate of the Abbey of Jarcy—to a goldsmith and money-lender,
named Grenier, for the sum of nine thousand livres.[62] This amount,
however, was insufficient to liquidate the whole of their debts, and at
midsummer the countess was forced to borrow three hundred livres from
Father Loth to pay her quarter’s rent.[63] The two pensions utterly gone,
beggary and open vagrancy loom in the distance, for the cardinal’s gifts,
however handsome they may have been at this period, go but a small way
now that ever-increasing debt is supplemented by habitual extravagance.
In a few months more the wretched adventurers will be forced to quit
their “spacious _appartement_” in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Gilles, and go
forth into the streets and highways, and in the name of Valois again
implore charity of the passing stranger. What remedy—what desperate
remedy could be devised to prevent this?
The countess’s interview with the Countess de Provence, after the
fainting scene, had made some little noise, and reports were spread to
the effect that Madame Elisabeth, the king’s sister, had since received
her on several occasions, and had promised to support her claim for the
recovery of the Valois estates, and to recommend her case again to the
queen. We have no means of judging whether these reports were true, but
as Madame Campan admits Madame Elisabeth to have been the countess’s
“protectress,” there was in all probability some real foundation for
them. Shortly afterwards, however, other reports, which were undoubted
fabrications, got into circulation. The purport of these was, that Madame
de la Motte had been honoured by the notice of Marie-Antoinette, that she
was received privately at the Petit Trianon, and was rising rapidly in
the royal favour. To give an air of probability to this assertion, the
countess, who had contrived to scrape acquaintance with the gatekeeper of
the Trianon, managed to be seen occasionally stealing out from thence, as
though returning from one of these pretended interviews with royalty.
No sooner did it get bruited abroad that the Countess de la Motte had
credit at court than she was applied to by that busy and motley group
of suitors—some of them in search of places and appointments, others
in quest of patronage for new inventions, or on the look-out for
opportunities to submit new schemes of taxation and finance, and others
again seeking redress of real or fancied grievances—who gather together
in the vicinage of royalty. The daring woman saw her chance, and entering
boldly on a career of imposture, began to traffic on a credit that had no
foundation, and to sell an influence which she could not exercise. This
new vocation bid fair to prove a much readier source of emolument than
her state petitions for relief. People came to her of their own accord,
waited in _her_ antechamber for an interview, conjured and supplicated
_her_ to lend them her protection, and in the meantime to permit them to
show their gratitude by anticipation, and in a substantial form.
In this new line of business she was assisted by an old acquaintance
and former comrade of her husband’s in the _gendarmerie_, one Rétaux
de Villette, son of a late director-general of excise at Lyons, and at
this time about thirty years of age. Villette left Lyons when a lad, and
accompanied his mother to Troyes, where he completed his education. His
sister having married a captain of artillery, and being himself inclined
to a military career, he followed his brother-in-law to the schools of
Douai and Bapaume, and when this latter establishment was suppressed,
entered the _gendarmerie_, where he formed a sort of intimacy with M.
de la Motte—an intimacy which was afterwards renewed at Bar-sur-Aube,
whither his mother had removed from the neighbouring town of Troyes.
Villette having exhausted the paternal patrimony, had come to Paris to
push his fortunes. His ambition was to obtain a sub-lieutenancy in the
marshalsea, still he was not averse to turning his hand to anything
that offered itself. He was not deficient in talent, and had a certain
facility of expression; for he wrote smartish articles in the _Gazette_,
could compose pleasing enough verses, and was a very fair musician.[64]
Nevertheless he was one of those indolent, careless men, without the
slightest forethought, who cannot follow any regular calling, because
they are only stirred into activity by sudden caprices, and who too
often serve no other purpose beyond replenishing the world’s stock of
rascaldom, and doing their best to save it from dying out. Finding
that he was a suppliant for court favour, Madame de la Motte first of
all persuaded him that she could advance his interests, then that she
would procure for him some better post than a sub-lieutenancy in the
marshalsea, and finally engaged him as her secretary, and by dint of “her
piquant face, her bright and piercing eyes, her white and transparent
skin, her fine teeth, her enchanting smile, her pretty hand and little
foot, her graceful manner, and natural wit,” soon enrolled him as one of
her lovers.[65]
We will here let the countess give her own account of her pretended
intimacy with Marie-Antoinette, an intimacy which it is impossible to
believe in for a single moment, since those who lived in the queen’s
service and society were unanimous in maintaining that the countess was
never once admitted to the queen’s presence, nor seen in the company of
any lady of her court.
“One day,” she observes, “as I was paying my court to Madame (the
Countess de Provence), I was attacked with a sudden indisposition (the
fainting fit of which we have already spoken), which made some noise
at the palace; the queen, having become acquainted with the incident,
deigned to evince some interest in me; her majesty even sent for Madame
Patri, the principal _femme de chambre_ of Madame, to ascertain the
particulars.
“Nothing can escape the eyes of courtiers. They remarked from that hour,
that her majesty always distinguished me by a gracious look, whenever I
appeared in her presence. The cardinal (de Rohan) surpassed everybody in
giving full rein to his conjectures.
“As I had received his benefits, the most natural gratitude linked me
to his fate ... for him I had no secrets; he had none for me ... his
ambition was to be prime minister, mine to be a lady of influence at
Fontette....
“Nothing could equal the astonishment into which I was thrown one day,
when having placed myself in the line of the queen’s passage, her majesty
condescended to honour me with one of those smiles which are so hard to
be resisted. I remember that the next moment, having chanced to raise
my eyes towards him (the cardinal), I saw his own sparkle with delight.
‘Do you know, countess,’ said he, ‘that my fortune is made? it is in
your hands along with your own.’... He told me I ought not to hesitate
to throw myself at the queen’s feet on the 2nd of February, during
the procession of the blue ribbons (the order of the Holy Ghost)....
Accustomed to be guided entirely by him, I promised to do what he
enjoined me.
“The important day arrived.... I went to the palace in full dress, and
waited in one of the saloons for the return of the procession. When
the queen was passing, I flung myself at her feet, and delivering my
petition, said to her, in a few words, that I was descended from the
house of Valois; that as such I had been acknowledged by the king; that
the fortune of my ancestors not having been transmitted to me along
with their title, I had no other resource than the king’s munificence;
that having found every one of the avenues leading to her majesty
unrelentingly closed against me, despair had driven me at last to take
the present step.
“The queen raised me up with kindness, took my petition, and, perceiving
that I trembled, deigned to bid me be of good cheer. She then passed on,
telling me to be at ease, and assured me that due attention should be
paid to the object of my request.”
In the first private interview she pretends to have had with the queen,
the countess relates that Marie-Antoinette said to her:
“‘I have read your memorial, the object of which is to urge the minister
to act and bestir himself with respect to the property which belonged to
your house. Having some private reasons not to second your views ... I
cannot reconcile the desire I may have to serve you publicly, with the
inclination I feel to see you in private ... but I shall still be able to
render you indirectly the services you wish to obtain from me.’... Her
majesty concluded by presenting me with a purse.”[66]
A few days afterwards, she tells us, she was summoned to repair to
the Little Trianon, between eleven and twelve o’clock at night! when
she received fresh proofs of the queen’s generosity. “She presented
me at parting,” says the countess, “with a pocket-book containing ten
thousand livres (francs) on the _caisse d’escompte_, and concluded by
saying: ‘We shall meet again.’”[67] Madame de la Motte then goes on to
state that it is needless to tire the reader with a repetition of the
frequent interviews she had with the queen, of whose munificence on these
occasions she received numerous proofs. “The Cardinal de Rohan,” she
says, “marked her growing favour, and insisting that his fortune was in
her hands, conjured her to let no opportunity slip of mentioning his name
to his sovereign.”
Let us turn now to the other side of the picture, and see what is said
by persons likely to be well informed, as well as by Marie-Antoinette
herself, respecting this pretended intimacy.
Lacretelle, whose truth and honesty are beyond question, says “the
Countess de Valois never had the least access to this princess,” and
that “one cannot read this libel (the countess’s Memoirs) without being
convinced that the queen never had any kind of communication with these
creatures, whose presence would have defiled the throne.”[68]
The Baron de Besenval speaks of the countess in his Memoirs as “one of
those creatures who live by intrigue and the sale of their charms.”[69]
Was such a person likely to have been received privately at the Trianon?
The Baron de Besenval was a regular visitor there himself, and would have
heard of this strange and familiar intercourse if it had ever existed.
What does Madame Campan, first _femme de chambre_ to the queen, who
enjoyed the confidence of her royal mistress, and was, moreover,
constantly in her company, and who, biased though she may seem to be in
her favour, invariably speaks what she believes to be the truth—what does
she say respecting this tissue of invention?
“Neither the queen herself, nor any lady about her, ever had the
slightest connection with the swindler, and during her prosecution she
could only point out one of the queen’s servants (a man named Declos or
Leclos), a page of the queen’s chamber, to whom she pretended she had
delivered Böhmer’s Necklace ... Declos,[70] on being confronted with the
woman La Motte, proved that she had never seen him but once, which was
at the house of the wife of a surgeon-accoucher at Versailles, and that
she had not given him the Necklace.” Madame Campan further states that
the countess “had never even been able to make her way into the room
appropriated to the queen’s women.” The same lady also furnishes this
additional piece of testimony:
“The queen,” she says, “in vain endeavoured to call to mind the features
of this person, whom she had so often heard spoken of as an intriguing
woman, who came frequently on Sundays to the gallery at Versailles; and
at the time when all France was taken up with the prosecution against
the cardinal, and the portrait of the Countess de la Motte-Valois was
publicly sold, her majesty desired me one day when I was going to Paris
to buy her the engraving, which was said to be a tolerable likeness, that
she might ascertain whether she could recollect in it any person whom she
had seen in the gallery.”[71]
Marie-Antoinette herself, when questioned by Louis XVI. on the subject of
this intimate acquaintance, assured the king that she had never seen the
woman. In a few simple words she repeats her denial when confronted with
the Cardinal de Rohan, immediately preceding his arrest. And in a private
letter to her sister, written at a time when the affair of the Diamond
Necklace was making a great noise throughout Europe, Marie-Antoinette
thus denies all previous knowledge of her pretended confidant:
“I have never seen this woman La Motte; it seems she is an adventuress of
the lowest class, with a good address and a bold air; she has been seen
two or three times on the back staircase of the Cour des Princes; this
is a scheme agreed on to deceive her dupes and to spread the belief that
she is received in my closet. The Duke de Nivernois on this occasion told
me that an adventuress from Paris had made her fortune in the days of
Madame de Maintenon by seating herself twice a week on the stairs; one
day she found the drawing-room of that lady open; she went in, and seeing
no one near she walked up to the balcony over the Place d’Armes, thus
proclaiming to every one that she was in favour with Madame de Maintenon.
We are surrounded in this place by persons of that class.”[72]