the questions she had put to me since her arrival at Versailles, it was
easy to see that she expected some great adventure, and had made her
preparations accordingly.... Nothing could be more diverting than the
embarrassment of this creature, whose real anxiety was about the issue,
since she knew she was going to play her part before the queen.
“The scene was the arbour at the lower end of the grass-plot. This arbour
is encompassed on its left-hand path by a hedge of hornbeam, supported
by a strong lattice-work fence. At a distance of three feet from the
inner part of the arbour is a second hedge, and the space between the two
quicksets forms a walk which leads round the enclosure without conducting
to the arbour itself.
“At the hour appointed I gave the signal by putting into Mademoiselle
d’Oliva’s hand the rose which Marie-Antoinette had told me to deliver
to the cardinal through her means. Having placed her at her post, I
withdrew. The queen was not ten paces from me. I was distressed by
d’Oliva’s timidity, and the queen doubtless experienced the same feeling,
for in spite of all her reserve and watchfulness she could not contain
herself, but cried out: ‘Take courage. Don’t be afraid!’ D’Oliva admitted
this in her examination. The cardinal having come up, the conversation
began.
“The cardinal, whose mind was at ease, since he was in the secret,
exerted himself to compose the poor girl, by putting none but simple
questions to her, and saying courteous things. What chiefly disconcerted
her was, that he spoke of former errors forgiven, of his gratitude, and
made fine promises for the future. Of all this she understood nothing,
answering Yes or No at random. But the cardinal took advantage of these
monosyllables to dwell upon his happiness with exaggeration, saying the
prettiest things in the world ... raising her foot at the close of this
speech, and respectfully kissing it. It was then Mademoiselle d’Oliva
gave him the rose, which he placed against his heart, protesting that
he would preserve this token all his life, and calling it the rose of
happiness.
“Everything having been said that was to be said, I came forward
hurriedly, and announced that Madame and the Countess d’Artois were
approaching the spot. Every one vanished with lightning-like rapidity.
D’Oliva returned to the seat where my husband was expecting her, the
cardinal having rejoined the Baron de Planta, whom he had left at some
distance on the watch, came, accompanied by him, to me, and induced me to
follow him beyond the avenue, behind which he stopped to see the queen
pass. Having caught sight of her as she was stealing out from the corner
of the grass-plot and taking the walk leading to the terrace, he urged me
to follow her majesty, and try to ascertain whether she was satisfied.
Accordingly I did follow her, with light measured steps, and having
overtaken her at the entrance to the château, she made me go in along
with her, told me in substance that she had been much diverted, paid me
a few compliments on my own account, and enjoined me not to tell the
cardinal that I had seen her that evening.”[98]
In this account there is much that is false, and but little that is
true. A counterfeit queen, and no other, was present at the interview.
The cardinal was imposed upon by the trick to which of course he was
not privy; and having left the park with the full conviction that he
had spoken to his sovereign, was committed to the tender mercies of the
countess and her confederates, who quickly proceeded to plunder him of
his money.
XIV.
1784. JULY–NOV.
A GOLDEN HARVEST.—HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF.—BARONESS D’OLIVA IS GIVEN THE
COLD SHOULDER.
The evening following that on which the cardinal was so cleverly duped,
young Beugnot happening to find himself in the neighbourhood of the Rue
Neuve-Saint-Gilles, looked in at the countess’s hôtel on the chance
of finding her at home. At this period it was no longer a spacious
_appartement_ that she rented, but the entire house; and yet, with the
view of deceiving the cardinal, on whose bounty she was now in a large
measure dependent, whenever he called upon her she used invariably to
receive him in some mean apartment on one of the upper floors.[99] “I
was told,” says Beugnot, “that the master and mistress were absent,
and that only Mademoiselle Colson was within. This made me the more
inclined to stay. Mademoiselle Colson was a relation of Madame de la
Motte’s, whom madame had qualified for and raised to the rank of _dame de
compagnie_. She was wanting neither in wit nor malice, and whenever I met
her we always made a point of laughing together at the foolishness and
extravagance of the heads of the house. They used to tell her nothing;
nevertheless she managed to find out everything. ‘I think,’ she remarked
to me on this occasion, ‘that their royal highnesses are occupied with
some grand project. They pass their time in secret counsels, to which the
first secretary (Villette) is alone admitted. His reverence the second
secretary (Father Loth) is consequently reduced to listening at the
door: he makes three journeys a day to the Rue Vieille-du-Temple (to the
Palais-Cardinal), without guessing a single word of the messages they
confide to him. The monk is inconsolable at this, since he is as curious
as an old devotee.’
“We passed two hours in thus slandering our neighbours and in making
guesses and prophesying. When I wished to leave, Mademoiselle Colson
pointed to the clock: it was midnight, and there was no chance of
finding a _voiture_ on the stand. Since I had remained so long, the
only thing to do now, she said, was to await the return of Madame de
la Motte, who would send me home in her carriage. I consented. Between
twelve and one o’clock we heard the sound of a vehicle entering the
court, and saw alight from it Monsieur and Madame de la Motte, Villette,
and a woman from twenty-five to thirty years of age—a blonde, very
pretty, and of a remarkably fine figure. The two women were dressed with
elegance, but simplicity; the men wore _dress-coats_, and had the air
of having just returned from a country party. They began by joking me
on my _tête-à-tête_ with Mademoiselle Colson, and spoke of the regret
we must both have felt at having been so soon disturbed. They talked
any amount of nonsense together, laughed, hummed, and seemed as if they
could not keep their legs still. The stranger shared the common mirth,
but she restrained herself within due bounds, and displayed a certain
timidity. They seated themselves at table, the merriment continued, it
increased, and finally became noisy. Mademoiselle Colson and I wore dull
and astonished looks, such as one is forced to put on in the presence
of very gay people when one is ignorant of what they are laughing
at. Meanwhile the party indulging in this excess of hilarity seemed
inconvenienced by our presence, as it prevented them from speaking openly
of the subject of their mirth. M. de la Motte consulted Villette as to
whether there would be any risk in speaking. Villette replied that ‘he
did not admit the truth of the adage that one is betrayed only by one’s
own people; in fact, anybody and everybody were ready to betray you, and
discretion——’ Here Madame de la Motte, by whose side the first secretary
was sitting at table, suddenly put her hand on his mouth, and said in an
imperative tone: ‘Hold your tongue; M. Beugnot is too upright a man for
your confidence.’ I give her own words without changing a syllable. The
compliment would have been a flattering one if the countess had not been
ordinarily in the habit of using the words ‘upright man’ and ‘fool’ as
though they were synonymous.
“Madame de la Motte, following her usual practice whenever I was
present, turned the conversation upon Bar-sur-Aube and on my family, and
inquired when I contemplated returning thither. Every one was wishing
the supper to come to an end. I asked Madame de la Motte to lend me her
horses to take me home. She raised only a slight difficulty: it was
necessary that she should send home the stranger, and eventually decided
that the one living farthest off should set down the other on the way.
I objected to this arrangement, and asked permission of the lady to
escort her to whatever quarter she lived in, expressing my regret at
the same time that however distant this might be, it would still be too
near. This woman’s countenance had at the first glance caused me that
kind of uneasiness which one feels when one is conscious of having seen
a person before, but cannot remember when or where. I addressed several
questions to her on our way, but was unable to draw anything out of her;
either Madame de la Motte, who had spoken to her in private before her
departure, had recommended her to be discreet with me, or, what seemed
more probable, she had naturally more inclination for holding her tongue
than for talking. I set down my silent companion in the Rue de Cléry.
The uneasiness which I felt in her presence was, I afterwards called to
mind, due to her striking resemblance to the queen. The lady proved to
be no other than Mademoiselle d’Oliva, and the mirth of my companions
was occasioned by the complete success of the knavish trick which they
had played off only the night before in the park of Versailles upon the
Cardinal de Rohan.”[100]
This meeting, at which the cardinal was so cleverly fooled, took place,
be it remembered, either at the end of July—the countess fixes it on the
28th—or at the commencement of August. His eminence the cardinal was so
much elated with his good fortune, in having thus recovered, as he hoped,
the favour of the queen, and felt so well assured that he was now in a
fair way of becoming prime minister, the great object of his ambition,
that the Countess de la Motte resolved at once to reap the first-fruits
of his fond hallucination. So great was her decision of character,
so thorough her assurance, so precise and prompt her mode of action,
that before many days had elapsed she had applied for, by means of a
billet bordered with _vignettes bleues_, penned of course by the forger
Villette—and obtained the moderate sum of 50,000 livres, in the queen’s
name, assuring her dupe that the queen required the loan for certain
charitable purposes.[101] Ere another three months had gone by, by the
aid of another forged billet purporting to have been penned by the queen,
madame succeeded in obtaining 100,000 livres more. Both these amounts she
received at the hands of the cardinal’s equerry, the Baron de Planta.
Thus the Prince de Rohan, who in the month of July had been duped by an
interview with a counterfeit queen, had been swindled, ere the year had
gone by, out of no less a sum than 150,000 livres, or £6,000 sterling.
This is all the more extraordinary, and only proves the intensity of
the infatuation under which the old dotard must have been labouring,
for no very long time previously there had been much talk within the
purlieus of the court of a daring act of swindling, perpetrated by means
of a scandalous misuse of the queen’s name, which ought to have put him
on his guard. It seems that one Béranger, a _fermier-général_ had been
induced to advance a sum of 200,000 livres, to a certain Madame Cahouet
de Villers, a lady said to be in attendance on the queen, for the use as
he believed of her royal mistress. When first the lady applied to him, M.
Béranger observed that he should be proud to furnish the sum required,
provided her majesty would condescend to say one word to him—only one
little word. But the lady only laughed at his unreasonable demand. If
the queen, she said, chose to apply in so open a manner, of course the
contents of every strong box in the kingdom would be at her disposal.
Then where would be the merit of lending so small a sum on such security?
Poor Béranger was ashamed of himself for having been so unreasonable, and
consented to lend the money if the queen would only show him by a look,
or even by a nod, that she desired it. This compact was agreed upon.
A few days afterwards, therefore, when the queen with her train of
ladies had to pass along the famous Galérie des Glaces at Versailles on
some occasion of pleasure, the cautious _fermier-général_ posted himself
in a quiet corner where he could be seen, and by-and-by Marie-Antoinette
swept by full of “nods and becks and wreathed smiles,”—cunningly provoked
by some smart observations made by Madame Cahouet de Villers, and
which the delighted financier applied entirely to himself. A few hours
afterwards the two hundred thousand francs were handed to the lady in
question. The duped _fermier-général_, who, when the affair came to be
commonly known, was toasted as a gallant financier at all parties and in
all societies for a month or two afterwards, ultimately put the affair
into the hands of the police, and my lady was arrested and sent to
Sainte-Pélagie, whilst her husband was brought to ruin through having to
reimburse the _fermier-général_ the amount of which he had been defrauded.
The above transpired in 1777. Five years later another imposture of
a somewhat similar character was brought to light, but owing to its
having been comparatively harmless in its results, it did not make
any particular noise. A female boasted that she was honoured with the
confidence of the queen, and exhibited letters—sealed with a seal
belonging to Marie-Antoinette which had been stolen off a table in
the apartment of the Duchess de Polignac—inviting her to Trianon.
She gave out that she could influence the favour of the Princess de
Lamballe, and pretended that she had been the means of disarming the
resentment of the Princess de Guéménée (the Cardinal de Rohan’s niece)
and Madame de Chimay against Madame de Roquefeuille. Here we have the
same falsehoods, the same sort of dupes, the same farce, and, what is
strangest of all, the same name; for the impostor of 1782 was also
named De la Motte!—Marie-Josephe-Françoise Waldburg-Frohberg, wife of
Stanislas-Henri-Pierre de la Motte, formerly administrator and inspector
of the royal college of La Flèche.[102] Thus does history, even in its
most insignificant byways, repeat itself.
For some time after the incident of the midnight interview, Mademoiselle
Leguay Designy was a constant visitor at the De la Mottes’ both at Paris
and Versailles, and subsequently at their country house at Charonne;
for immediately the countess had gathered the first-fruits of her
successful fraud a _petite maison de campagne_ was added to their other
establishments. The demoiselle of the Palais Royal was presented to
the somewhat mixed company she met on these occasions under the title
of the Baroness d’Oliva, which the countess had herself conferred upon
her, deriving, it is supposed, “Oliva” from “Olisva,” an anagram of
“Valois.” We learn from her that at the De la Motte table, which was
served, by-the-way, by footmen in elegant liveries, there were to be seen
officers of rank, such as the Baron de Villeroy, chevaliers of St.-Louis
and of Malta, retired notaries and their wives, a relative of madame’s,
one Valois, a bootmaker, Rétaux de Villette, the countess’s secretary,
and Father Loth, her _homme d’affaires_,—altogether a tolerably
free-and-easy sort of society, we have no manner of doubt.
On one occasion the Baroness d’Oliva accompanied the Countess de la
Motte, the Baron de Villeroy, and Rétaux de Villette to the Théâtre
Français to see Beaumarchais’ comedy, “The Marriage of Figaro,” then
running its hundred nights; but as time wore on, the countess became less
pressing in her invitations, and the intercourse between the two ladies
grew gradually less intimate, until some time in the ensuing November,
when the Countess de la Motte and the Baroness d’Oliva were no longer on
visiting terms. With regard to the 15,000 livres which the counterfeit
queen was to have received for her single night’s performance, and on the
strength of which brilliant engagement she had contracted debts which
were a source of great future embarrassment to her, this is what she says
to the countess in her “Mémoire:”—
“Some days after your return from Versailles, you and your husband came
at midnight in a _voiture de place_ to the Rue de Jour, and gave me four
hundred livres on account.
“On another day you came to me in the evening in your carriage, having
only your footman with you, and gave me seven golden louis.
“Another day you drove up to my door in your carriage and sent your
footman to inquire for me. I came down and saw Father Loth and the Baron
de Villeroy with you in the carriage. I asked you for four hundred
livres, which I wanted to pay to Gentil, my upholsterer. Some days
afterwards, Father Loth called for me, and we went together to Gentil and
paid him the money.
“On another occasion your friend Villette brought me three hundred livres
from you.
“Another day I sent my servant to you, according to previous arrangement,
when you paid her three thousand francs in notes of one thousand francs
each.”[103]
Thus it will be seen that she was only paid 4,268 of the 15,000 livres
promised to her, and that by bit-by-bit instalments. Schemers and
sharpers, if they had gold mines at their disposal, would never pay in
any other way.
XV.
1784. NOV.
GRAND DOINGS AT BAR-SUR-AUBE.
The sudden possession of a large sum of money produced in the countess
an invincible desire to return for a time to Bar-sur-Aube, where a few
years previously she had suffered so much poverty, but where she could
now display a little pomp. Late in the autumn of 1784, young Beugnot
received a very amiable letter from Madame de la Motte, in which she
announced to him that having several days to spare, she was about to
spend them at Bar-sur-Aube with her friends. “She informed me, in an
easy off-hand manner,” observes the count, “that she had sent in advance
her carriage and saddle-horses, which would be five days on the road,
as she had been recommended not to fatigue them, and that she herself
would arrive two days afterwards. She apprised her sister-in-law, Madame
de la Tour, of her coming in much the same terms, and gave her certain
particular directions as to the lodging of herself and suite. Madame de
la Tour came to me quite bewildered, and asked me what it all meant,
to which I replied that I was as much in the dark as she was. Having
compared letters, we agreed that there was a mystification of the worst
kind about the affair, but resolved that we would not be duped, and that
no preparations should be made for lodging the princess and her suite,
and moreover that we would both preserve strict silence with reference to
the letters we had received.
“How great was our joint astonishment when on the appointed day we beheld
a large heavily-laden waggon, drawn by a fine team, and followed by two
led horses of great value, drive into the town. A steward who arrived
with the waggon instantly gave orders for more provisions than would
have sufficed to victual the best house in the town for a period of six
months. People stared at each other when they met in the streets, and
wondered what this new chapter in the ‘Arabian Nights’ could possibly
mean, and were still wondering when the Count and Countess de la Motte,
preceded by two outriders in handsome liveries, drove leisurely through
the main street of Bar-sur-Aube in a very elegant _berline_.”[104] Two
years before they had left the place with borrowed money and no other
clothes but those they had on; now they returned in their own carriage,
with their couriers and saddle-horses, and actually required a waggon to
convey their wardrobe!
The town of Bar-sur-Aube, on the banks of the river, the name of which
it bears, is built partly on the slope of a mountain and partly in a
valley, and has on its mountain side the remains of some extensive Roman
fortifications said to have been constructed by Cæsar during his invasion
of Gaul. In by-gone times the town was encompassed by a massive stone
wall, and had its moats, ramparts, and four ancient gateways, with a
garrison of arquebusiers and militiamen. Its fortifications, however,
have been long since demolished, and pleasant gardens now occupy their
site. At the present day Bar-sur-Aube boasts several ancient churches and
chapels containing handsome carved altar-pieces, and many curious antique
monuments, and has also its convents, hospitals, college, and theatre.
The one object of historical interest that commonly attracts the
attention of strangers is the little Gothic chapel in the centre of the
old stone bridge of seven arches which spans the river Aube, built to
mark the spot where, upwards of four centuries since, Charles VII. caused
the Bastard de Bourbon, chief of the gang of _écorcheurs_ (flayers)—so
called because they stripped the unfortunate wretches that chanced to
fall into their hands of every particle of clothing, and who had for a
long time ravaged the Champagne—to be sewn up in a sack and drowned in
the river beneath. In the old parts of the town the houses are chiefly
of wood, and some of the more picturesque among them have large figures
of saints forming their supports. Most of those erected during the
last eighty or ninety years, however, are built entirely of stone. The
outskirts of Bar-sur-Aube are planted with trees, and laid out in public
walks, gardens, and orchards; beyond which a chain of low hills, covered
with vines or dense plantations of foliage, gives a picturesque aspect to
the surrounding country. Owing to the favourable situation of the town
and the productive nature of the adjacent districts, Bar-sur-Aube does an
extensive trade in various kinds of grain, horses, cattle, wine, brandy,
fruit, wool, leather, linen, iron, glass, pottery, and stone and timber
for building purposes.
Bar-sur-Aube has something of a history of its own, for it has been the
scene of several stirring historical events. It was occupied by the
Romans during their invasion of Gaul, was ravaged by Attila, and was
pillaged by our own Edward III. in 1360. About four centuries later
the inhabitants of Bar-sur-Aube welcomed with great display Louis the
Well-Beloved when he passed through the town on his return from the
siege of Fribourg. In January, 1814, the Allies, then marching upon
Paris, appeared before Bar-sur-Aube, and after a series of hard-fought
engagements forced Marshal Mortier, who held the town, to beat a rapid
retreat under cover of the night. While in the occupation of the Allies,
a conference of the ministers of the different powers was held at
Bar-sur-Aube, when Lord Castlereagh resolutely refused all subsidies to
the vacillating Bernadotte unless he agreed to support Marshal Blucher
with two _corps d’armée_, and so enable the Allies to continue their
march upon Paris. At this period there were three crowned heads, the
Emperors of Russia and Austria, and the King of Prussia, installed in
comparatively humble lodgings in this second-rate provincial town. After
the battle of Montmirail, on the 11th of February, the Allies, who were
retreating, turned and made a stand, and compelled the French army to
retire across the river Aube. On this occasion the town was twice taken
and retaken after several severe engagements. In the year following,
about three weeks after the battle of Waterloo, the Allies, to the number
of 200,000 strong, again appeared before Bar-sur-Aube. This time there
was no enemy to face them, so they quietly took possession of the place,
and levied heavy contributions on the inhabitants, leaving a garrison of
a couple of thousand men behind them, when they pursued their unopposed
march upon Paris.[105]