displayed at the very time that she and her husband were, as she said,
selling these diamonds on the cardinal’s behalf, she recapitulated
various presents of money which she affirmed the cardinal had made her;
in addition to which, she said, she had received considerable gifts from
the royal princes and princesses and from ministers of the crown. She
stated that the diamonds which had been handed to her by the cardinal,
including those remaining unsold in England, were of the value of three
hundred and seventy-seven thousand livres; nevertheless these did not
comprise all that belonged to the Necklace sold to the queen, as the
cardinal had given numbers away; and among them, some of the most
beautiful to the lady, whom he wanted to marry to a gentleman attached
to the suite of the Count de Provence, and others to the Countess de
Cagliostro. After having expressly stated that the diamonds she and her
husband disposed of did not comprise all that belonged to the Necklace
sold to the queen, Madame de la Motte maintained, in reply to questions
asked her, that she neither knew nor suspected that any of the diamonds
sold by them formed any portion of the Necklace in question; otherwise
she would have had nothing to do with them, but would have felt it her
duty to have warned the jewellers. When her husband, on seeing such a
large number of unset stones, asked the cardinal where they came from,
the prince replied that they belonged to an old set of jewels which he
had no longer any occasion for now that he was getting old. When reminded
that it was at this very time Laporte had spoken to her of the jewellers’
inquietude at finding the Necklace was not worn by the queen, Madame
de la Motte observed, that in this case the jewellers ought to have
addressed themselves to the cardinal, particularly as she had warned them
to be cautious. She denied that the cardinal had at any time expressed
astonishment to her at her majesty not wearing the Necklace; the reverse,
indeed, was the fact, it was she who had expressed her astonishment to
the cardinal.
The countess, as a matter of course, denied having shown to the cardinal
a letter purporting to be from the queen respecting the payment of the
sum of seven hundred thousand livres to the jewellers; she also denied
having given thirty thousand livres to the cardinal to be handed over
to them as interest for the delay in the payment of the instalments.
When asked what she borrowed from thirty to forty thousand livres from
her notary for at this precise date, she was ready with her answer.
It was to oblige the Marchioness de Crussol (the same who went to the
guillotine with Madame Elisabeth, the king’s sister, when these two poor
ladies embraced each other at the foot of the scaffold), who came to her,
and told her of the embarrassing position in which the ambassadress of
Portugal was placed through having pledged her diamonds, which she was
unable to redeem, and which would have been sold if Madame de la Motte
had not furnished the money to take them out of pawn.
She tried to persuade her judges that the cardinal had called upon
her one morning, and complained to her that he had been duped in
the affair of the Necklace; that he had shown her a letter which he
imagined had come from the queen, containing these words, “Send by the
little countess[254] a sum of money—the amount of which she could not
recollect—for these unfortunates. I should be annoyed if they get into
trouble.” He suspected, however, that the letter was not in the queen’s
handwriting, and that he had been made a dupe of. He paced up and down
the room exclaiming, “Has she deceived me, this little countess? has she
deceived me? Oh, no! I know Madame de Cagliostro too well; she is not
capable of this.”
On being asked if she knew a certain Dame de Courville, she replied
that she had seen her with the cardinal in holy week the year previous,
and that she knew her as a neighbour living within a few doors of her
own house. She then proceeded to say that this was the same lady the
cardinal desired to marry to a gentleman belonging to the suite of the
Count de Provence, and to whom he had promised to give five hundred
thousand livres. When asked if she knew an individual named Augeard[255]
or one Bette d’Étienville, or one Marsilly, a counsellor, she replied
that she knew none of those persons. This concluded the countess’s first
examination, which lasted from the 20th to the 26th of January, an
entire week, and of which we have given all the chief points to enable
the reader to see the scope and power of Madame de la Motte’s inventive
faculties, and her proficiency in the arts of falsehood and deceit.
It was now Cagliostro’s turn to be examined. In answer to questions put
to him, he said that he was a professor of medicine, of noble birth, and
had travelled largely in Asia and Africa, as well as Europe, most of the
chief cities of which he had visited. He was intimately acquainted with
the Prince de Rohan, and since his (the count’s) arrival in Paris, on
the 30th of January in the past year, had been in the habit of seeing
him generally three or four times a week. During this period the prince
and his friends had occasionally dined with him at his house in the Rue
Saint-Claude. The Necklace, respecting which so much had been said, was
purchased before this time. He remembered the cardinal expressing certain
doubts to him with regard to the genuineness of the signature affixed
to the contract, when he, sharing in them, advised the grand almoner
to throw himself at the king’s feet and confess everything that had
transpired; but this he resolutely refused to do.
With regard to the scene at the Hôtel de Strasbourg, described by the
Countess de la Motte, Cagliostro asserted this was merely an attempted
experiment in animal magnetism, in which he was no great believer. The
ribbons which the child was dressed out in were some that were lying
about the apartment. He denied having placed his drawn sword on the
child’s head, and having made use of the words ascribed to him; but
admitted there was a bottle of clear water on which the child placed
her hand. The affair was got up entirely at the instigation of Madame
de la Motte, who displayed great anxiety respecting the forthcoming
accouchement of some great lady, and he performed the experiment in the
hope of calming her. The countess’s story about the table with a large
number of lighted candles upon it, and the naked sword and poignard, and
the crosses of Jerusalem and St. Andrew, had not a particle of truth in
it. He never placed Madame de la Motte’s hand upon these things, and
nothing of what she had described took place. The cardinal did not fetch
any diamonds from his secretary, and, indeed, the whole affair was a
pure piece of invention. The cardinal had given him and his wife a few
articles of jewellery as presents; all these things, and whatever other
diamonds he possessed, had been seized by the police, and were still in
their custody, and could be produced. The cardinal had never given the
Countess de Cagliostro any diamonds forming part of the Necklace, nor any
sum of money arising from the sale of the diamonds. He had never told
the cardinal that his wife was intimate with the queen. She had never
seen the queen, and was never once at Versailles, and could have had no
correspondence with any one for the best of all reasons—she could not
write.[256]
Cagliostro, in his examination, having stripped the countess’s highly
inventive narrative of its marvellous character, and exposed her
falsehoods with respect to the diamonds, and having, moreover, previously
stated in his memorial that he had cautioned the Cardinal de Rohan to be
on his guard against Madame de la Motte, whom he stigmatized as a wretch,
but that the cardinal would not believe him, the countess’s indignation
knew no bounds. Knowing the doubtful kind of reputation that attached to
Cagliostro, and the peculiar nature of the relations commonly believed
to subsist between him and the cardinal, who, it was thought, aided and
abetted him in his endeavours to discover the philosopher’s stone—it was
commonly reported that Cagliostro had prevailed on the cardinal to obtain
possession of the Necklace, that he might experiment upon the diamonds
and centriple their value[257]—the countess believed she could readily
have diverted not merely suspicion towards the “low empiric,” as she
was now in the habit of styling him, but have induced a firm conviction
of his guilt. This had been her aim from the outset, as is evident from
the insinuations in which she indulged in her memorial with regard to
Cagliostro, whom she, or rather her counsel, introduces in the following
grandiloquent style:
“His name, his surname, his quality? he and the woman attached to his
fortunes?—The Count and so-called Countess de Cagliostro!
“His age?—One of his valets said that he knew not the age of his master,
but for himself he had been one hundred and fifty years in his service.
As for the master, he sometimes gave three hundred years as his age,
at other times he said he had assisted at Galilee at the marriage of
Cana.[258]
“His country?—A Portuguese Jew, or Greek, or Egyptian from Alexandria,
who had brought with him to Europe the sorceries and allegories of the
East.
“His habits and his religion?—Doctor of the cabalistic art; one of those
extravagant members of the Rosy Cross who profess to raise the dead, and
make them hold converse with the living—masters of all the sciences,
skilled in the transmutation of baser metals into gold—beneficent spirits
who attend the poor for nothing, and sell immortality to the rich.
“His fortune? in short, his means of supporting that luxurious
ostentation which he has displayed before our eyes?—A sumptuous hôtel,
elegant furniture, a well-supplied table, servants in all sorts of
liveries; and the court of this hôtel always noisy with carriages,
announcing in the midst of an intelligent nation visionaries of every
rank—in a word, Cagliostro, without inheriting anything, without
purchasing anything, without selling anything, without acquiring
anything, is possessed of all. Such is this man.
“What are his great deeds?—Many are known in the different courts of
Europe, others are known to Madame Böhmer;[259] but let us confine
ourselves to the third filtration of the Necklace, when it is needful
to dispose the Count de la Motte to carry to a foreign country a
considerable quantity of diamonds. This is the grand result furnished by
the crucible of the operator.”[260]
Cagliostro, it may be observed, was greatly excited on hearing of the
arrest of his wife, and on afterwards learning that she was ill, became
perfectly frantic. He pretended to believe that she was dead or at her
last extremity, and threatened to kill himself if he were not permitted
to see her, or she were not immediately set at liberty.[261]
XXX.
1786. FEB.–MARCH.
THE TRIAL: THE CONFRONTATIONS OF THE ACCUSED WITH EACH OTHER AND WITH THE
WITNESSES.
The examinations having at length terminated, the confrontations of the
accused with each other, and with the principal witnesses, now commenced.
At the time these were going on, the accused, in accordance with custom,
were deprived of the assistance of their counsel, who were not permitted
to hold any intercourse whatever with them. Madame de la Motte and the
cardinal were first confronted with each other. The countess describes
being ushered into the hall of the Bastille, and the cardinal making
his appearance shortly afterwards. The oaths having been administered,
the opponents surveyed each other attentively; though, says Madame, the
cardinal, “pretending to amuse himself with his pencil, which he twirled
about in his fingers, affected not to regard me,” and the duello of words
at once began. And it was a mere duello of words, for the real points
of the affair seem hardly to have been touched upon. At the outset the
countess evidently thought she was getting much the best of the contest,
for she observes in her “Life,” that in her replies to the cardinal’s
interrogatories her expressions “were so strongly pointed, so pertinent
and forcible, that every one present gave smiles of approbation.”[262]
When questioned as to whence she derived the means for such an unwonted
display of opulence as she was known to have exhibited, she pointed to
the cardinal, and gave the judges distinctly to understand that the
relations subsisting between them were those of lover and mistress, and
not benefactor and supplicant as had been commonly supposed; hence the
motive for the liberal gifts which she had received at the hands of the
Prince de Rohan.[263]
As the contest went on, the cardinal, according to Madame’s version,
got some further awkward thrusts which touched him to the quick, and
made him “look uneasy, and turn suddenly pale, and complain of a violent
headache,” which stayed the proceedings for a time. When these were
resumed, the countess thought it necessary to object to what she styles
some impropriety on the part of the cardinal—he put some pertinent
question which it was not convenient for her to answer—whereupon a three
hours’ altercation ensued, during which the plethoric cardinal grew “red
as fire,” while madame, less excited “came off,” she tells us, “with
flying colours,” the judges bestowing upon her “smiles of encouragement.”
Thus ended the first day’s confrontation.
The day following, the cardinal entered the hall quite chapfallen;
“instead of his former fierce and haughty demeanour, his eyes appeared
to ask pardon, and his countenance was sweet and engaging.”[264] His
“mildness” gave the countess “fresh spirits, and increased her hopes,”
but a scene of wrangling began immediately—each accused the other of
having had the Necklace, and of knowing what had become of it. “At this
moment,” remarks the countess, “I was not mistress of my temper, and
loaded them all with reproaches,” which brought down upon her a severe
reproof from the judges, which did not, she confesses, “in the least tend
to abate her violence.”[265] The second day’s proceedings terminated,
therefore, in a greater tempest than the first had done.
If we believe what Madame de la Motte says, the cardinal, as the
confrontations progressed, grew quite sentimental. Weak and foolish to
the extreme point of folly we know the grand almoner to have been, still,
now that the film was removed from his eyes, we can hardly credit that he
acted the old dotard’s part as the countess would have us believe. “He
blew me over kisses,” she says, “and when he discovered my eyes turned
aside upon any other object, he played with his pencil to attract my
notice.” At another time, “he clasped his hands eagerly together, and
lifting up his eyes to heaven, ‘Ah!’ exclaimed he, ‘how unhappy we are!’
He even shed tears.”[266]
On a subsequent occasion the countess pretends that when they were by
themselves at one end of the hall the cardinal approached her, took her
by the hand, and led her to the fireplace, and that while they were there
standing in an attitude of the most friendly regard, engaged in earnest
conversation, she suddenly rang the bell, which brought in De Launay,
governor of the Bastille, and two of his officers, who surprised them in
the attitude above described. “The lieutenant, De Losme,” she observes,
“could scarce pardon me to see me holding discourse with my executioner,
‘a person,’ said he, with indignation, ‘that endeavours to prove you a
thief;’” and who did, indeed, in due course, not only prove her to be a
thief, but procured her a felon’s punishment.
Although, according to her own account, these confrontations opened so
triumphantly for her, the countess at their close had lost much of that
confidence which her overweening vanity had led her to feel, and tried
hard to prolong the proceedings by urging that application should be made
to the king for permission for her to send a letter to her husband, “to
engage him to come in person to confront and disprove this preconcerted
system of lying accusations which pretends that he has gone off with a
part of the necklace.” As if the count could not have come forward, and
done all this of his own accord, as he might possibly have been tempted
to do had he not entertained a wholesome fear of the scourge and the
branding-iron, and of being chained to the oar as a galley slave for the
rest of his life.
Judging from the countess’s report of these confrontations, they would
seem to have been merely a series of wordy wranglings; it is, however,
quite certain that in the course of them many facts damaging to her in
the last degree were brought to light. Her wretched poverty, up to the
very moment when she touched the first fifty thousand livres of the
cardinal’s money, was proved beyond a doubt, as well as the comparative
affluence which she displayed immediately afterwards. And the same with
respect to the almost Oriental style of luxury in which the De la Mottes
commenced to live immediately after the count had returned from England
with the proceeds arising from the sale of the diamonds to the jeweller
Gray.
The countess in her confrontation with Laporte—who had first mentioned
the Necklace to her, and had introduced her to the crown jewellers—tried
to wheedle him by such a shallow manœuvre as thus addressing him: “I
believe you to be an honest man, Monsieur Laporte. Forget for a moment
that you have made any deposition, and distinctly answer my questions.”
Laporte, however, stuck to his text, and nothing favourable to the
countess could be extracted from him.[267] When she and the Baron de
Planta, the cardinal’s equerry, are brought face to face, he declines
to swear black to be white, and persists in saying that he had himself
carried to her the two several sums of fifty thousand livres and one
hundred thousand livres, for which she had applied to the cardinal in the
queen’s name. “I swear in the presence of justice, and on my honour and
my head,” exclaimed the indignant baron, “that I myself gave you these
amounts from the Cardinal de Rohan to be remitted to the queen;”[268]
whereupon madame pronounces him to be mad, and in proof of her assertion
recounts, with evident unction, the particulars of an attempted
indelicate assault upon her by the baron in the month of October,
1784.[269] Regnier, the goldsmith and jeweller who supplied the De la
Mottes with a service of plate, &c., and received diamonds in discharge
of his account, having given his version of his transactions with the
count and countess, the latter, following her usual system of denial,
contradicts Regnier point blank, whereupon he exhibits the entries in his
books made at the time. She then admits everything, and asks herself,
with seeming astonishment, how it was possible in less than a year for
her to have so far lost her memory.[270]
The countess, when confronted with Father Loth, loaded him with a
shower of reproaches. “You bad man,” exclaimed she, “it is you who have
led my husband astray; you have introduced him to disreputable women.
You have persuaded him to live on bad terms with me. You have robbed
me.”[271] Grenier, the goldsmith and money-lender, had deposed that
Madame de la Motte had ordered of him two superb robes of Lyons silk,
saying she intended making a present of them to the queen; in reply
to which he had told her point blank that it was not likely she would
dare to take the liberty of making presents to her majesty. Whereupon
the countess remarked, that there was no such ceremony as he supposed
between relations! She had, moreover, told him that she had reinstated
the cardinal in the queen’s good graces, and that her majesty dared
refuse her nothing, and had also shown him a letter which she said had
been written to her by the queen, but which she would not allow him to
read.[272] When brought face to face with Grenier, she exclaimed, “He
has been in the Bastille for fifteen days, and when he comes out his
first act is to depose against me out of revenge, because I once had him
put outside my house, and because it was in relation to me that he was
imprisoned.”[273]
With regard to her confrontations with the Demoiselle d’Oliva, the
countess complains that questions were put to the latter in such a form
that she had only to answer yes or no. “I did not let this escape me,”
she remarks, “but desired Dupuis de Marcé, one of the reporters of the
case, appointed by the parliament, to suffer her to speak, and not to
be her mouthpiece. He turned red, was stung with rage, and getting up
like a demoniac, put an end to the sitting.”[274] When it was resumed,
and that portion of D’Oliva’s declaration was read which spoke of the
letters, purporting to have been written by the queen, which the countess
had shown her, Madame de la Motte cannot conceal her agitation. She makes
signs to D’Oliva, winks her eyes at her, and finding that she takes no
notice, keeps repeating the action. When charged with this, she replies
in a furious tone of voice, “I make signs to you? Yes, I make you a sign
that you are a monster for having said such a thing.” She then proceeds
to charge D’Oliva with having behaved immodestly when on a visit to
her at Charonne, says she was guilty of positive indecencies, that she
was only a common courtezan, who had been for some time her husband’s
mistress, and who had usurped a title to which she had no claim. She next
enlarged upon D’Oliva’s affairs generally, and spoke of her pecuniary
embarrassments, and of the real and supposed disappointments she had
experienced, with “audacity, arrogance, and fury;” for all of which she
was duly taken to task by D’Oliva’s counsel in a new edition of his
client’s “Mémoire.” “Proud and vile woman,” the memorial proceeds to
say, “who caressed me when I could serve you, who disdained me when I
exposed you, who hate me when I confound you, descend, descend from the
supreme height of your genealogical tree, from whence you brave the law,
impose upon its administrators, and insult by turns your unfortunate
co-accused.”[275]
As for Cagliostro, on whom and on whose wife the countess had tried her
utmost to shift a portion of her own guilt—out of revenge, we suppose,
for the count having been the first to suggest to the cardinal that she
had tricked him in the Necklace business—he is “this oracle who bewitched
the cardinal’s understanding,” a low alchemist, a false prophet and
profaner of the true religion, a mountebank and a vagabond. To which
Cagliostro pertinently replied, “Not always a false prophet, for had the
Prince de Rohan taken my advice he would have seen through the artifices
of the countess, and neither of us been where we are. To her numerous
calumnies I will content myself with making a laconic reply, the same
that was made by Pascal under parallel circumstances—a reply which
politeness forbids me to make in the vulgar tongue, but which madame’s
counsel will translate for her, _Mentiris impudentissime_.”[276] The
countess, not knowing the meaning of the phrase, imagined, correctly
enough, that it was something exceedingly offensive, and to use her
own language, “put an end to the scene by throwing a candlestick at
the quack’s head! Cagliostro, enraged and foaming at the mouth, said
to me, ‘He will come, thy Villette! he will come! it is he that will
speak!’”[277]
Referring to her confrontation with Madame Dubarry, the countess
observes, “I cannot withstand the temptation of saying a few words
concerning the part assigned to the ‘queen dowager,’ the immaculate
Dubarry of monastic memory. She stated that I had been at her house to
solicit her protection, and that I had left with her a memorial, signed
‘Marie-Antoinette de France.’ The fact is, I only went to her house out
of curiosity in a good coach and four. Upon her signifying to me that
she thought the branch of Valois had been extinct, I gave her a memorial
of my genealogy, signed ‘_Marie-Antoine_ d’Hozier de Sérigny, Judge of
the Nobility of _France_.’ When confronted with me she assumed an air of
haughtiness and insolence, but I hastened to make her sensible of the
distance between her birth and mine.”[278] This wrangling between such a
pair of demireps must have been highly amusing to all who chanced to be
witnesses of it.
The cardinal, alluding to the confrontations in one of his memorials,
says that Madame de la Motte generally either cried or went into
convulsions at them, and that with her, audacity, gaiety, and tears
succeeded each other by turns, according as she found herself capable
of sustaining a part, or felt herself forced to succumb to feelings of
remorse and fear.[279]
During Lent of 1786, while the public excitement with reference to the
Necklace trial was at its height, the Abbé Georgel, grand-vicar to the
cardinal, whose office of grand almoner gave him spiritual jurisdiction
over the royal chapel at Versailles, the Hospital of the Quinze-Vingts,
and the Assumption, caused to be printed and posted on the doors of the
churches and sacristies dependent on the grand almonry, a charge, wherein
he quoted the words of St. Paul to his disciple Timothy, exhorting him to
blush neither for his captivity nor for his bonds. Copies of this charge
were even posted in the royal chapel itself.