and queen were deeply irritated, and the Baron de Breteuil sent for the
offender and spoke sharply to him on the subject. Instead of expressing
regret, the faithful grand-vicar, intoxicated with the success he had
already met with in thwarting the enemies of the cardinal, his master,
ventured to brave the minister of justice, replying to his remonstrances
with firmness, and insisting on his right to exercise the powers which
the cardinal had delegated to him. The minister, taken aback at so much
assurance on the part of a mere abbé, required Georgel to furnish him
with an explanation in writing. This the grand-vicar did in the following
terms:
“I had the honour to observe to you, sir, that monseigneur the cardinal
not being under the bonds of a legal decree, enjoyed, even where he was,
his rights as citizen, bishop, and grand almoner in all their fulness;
that a detention which had not been pronounced by law did not take away
from a prisoner the right to exercise his civil and ecclesiastical
functions; that such an interdiction could be the consequence only
of a decree of banishment or imprisonment; that the grand-vicars of
monseigneur the Cardinal de Rohan, furnished with his powers, were
legally authorized to exercise in his name and under his orders their
respective functions; and that our legal code was precise on the
application of these principles.
“You then tell me, sir, to send you all these details in writing. I obey
the minister of the king, and shall await with the profoundest respect
the orders of his majesty respecting the conduct which I ought to show in
my quality of grand-vicar.”[280]
This was another false step on the abbé’s part, for the minister
retaliated by a _lettre-de-cachet_, and the only order the grand-vicar
received from his majesty was a command, dated March 10, 1786, to depart
from Paris within four-and-twenty hours for Mortagne in Brittany. Thus
at a most critical point in the proceedings instituted against him was
the cardinal suddenly deprived of the services of his able and energetic
grand-vicar.
On the 26th of March, owing to the exertions of Counsellor D’Epréménil,
who pressed her case on the attention of the parliament, the Countess
de Cagliostro succeeded in regaining her liberty after upwards of
seven months’ confinement in the Bastille; and about this time the
women of Paris, who were great partisans of the cardinal’s during the
entire period of his imprisonment, took to wearing in their toilettes
a combination of scarlet and straw-colour ribbons, jocularly entitled
“cardinal on the straw”—meaning the cardinal in prison. Grand dames of
fashion, too, at the Easter promenade of Longchamp, came out in straw
bonnets with scarlet crowns, and trimmed with scarlet ribbon, which
Mademoiselle Bertin, the queen’s milliner—at this moment out of favour at
court—had introduced under the name of _chapeaux au Cardinal_.[281]
XXXI.
1786. APRIL–MAY.
ARREST OF THE FORGER VILLETTE—HIS EXAMINATIONS AND CONFRONTATIONS.
It is now that Rétaux de Villette is unearthed with the Abbé Georgel’s
sleuth-hounds in full cry. Tracked from town to town, and from village to
village, he is at length run down at Geneva, having, says one account,
since the news of the Necklace affair, crossed the Swiss frontier,
assumed various disguises, and turning his musical talents to account,
acted the part of a vagrant musician, playing on his mandoline along the
streets and highways to amuse the passers-by. One version of his capture
represents him as having been trepanned in some low Geneva tavern, whilst
overcome by drink, into enlisting in some phantom regiment, by which
adroit manœuvre he was enticed from off the “sacred republican soil,”
and carried away to Paris in triumph.[282] Another version affirms that
he had got mixed up in a local brawl at the time the abbé’s emissaries
pounced upon him, which is likely to be the truer statement of the two,
as it is corroborated by his own account of his arrest. “A disturbance,”
he says, “probably brought about by design, arose in the public streets
between two Geneva watchmakers. A Frenchman, witness of the affair,
interposed as peace-maker; whereupon he was seized, together with the
two disputants. ‘Where do you come from?’ was asked of him. ‘From
Lyons.’ ‘Ah! there has been a great robbery recently committed there.
What brought you to Geneva?’ ‘Nothing.’ ‘What is your name?’ ‘Rétaux
de Villette.’ ‘To prison with him!’ A few days afterwards an inspector
of police arrived from Paris, and carried off the prisoner to the
Bastille.”[283]
This must have been about the commencement of April, and no sooner did
Villette find himself within the grip of the French police for the
second time than he became quite chapfallen. On the road to Paris he
was low-spirited to a degree, constantly speaking of himself as a lost
man, as a victim about to be sacrificed. His distress, he tells us, was
“aggravated by the jokes of the officers, in which they appeared to
take a malicious pleasure.”[284] Now and then when cheered with wine
he would chat confidentially with police-inspector Quidor concerning
his _liaisons_ with Madame de la Motte, and would let fall scraps of
information respecting the “_belle demoiselle_” of the Palais Royal, the
part she played at the midnight meeting at Versailles, and the influence
which the countess exercised over the Prince de Rohan; but with regard
to everything that related to the Necklace, and the _billets-doux_—“gilt
edged,” or bordered with “vignettes bleues,”—and the forged signature to
the contract with the jewellers, he preserved a discreet silence.
When housed within the gloomy walls of the Bastille he became slightly,
but only slightly, more communicative. He railed at his former mistress
for having been the cause of his ruin; described how he came to Paris to
obtain a situation in the marshalsea, when, unfortunately for him, he
fell into the snares of the siren, who, by pretending to have influence
in high quarters, won his confidence, and by promising to do something
better for him than his modest expectations led him to hope for, induced
him to relinquish all idea of the post he was on the point of securing.
Being frequently at her house, the countess employed him in drawing up
and copying memorials setting forth the claims of the house of Valois,
and asking sometimes for restitution, and at others for pecuniary
assistance; also memorials on behalf of individuals in whom Madame de la
Motte took an interest, addressed either to the ministers, or to persons
in high official positions, from whom places were solicited for the
applicants.
At his first examination Villette confessed absolutely nothing but what
he was well aware was already known beyond the possibility of doubt.
For instance, he admitted that he was acquainted with Mademoiselle
d’Oliva, and that he accompanied the count and her to Versailles on a
particular day, in the evening of which she was dressed out, and went
with the countess to the park, where he and the count also proceeded. In
substance he admitted the acting of the part of the queen by D’Oliva,
who left the park with him and the count—the countess going off with
the Cardinal de Rohan and the Baron de Planta. Villette scrupulously
avoided everything like an admission of having written any letters for
the countess. He denied having written a letter for D’Oliva to give to
the cardinal, or one for the countess to read to D’Oliva as though it
were from the queen. He believed D’Oliva was paid for the part she acted,
but did not know the amount; he himself carried her three hundred livres
on one occasion. When questioned respecting the Necklace, he replied
that he knew absolutely nothing about it, nor of the negotiation for its
purchase, nor of the letters said to have passed between the cardinal and
the queen relative to this purchase. He confessed he was very frequently
at Versailles, but could not tell whether he was there on the particular
day the Necklace is said to have been delivered. At any rate he knew
nothing of the circumstances connected with its delivery, was not the
bearer of any letter respecting it, and certainly did not write any such
letter. Was not aware of the Necklace being taken to pieces, though he
admitted having had some diamonds given to him to sell. Did not know the
object of the count’s journey to London; was not aware that he sold any
diamonds there, or that he returned to Paris with letters of credit for a
considerable amount. He admitted having assumed the name of Augeard, but
only as a disguise for carrying on intrigues with women.
Villette of course utterly denied all knowledge of the signature to the
contract, but when asked if he thought the cardinal was able to discern
whether the signature was genuine, he replied, that for his own part,
without possessing the intelligence of the cardinal, had he been in his
place he would not have been duped. During the time he was in familiar
intercourse with the De la Mottes they appeared, he said, to live like
persons of means, but he knew nothing of their sources of income. With
respect to their opulence, although he had witnessed it, he had never
shared it, save as a hanger-on—a guest who always had a seat at their
table. With regard to the De la Mottes’ motive for leaving Paris in
August last, he understood from madame that her circumstances were
embarrassed. He admitted having received four thousand livres from
madame, but only as a loan to enable him to visit Italy, where he had
long desired to go; and confessed to having slept part of the night in
a cabriolet in the courtyard of the De la Motte hôtel ere setting forth
on his journey early on the following morning. Finally he stated that
he had had no correspondence with the De la Mottes subsequent to his
departure.[285]
Less than a month’s reflection in the Bastille seems to have sharpened
Rétaux de Villette’s memory on several essential points, for he writes
a letter to the Count de Vergennes, in which he confesses everything
except the receipt of the casket containing the Necklace; this he
persisted in denying to the last. In consequence of this letter he is
again brought up for examination, when, the contract being produced
and shown to him, he admits the words “approuvé” and the signature to
have been written by himself alone, not in imitation, however, of the
queen’s handwriting, but in his own ordinary hand.[286] It was done, he
said, at the request of Madame de la Motte, and on her assurance that
it was to oblige the cardinal. He also confessed to having written, at
the countess’s dictation, all the _billets-doux_—gilt-edged, or bordered
with _vignettes bleues_—which purported to have been addressed by the
queen to the Prince de Rohan, and two letters in particular, in which the
queen charged Madame de la Motte to ask the cardinal, in her name, first
of all for sixty (fifty) thousand livres, and secondly for one hundred
thousand livres, for an immediate payment the queen had to make.[287]
Villette positively denied having been the bearer of a billet purporting
to have been written by the queen on the evening of the 2nd of February,
and of receiving the casket containing the Necklace, and he complacently
referred to the striking difference that existed between the individual
indicated by the Cardinal de Rohan and himself. The former, he remarked,
had big black eyebrows, a pale thin face, and slender figure; whereas his
eyebrows were light, his face full and somewhat rubicund, and his figure
inclined to be portly. With regard to the Necklace, he knew that it had
been broken up, and that the diamonds intrusted to him to sell formed
part of it, but he denied having had any of the diamonds given to him, or
of having received money from Madame de la Motte for appending the forged
signature to the contract. “It is true she has lent me money,” observed
he, “and I have kept a note of it, but whenever I have spoken to madame
on the subject she has always been polite enough to say that she did not
wish the matter mentioned.” Finally, he expressed his firm belief that
Cagliostro was entirely innocent of any complicity in the affair.[288]
The countess now undergoes a second examination at which she denies that
Villette wrote any letters to the cardinal in the name of the queen.
Having had time to reflect upon the weight of evidence against her,
she now admits the truth of the statement with respect to the meeting
between the cardinal and D’Oliva in the park of Versailles, but pretends
the affair was a mere pleasantry got up to quiet the restless cardinal.
She still denied that she had applied to him for the several sums of
fifty thousand and one hundred thousand livres, and maintained that she
had never received these amounts. Denied, moreover, having ever seen
the contract with the jewellers, and having got Villette to sign the
same. When told that Villette had confessed, she simply replied that she
could not conceive his motive for stating the signature to be his; said
she first knew of the signature being forged when the cardinal showed
her part of a note written by the queen. Next day, after having again
reflected, we find her adhering to her text, and contenting herself with
remarking that Villette had been overpersuaded to say that he signed the
document, and by her orders.
At Rétaux de Villette’s first confrontation with the countess, after
making the damaging admissions which he had done, he seems to have given
way to feelings of remorse at having betrayed, as he says, “a woman whom
I loved to adoration, and who had loaded me with benefits.” He declared
that De Launay, Dupuis de Marcé, Fremyn, the Count de Vergennes, and
others, had forced him to assert, with the view of saving himself, that
the countess alone had instigated him to write the false signature of the
queen so as to cheat the cardinal, whereupon the sitting was immediately
broken up without giving him time to finish what he was about to say.[289]
When confronted, however, with Madame de la Motte on a subsequent
occasion, he tries his hardest, though in vain, to induce her to speak
the truth. He told her that her denials could be no longer accepted as
proofs while he, the principal agent, and other witnesses were giving
her the lie. “You will not see,” he continued, “that everybody accuses
you, and that your voice necessarily loses its power. It is useless to
deny that the cardinal, you, and I are culpable in this affair. You seek
to destroy the avowal which I make of my own guilt. You say that I lie
when I accuse myself of forgery. You ruin yourself in acting thus, and
evidently do not understand your own interests.”[290]
Madame, however, conceived that she did, and was prepared with her
rejoinder, which she made with all the tact and vehemence of the
professional advocate. “The observations,” remarked she, “that M.
Villette has made are only made to frighten me. I fear nothing, and am
perfectly calm. To all his remarks I persist in replying that I neither
urged him to write the signature nor the ‘_approuvés_,’ nor any other
similar writing purporting to come from the queen. If M. Villette is good
enough to say that he has written the signature and the ‘_approuvés_,’ it
is owing to the fear with which he has been inspired on being told that
his ordinary handwriting bore so striking a resemblance to the signature
appended to the document, and that he would be certain to be condemned,
by reason of this resemblance alone, to corporal punishment. He has been
told that if he confessed to this, his punishment would be materially
lightened. This is what has caused him to make the confession, which I
maintain is false.... I repeat that I am in nowise guilty. I await with
calmness the punishment that may be awarded me, and I ask no grace.
“With regard to M. le Cardinal, whom M. Villette has just said he
believed to be as guilty as we two, I shall not charge myself with his
defence, nor with that of any other person, not knowing whether he is
guilty or no. If I were in possession of any secret that would tell
against the cardinal in the Necklace affair I should not hide it, because
for a long time past he has caused me much suffering. As for myself, I
again say that I have no confession to make, as M. Villette pretends I
have, for I am not guilty, and I am persuaded that he is no more guilty
than myself. If I were guilty I would make a confession, in the hope that
my punishment would be less grave. As it is, I could only make a false
confession; and although M. Villette tells me that every proof has been
obtained against me, and that I have only my bare assertions to oppose
to these, I repeat again that I leave my judges at liberty to find me
guilty, still asserting that I am innocent and free from crime.”[291]
With this smart peroration of madame’s the confrontations were brought
to a close, and the accused were remanded back to their several quarters
in the gloomy old fortress to await the next step which the law would in
due course take. The revelations of D’Oliva, and more particularly those
of Villette, by utterly changing the aspect of things, had sadly weakened
the countess’s confidence in her line of defence, and the hold which she
believed she had on the sympathy of the public. To retain so much of the
latter as was possible, she published a third memorial, or summary, as
it was called—her second was simply a rejoinder to Cagliostro—made up,
as was her custom, of an artful combination of ingenious fallacies well
calculated to perplex, if not to delude, the understanding.
M. Feuillet de Conches has, among his collection of autographs,
an extensive MS. in the countess’s handwriting, consisting of her
observations upon the various “Mémoires” issued on behalf of her
co-accused, and of reports of what passed at her own examinations and
confrontations. This was evidently prepared for the use of her advocate,
M. Doillot, who drew up her memorials from materials she supplied him
with, and whom it is quite certain, from the evidence furnished by this
MS., Madame de la Motte did not scruple to attempt to deceive, just as
she tried to deceive her judges, and, indeed, every one else with whom
she came in contact.[292]
“Her foot on earth, her forehead in the skies,
Things done relates, not done she feigns,
And mingles truth with lies.”
In neither of the countess’s memorials does she seek in any way to
implicate Marie-Antoinette, nor make the least claim to that intimacy
with royalty which she subsequently maintained in her “Mémoires
Justificatifs” with such wanton audacity, and again in her “Life,
written by herself,” but lays everything to the charge of the cardinal,
fascinated, deluded, and overruled by Cagliostro. As a type of the
depravity of the human heart when no moral laws restrain its licence,
a book more astounding and impudent than “The Life of Jeanne de St.
Remi de Valois, Countess de la Motte,”—from which, in the course of our
narrative, we have extracted everything of the least importance wearing
an air of truth—was, perhaps, never written.
New memorials, however, were of no use now. Her game, which had been most
audaciously played, was played out. People of every class turned against
her. The queen and the cardinal were no longer victims to that prejudiced
and hastily-formed opinion which, without waiting for the pleadings of
the lawyers or the verdict of a jury, passes sentence beforehand. Alone
and apart from even her fellow-prisoners, this powerful impostor stood
detected as the liar, the swindler, the thief, the contriver of the
plot, the single and crafty director of a complicated fraud. And the
man who was the first to betray her, and “whose villany and diabolical
machinations,” to quote the countess’s own words, had caused all this to
come to light, had been one of her familiars—friends she could hardly be
said to have had—a constant hanger-on at her house, an almost daily guest
at her table, “who, by way of rendering himself necessary,” says the
countess, “pretended that, as my husband and I were young people, it was
requisite we should have some trusty person to superintend our domestics.
He superintended, and had the disposal of everything in the house,
and when I went into the country he had all the keys, and the care of
paying my servants.”[293] Recalling all this to mind in her “Life,” the
countess heaps on Father Loth some of her choicest expletives—“serpent”
and “viper” being the most favourite. He is, for instance, “the serpent
that stung me to the heart;” “the serpent that darted his envenomed
sting against me;” “the dangerous viper that stung the bosom that
cherished it;” “this disgrace to human nature;” “this iniquitous monk,
who embezzled my money and my watch;” “this perjured and malignant monk;”
“this solitary savage;” “this dexterous hypocrite;” “this hypocritical,
this notorious villain;” “this monster,” “this profligate and abandoned
wretch;” “this wretch who has violated every moral obligation.”[294]
The countess’s confederates had confessed themselves guilty, but there
was this excuse for them—they were merely her tools and instruments.
Villette, in his time of tribulation, might well protest that he was
not that great friend and confidant of Madame de la Motte which he was
represented to be, for, said he, “_she had no friends, and her confidence
never was bestowed absolutely on any one_.” She merely instructed her
instruments in what was necessary to the parts they had to perform, and
kept the secret of the combinations entirely to herself.[295] D’Oliva
had captivated the public by her ingenuous explanation of a stratagem
which, it was evident to every one, she had had no share in conceiving
or conducting to its issue, although she had taken a part in it. And as
to the forger Villette, he had rendered so great a service to the law by
his complete exposure of the crime which had been committed, and had so
disarmed resentment by his apparent contrition, as to call forth towards
himself a kind of latent pity, in which contempt and disgust were to some
extent mingled.
With regard to the countess, nothing seemed capable of subduing the
wanton energy of this bold bad spirit. Confronted alternately with the
cardinal, with the girl D’Oliva, with Cagliostro, and with Rétaux de
Villette, besides several minor witnesses, she stood, as we have seen,
face to face with them, unabashed against them all. At first she denied
everything; accused them of the very crimes she had herself committed;
charged them with inventing, conducting, and executing the fraud from
first to last; even swore that her two chief confederates, standing there
as witnesses against her, had been suborned by the relations of the
cardinal, and had formed a conspiracy to shift their own dishonour upon
her. She told her judges to remember that she was a Valois, descended
from the princes who had formerly reigned over them. Perching herself on
this imaginary pedestal, she seemed to forget that she was a prisoner on
her trial before the country, and thundered her denunciations against her
fellow-prisoners in the loudest key, every eye shrinking and quailing
beneath her own. Her judges were for the moment amazed and overawed by
an assurance which far surpassed anything hitherto seen in a court of
justice, whilst the cardinal respectfully styled her “madame” whenever he
addressed her.