expose ourselves any more that night, as his horse seemed to be so much
fatigued. This determination did not seem agreeable to him; he stormed
and swore, but all to no purpose. ‘I am determined,’ said I resolutely,
‘not to proceed till six o’clock in the morning.’ We did, indeed, set
out an hour sooner, but then there was no danger; though, when he put us
down upon an eminence on the side of Nancy, I really thought he seemed to
quit us with an air of regret at having failed of his prey. After having
dined at Nancy, we took a voiture, which conducted us to Lunéville, where
we stopped and slept at the Hôtel du Saint-Esprit, from whence the next
morning I wrote to M. Aminot, my cousin, an officer in the gendarmes.
I took the precaution not to sign my name to this billet, in which I
merely mentioned that a lady, one of his father’s acquaintances, wished
to communicate some news from his family. Upon the receipt of my billet
he did not lose a moment, but followed Marianne, who introduced him to
my chamber. He approached me: ‘Really, madame,’ said he, ‘I have not
the honour to recollect you.’ ‘Do you not know your unhappy cousin?’
said I. I could utter no more; my sensations checked my tongue. He also
appeared greatly astonished. ‘Is it possible, my dear cousin,’ said he,
‘that this can be you?’ He then embraced me affectionately, but his
joy at meeting me could only be equalled by his surprise. The evening
before my arrival, he had received letters from Paris, one of which he
showed me, which mentioned my surprising escape from the Salpêtrière,
observing, that there were flying reports that the queen had facilitated
my escape. My cousin and I spent two or three days together; and as I
communicated to him my desire to pass through Switzerland, though without
explaining my motive, he gave me in writing the plan of my route, which
was by Luxembourg. After this interval of rest, Marianne and I pursued
our journey, at five in the morning, on foot. We went eleven leagues this
day; and the next, not being able to procure a coach, we were obliged
to walk nine leagues further. After this fatigue I really was fearful
that I should lose my companion, who was most violently attacked with
asthma; and for five days the physician and surgeon were doubtful of her
recovery. As soon as Marianne was in a condition to support herself, we
took a voiture for Metz, where we slept, and the next day departed for
Thionville, about ten leagues from thence. The diligence put us down at
the sign of the ‘Three Kings,’ kept by one Phillips.”
This inn appears to have been a regular place of resort for the officers
quartered in the town, and the countess pretended that, owing to certain
consequential airs she indiscreetly gave herself, her incognito was more
than suspected by these gentlemen, who importuned her with their visits
and invitations to prolong her stay in the town, which of course only
made her the more anxious to get away.
“We proceeded on our journey,” resumes Madame de la Motte, “and slept at
Etauche; and the next day we departed in a tilted carriage. My intention
was to go into Switzerland, and to remain a short time at some frontier
town, from whence I could write to M. de la Motte, conceiving this was
the only chance of being secure, and that Providence, which had so long
guided and supported me, now granted me my wish, and directed me to an
hospitable mansion inhabited by the most worthy, the most charitable of
beings.”
Here they stopped to bait their horses, and were pressed by the hostess
to stay. “‘If, madam,’ observed she, ‘you have any fears of being upon
French ground, instantly dismiss them; nobody has any power over you
here.’ ‘I have no fear,’ replied I; ‘but I am in want of money, and wish
to write to my family.’ ‘Very well,’ replied this good creature, ‘for
that very reason I insist that you shall remain with me; you can write
from hence.’ About two days after I wrote to M. de la Motte, under cover
to Mr. McMahon, his friend in London, to which I received an answer in
about ten days, to the effect that he would make inquiries for some
proper person that he could trust, whom he would send to fetch us as soon
as possible. Three weeks, however, passed away without any emissary from
my husband. At this time my good hostess had no idea who I was: a report
gained ground, and even reached the military society at Luxembourg, that
there was a person at the house of Madame Schilss with a tall, stout
girl, who perfectly answered the description of Madame de la Motte and
the girl Marianne. I was every day visited by a great number of officers,
both old and young, then residing in the village, who constantly prefaced
their visits with expressions of condolence, observing how very dull it
must be for me to be alone in a place so destitute of amusement. The
Chevalier de Curel, of a family at Langres, appeared to be one of those
most officious in circulating the report that I was the Countess de la
Motte, which made me tremble for the consequences, and I conceived that,
by associating my hostess in my confidence, she might find some means
of silencing these reports. I therefore trusted her, leaving everything
to her discretion. This good lady rendered me very essential service;
for when persons came to make inquiries of her, she amused them with
different stories, and at the same time enjoyed the most profound secrecy
on every one of them.
“These reports made me extremely unhappy, particularly as I had not
received any further news from London, though the letter which I had
received led me to hope that I should shortly have another to apprise me
of the day when somebody would come to fetch me. At length, about the
27th of July, in the afternoon, a lady and gentleman came to inquire
for me. Madame Schilss, informed that I had been long in expectation of
some persons from England, was very well pleased. She introduced them as
persons she could trust, and my own confidence was increased when the
lady presented me with a letter from M. de la Motte.”
Accompanied by this lady, who proved to be Mrs. McMahon, Madame de la
Motte travelled first of all to Brussels and from there to Ostend,
whence, after a forty-two hours’ passage, the pair arrived safe at Dover.
“At seven we took the route for London,” continues Madame de la Motte,
“where we arrived at seven the next morning, and at nine my eyes were
greeted by the sight of M. de la Motte. It is not my intention,” remarks
the countess in her most sentimental vein, “to attempt to describe those
mutual transports which glowed in either bosom at this interview. The
situation, the circumstances of the parties, will raise corresponding
emotions in the bosom of sensibility which will convey my idea more
strongly than all the pomp of diction that may captivate the ear, but not
impress the soul.”[391]
XXXIX.
AUG. 1787–APRIL, 1789.
IN LONDON.—THE COUNTESS GIVES UP FORGERY AND TAKES TO CALUMNY.
“I remained a fortnight,” continues Madame de la Motte, “at the house
of Mrs. McMahon, in the Haymarket, without venturing abroad to take the
air, fearing lest I should be discovered. Every coffee-house in the
neighbourhood of this place was filled with persons, many of whom were
foreigners, eager to gratify their curiosity by seeing me. To prevent the
inconvenience of being stared and pointed at, my friend, Mrs. McMahon,
contrived to take me out about nine or ten o’clock in the evening.”
The countess tells us that she found her husband in great distress,
waiting impatiently the moment when his unfeeling uncle and aunt,
Monsieur and Madame de Suremont, would send over such property of his as
remained in their hands. The count had not long to wait, it appears, for
the De Suremonts arrived in London a few days after Madame de la Motte,
when they delivered to him a “ring, which had formed the stud of the
Necklace; a watch-chain which,” says the count, “I sold for fifty pounds
sterling; and a box I had taken in exchange, and which I sold to Gray for
sixty pounds. Restoring these three articles, they told me that they were
all they had been able to preserve of our jewels. Having had full leisure
to invent these falsities, and persuaded that I could not have been
informed of their conduct and the depredations they had committed on my
property, they spared no pains to convince me of the truth of what they
said, which would indeed have appeared reasonable had my intelligence not
been so well founded.
“Affecting to be satisfied with what they had delivered to me, I, the
same day, procured a writ to be issued, hoping thereby to frighten them
into a surrender of the remaining jewels; but they imagining, from the
inquiries they had made, and the advice they had received, that I could
not by any means molest them, pretended to show the utmost indignation at
my conduct, and finally declared that they had nothing left belonging to
me; that they had sold every article; and that, could they have foreseen
the ingratitude I now evinced towards them, they would have given up all
my jewels to the government.
“Judging from their resolute tone that something more than words was
requisite to bring them to a sense of justice, I insisted no farther,
but, urged by necessity, put the writ into the hands of a sheriff’s
officer, who soon after, though much to my regret, arrested my uncle, a
man of property, childless, enjoying the first offices in the place of
his residence, and possessing the esteem of all its inhabitants, and whom
I really respected. The case was otherwise with his beloved consort, a
despicable woman, detested by all who knew her, who, I am certain, had
prevailed upon her husband to be guilty of such a piece of meanness and
injustice. The moment she saw him arrested she came to me, urging my
acceptance of bills to the amount of my claims, still assuring me she
had nothing of mine, and that she was going to part with some of her
own property to purchase her husband’s release. Finding she could not
make me accede to the terms she proposed, she ended by acknowledging
everything, and departed to fetch what she had asserted upon oath had
been surrendered to government.
“On her return she gave up two rings that had belonged to the Necklace, a
pair of drop earrings (out of which she had taken four diamonds, which I
only perceived after we parted), a hoop ring, a neck-button, a hair-ring,
set round with stones, and another ring of small value. The day after
this forced restitution my relations returned to their own home, where
they have shared the remainder of the spoil; I have not heard of them
since, excepting being informed, in a circumstantial manner, of all the
havoc they have made in my house at Bar-sur-Aube, and of the contempt
they have drawn upon themselves by their behaviour to me.”[392]
The count informs us that he sold the articles which he so fortunately
recovered to Gray the jeweller, who, spite of the part he took in the
Necklace trial, was still ready enough to buy any more diamonds that
the De la Mottes had to sell. The amount which the count received for
these trinkets—all that remained to them of the famous Necklace—was two
thousand two hundred pounds, a mere per-centage on the sixty thousand
pounds at which the matchless jewel was originally valued, but still a
nice enough little sum of money for people in a “hard-up” condition.
True, it would not go very far in supporting even an approach to that
state to which the De la Mottes had accustomed themselves, and which the
hard fare and dismal cells of the Salpêtrière had not entirely destroyed
madame’s taste for. Unfortunately “some people having learned that the
count’s relations had brought him nearly sixty thousand livres’ worth
of diamonds, eager to share the spoil, swore false debts against him. I
myself,” says madame, “saw him arrested five times for different sums.
M. de la Motte’s attorney availed himself of this, and advised him, to
use his own expression, to rid himself at once of these troublesome
scoundrels by giving a gratuity of two hundred louis to one and one
hundred and fifty louis to another, while eighty louis were given to
an attorney who had never once appealed to the laws in favour of his
unfortunate client, from whom he had frequently received different sums
to extricate him from real or fictitious embarrassments.”
Such being the state of affairs means have to be found to replenish
the almost empty exchequer. The count has recourse, no doubt, to the
gaming-table, for all his life he has been an inveterate gambler. The
countess, on whom her sentence has had this wholesome effect, it had
cured her of her propensity for forgery and theft, bethinks herself that
calumny, if the envenomed shaft be only skilfully aimed, might yield a
golden prize. This contemplated slandering of the queen “was an arrow I
still preserved,” says Madame de la Motte, “as the best in my quiver,
resolving to threaten, but not to shoot till reduced to the very last
extremity.”[393] In pursuance of this resolution, rumours are wafted
abroad—care being especially taken that they shall cross the Channel
and penetrate to the royal apartments at Versailles—to the effect that
the Countess de la Motte is engaged in writing her “Mémoires,”—the very
titles of the chapters of which she had managed to get published in
the English newspapers,—wherein she intends to give “an exact detail of
the extraordinary events which contributed to raise her to the dignity
of confidant and favourite of the Queen of France, with some further
particulars relative to the mysterious transaction of the Diamond
Necklace.”[394]
If Count de la Motte is to be believed, the Duchess de Polignac made at
this period a second visit to England, again “to drink the Bath waters.”
Our opinion, however, is that, either by accident or design, he has put
forward the date of the visit (which it is quite certain the duchess made
early in May, returning to France at the end of June)[395] for upwards
of a month; for Madame de la Motte, according to her own statement, did
not arrive in England until the early part of August. Either the case
is as we have suggested, or else the countess arrived in England more
than a month earlier than she represents herself to have done. Supposing
this to be the fact, the visit of the duchess now alluded to would
be the same visit of which we have already spoken.[396] The count in
his autobiography states that, soon after his wife arrived in London,
he received a message from the Duchess of Devonshire (the beautiful
Georgiana), begging him to call upon her at Devonshire House. The count
goes there, and on being introduced into the drawing-room is presented to
the Duchess de Polignac and her sister the Countess Diane, who observe
to him that, having come over to drink the Bath waters, and having heard
that Madame de la Motte proposed publishing some memoirs, they thought
they might perhaps be of service to her—in other words, might save her
from fresh persecutions, and insure her the means of an honourable
existence for the future.
On the count communicating all this to his wife, she immediately
resolved, he says, to leave London with the least possible delay, for
she feels certain that the intention is to kidnap her and take her back
to the Salpêtrière, and threatens she will throw herself into the Thames
if her husband will not leave London with her that very day. The count,
knowing that she was quite capable of carrying out her threat, wrote to
the Duchess of Devonshire, explaining his wife’s fears, and informing the
duchess of her resolution. De la Motte, in answer to the Abbé Georgel’s
assertion that Madame de Polignac bought the MS. of the “Mémoires,”
affirms that at this time not a line of them was written, and never
would have been written, had it not been for M. de Calonne (madame’s old
friend and ex-controller-general), who called a few days afterwards and
suggested that the “Mémoires” should be at once written, so as to profit
by the offer of the queen. With this view he introduced to them a M. de
la Tour, a writer in the _Courrier de l’Europe_ to throw their rough
notes into shape; and in consequence the countess at once set to work,
and produced her celebrated “Mémoires Justificatifs.” Supposing this
statement to be true, the chances are, that the Duchess de Polignac, in
the settlement she made with the De la Mottes, provided for these memoirs
never seeing the light. In one of those letters of court gossip, from
which we have made frequent quotations, it is explicitly stated that
Madame de Polignac was assured that “these writings would not appear.”
The queen, who was no doubt gratified at the success which she believed
had attended the Duchess’s negotiations, had all the apartments of the
latter newly furnished at her own expense just before the duchess’s
return from her mission, and went, accompanied by the king, to sup with
her on the evening of her arrival.[397] One can plainly see that the
spirit which pervades this book of Madame de la Motte’s was prompted by
an axiom of which she is herself the author, and which is to be found
in the second volume of her “Life.” “_No calumny_,” says she, “_is
so certain to be believed as that which one woman propagates against
another_.”[398] In the midst of the long string of infamous slanders in
these so-called Justificatory Memoirs, with which the writer has sullied
for all time the name of a noble-hearted, if somewhat erring woman,
there occurs this passage: “If the Queen of France were not what she is,
should I have been to her what a defenceless bird is in the hands of a
froward child, who, after being amused with it for a few moments, strips
it of its feathers one by one, and then throws it into the destructive
talons of a devouring animal?” Most people, after reading these “Mémoires
Justificatifs,” will be inclined to reverse the application of the above
simile, and will look upon poor Marie-Antoinette as the defenceless bird,
and seek for the devouring animal, with its destructive talons, in Jeanne
de St. Remi de Valois.
When the MS. of these “Mémoires” was completed, it was sent to M.
de Calonne, who, according to the count, altered it to suit his
own purposes. Madame says that the ex-minister even added indecent
expressions against the queen—his aim being to get recalled to France
and to secure the restoration of the blue ribbon of which he had been
deprived. With this object in view, armed with the De la Motte libel, the
ex-minister writes to Versailles, offering terms. The queen, however,
rejects his proposal with disdain. Calonne now desires to have the MS.
printed without delay, and for this purpose orders type and presses to be
sent to the house where the De la Mottes reside, so that the work may be
done in all secrecy.
During its progress, the ex-controller-general seems to have carried
on an intrigue of another kind with the countess, and one which was,
moreover, so notorious as to be openly referred to in the scandalous
publications of the time.[399] He used to twit her about the branding
she had received, and on one occasion, when the countess was boasting
in a large assembly of the capital hand she held at picquet, he
spitefully observed she had better be careful, or she would certainly be
_marked_.[400] Some little misunderstanding which occurred between the
pair made them thenceforth at daggers-drawn with each other.
Just about this time, a new ambassador from the French court arrives in
England—the Marquis de la Luzerne, brother of the Bishop of Langres, the
countess’s early patron, and reputed lover. He has heard of Calonne’s
proceedings, and loses no time in sending an envoy to the De la Mottes,
to point out to them that Calonne will be certain to play them false,
and to make arrangements for an interview. Calonne gets scent of what
is going on, and tries to carry off the MS., but does not succeed. The
interview with the ambassador takes place; Count de la Motte shows M. de
Luzerne the MS., with Calonne’s corrections and interlineations, and it
is arranged that the ambassador shall make a definitive proposition so
soon as he has received instructions from Paris. Calonne hears of this
interview, goes to the De la Mottes, and demands the restitution of the
MS.; threatening all the terrors of the law if they do not comply. The
count remains firm, and madame, by the aid of an English naval officer,
who subsequently translated her “Mémoires” into English, shows up the
ex-French minister of finance in a pamphlet, which she styles, “A Scourge
for Calonne,” and which goes off like wildfire, copies fetching as much
as six louis each in Paris on its first appearance.[401] The Marquis de
la Luzerne, having received his instructions, communicates them to the
count. He is commissioned to make an offer of ten thousand livres a year,
with fifty thousand livres down, to enable the De la Mottes to discharge
their more pressing debts. The countess, according to her husband’s
account, is opposed to accepting this very liberal offer, talks very
big about her position before the world, clearing her character, &c.;
the count, however, thinking that the solid pudding is to be preferred
to all this, over-persuades his wife, and they give their acquiescence.
The money is to be speedily forthcoming; but, unfortunately, one
of those proverbial slips between the cup and the lip now chances.
Cardinal-Archbishop Loménie de Brienne is dismissed from his office of
prime minister, and M. Necker is summoned to occupy his place, and M.
Necker will have nothing whatever to do with a De la Motte negotiation
in any shape or form. Such is the count’s version of this affair of the
“Mémoires,” but, like everything else from the De la Motte mint, it must
be received with suspicion.[402]
When or how the MS. of these “Mémoires,” of Madame de la Motte’s was sold
to the French court, we have no means of ascertaining; but that it was
sold, and that after the sale the “Mémoires” were published in breach
of good faith, is a moral certainty. In all probability the Duchess de
Polignac negotiated the purchase, which was likely enough carried out
through the medium of the French ambassador, the statement about M.
Necker being a falsehood concocted to conceal the fact of any sale of the
MS. taking place. Madame Campan asserts, in the most solemn manner, that
she herself had seen, “in the queen’s hands, a manuscript of the infamous
memoirs of the woman Lamotte, which had been brought to her from London,
and which were corrected by the very hand of M. de Calonne in all those
places where a total ignorance of the usages of the court had made this
wretch commit the most palpable errors.”[403]
In the doubtful Lamballe Memoirs this Princess is represented as giving
a most circumstantial account of her having become the purchaser of a
printed copy of Madame de la Motte’s “Mémoires Justificatifs” corrected
by the hand of M. de Calonne, and of the existence of which she was first
made acquainted by a letter addressed to her by Sheridan. This occurred
immediately subsequent to a visit paid by her to England where she went
on two occasions—once during July 1787,[404] and a second time in June
1791.[405] On the receipt of the work in question she delivered it, she
says, to the queen, who at once brought it beneath the notice of Louis
XVI. in proof of Calonne’s villainy. Had the princess’s narrative stopped
here we might have felt disposed to put faith in it, but, unfortunately
for its claims to be regarded as authentic, it goes on to say that the
king forthwith indignantly ordered Calonne to resign his portfolio, and
that the minister begged permission to return it to the king with his own
hands. On this request being granted, the book was produced, and a scene
ensued which ended in the king leaving the room, and Calonne falling upon
his knees before Marie-Antoinette and imploring her to pardon him.[406]
Now as Calonne was dismissed from office, and exiled from Paris in April
1787, three months before the Princess de Lamballe’s first visit to
England, and more than four years before her second, and was never called
upon to serve the king afterwards, and as moreover Madame de la Motte’s
first libel, her “Mémoires Justificatifs,” was not printed until 1789,
it is quite certain that there is not a particle of truth in the above
narrative, which induces us to believe that the so-called “Mémoires
relatifs à la Famille Royale de France” claiming to be based on a private
journal of the Princess de Lamballe’s, are, like many other pretended
Memoirs of the time, nothing more than a clumsy forgery.
Madame de la Motte herself indirectly admits that it was the desire of
pecuniary gain rather than any particular anxiety to “clear her character
before the world,” which induced the publication of her “Justificatory
Memoir.” “My husband,” says she, “standing on the very brink of
ruin”—they had received since they had been in England two thousand two
hundred pounds for their diamonds, and at least as much more we should
suppose for the MS. of the “Mémoires,” so that if this statement is
true, they must have dissipated between four and five thousand pounds in
the course of a couple of years—“was necessitated to have recourse to
printing my ‘justification’ as the only means of satisfying the craving
demands of his creditors, whom he was obliged to avoid, as they made
every effort to arrest him; while I, with misery like a vulture gnawing
at my heart, and poverty chasing even at my very heels, detesting that
burden of life which it is yet my duty to support, and, God forgive me!
cursing the hour of my birth, remained defenceless—unable to protect
myself from insult, or to ward off the blows which malice aimed at my
reputation.