accusation, instituted against him in the name and by order of the king,
finding himself charged with a commission which interested his majesty,
and the importance of which was apparent from the mystery attaching to
it, troubled himself less about the best way of executing it than in
making a parade of this mark of confidence. On May 30th, 1792, (at ten
o’clock in the morning), he had the printed sheets conveyed in a cart,
which he himself accompanied, to the porcelain manufactory at Sèvres, and
caused a great fire to be made of them in the presence of all the workmen
belonging to the establishment, who were expressly forbidden to approach
near it. All this parade, and the suspicion to which it gave rise in
these critical times, caused the matter to be publicly talked of and
discussed; and the same evening it was brought before the Assembly, when
Brissot, and others of the Jacobin party argued with as much effrontery
as vehemence that these papers, burnt with so much secrecy, could have
been nothing else but the registers and correspondence of the Austrian
committee. M. de Laporte was called to the bar, and gave a most exact
account of the facts. Riston was also summoned, and confirmed the account
given by M. de Laporte. But these explanations, however satisfactory they
ought to have been, did not appease the violent feeling which this affair
had excited in the Assembly.”[419]
Madame Campan tells an interesting anecdote in connection with this
unfortunate casualty. “One day,” observes she, “M. d’Aubin came and
said to me, ‘the National Assembly has been engaged with a denunciation
made by the workmen of the manufactory of Sèvres, who brought to the
president’s desk a pile of pamphlets, which they said was the life of
Marie-Antoinette. The director of the manufactory was called to the
bar, and declared that he had received orders to burn these printed
works in the kilns used for baking the porcelain.’ Whilst,” says Madame
Campan, “I was giving an account of this to the queen, the king coloured
and hung his head over his plate. The queen said to him, ‘Do you know
anything of this, sir?’ The king did not answer. Madame Elisabeth asked
him to explain what it all meant. Still the same silence. I promptly
retired. A few minutes afterwards the queen came to me, and told me it
was the king who, out of regard for her, had caused the whole of the
edition printed from the manuscript of which I had spoken to her, to be
purchased, and that M. de Laporte had not thought of any more secret way
of destroying the work than having it burnt at Sèvres, in the presence
of two hundred workmen, one hundred and eighty of whom were certain to
be Jacobins. She told me that she had concealed her grief from the king;
that he was dismayed, and that she could say nothing when she found
that his tenderness and goodwill towards her had been the cause of this
accident.”[420]
Such was the end of the last of the De la Motte libels, which were
nevertheless reprinted in subsequent years, and even so recently as the
year 1846, more than half a century after their first dissemination, so
thorough is the vitality of calumny!
Marie-Antoinette, in reply to questions put to her at her trial, with
reference to the papers burnt at Sèvres, said: “I believe it was a libel.
I was not, however, consulted on the matter. I was told of it afterwards.
Had I been consulted, I should have opposed the burning of any writing
which was against me.”[421]
XLI.
MAY, 1789–AUG. 1791.
RETRIBUTION.—THE CRIMINAL AND HER ACCOMPLICES.
We must now go back in our narrative to the point of time when Count de
la Motte left England to traffic in his wife’s “Mémoires” abroad, with
what success we have already seen. Judging from the countess’s dolorous
account of their dealings with them in England, it is evident that
trouble as well as profit resulted from these “Mémoires Justificatifs.”
Neither she nor her husband were satisfied with disposing of copies of
them through the ordinary channels, but sought to force a trade among
merchants, and even hatters. It seems that nine hundred copies of the
French, and two hundred and fifty copies of the English edition of
the “Mémoires,” together with two hundred and eighty-three copies of
the countess’s “Scourge for Calonne”—published at the several prices
of one guinea, half a guinea, and five shillings—were intrusted to a
French hatter in New Bond Street, named Coup, who advanced the count, at
various times, something like three hundred pounds upon them. “Without
any previous demand,” says Madame de la Motte, “Coup came one day (May
14, 1789), in the absence of my husband, at the head of half a dozen
bailiffs, and lodged an execution at my house in Chester Place, where he
for the first time told me he had sufficient authority, my husband never
having even mentioned the circumstance to me.
“This was another disagreeable attack, and I saw my house and furniture
sold on the 21st of May, without being able to procure any account from
this man of the books he had sold, which would have been more than double
his demand, as at that particular juncture the sale of these books must
have been at once rapid and extensive. He even had the meanness to put
an execution upon four or five hundred ‘Mémoires’ which remained with
him, and which were sold for only six guineas, and were resold by the
purchasers at half a crown and three shillings each.
“Of the five thousand ‘Mémoires’ which had been printed, Coup had
received only nine hundred. I proceed to mention what became of
the remaining ones. My credulous husband, profuse of confidence,
notwithstanding he had been formerly deceived by a man pretending to be a
capital merchant, trusted this man with a certain number of ‘Mémoires,’
French as well as English, which he was to dispose of as merchandise to
his correspondents in different countries, from whom, in a short time, he
would receive remittances.
“M. de la Motte, though formerly deceived, yet gave him his confidence,
and delivered to him nine hundred and nine French ‘Mémoires,’ valued at a
guinea each, three hundred and eighty-six English ditto, valued at half
that sum, and a number of the ‘Scourge for Calonne,’ for all of which
we never received one farthing. This man’s wife, upon whom I took pity,
remained in my house during the time of the execution, under the specious
pretext of rendering me service. Alas! what service did she render me?
Small miniature paintings of great value, and other valuable articles to
the amount of forty or fifty guineas, she put into her pocket, and when
I reclaimed these effects, she made me a most audacious and impertinent
reply, to the effect that when M. de la Motte should pay them, they
would then give an account. Against their injustice I have no remedy.
They have no property, and I am heartily sick of having any business
with attorneys, who have already had too much to do with my unfortunate
husband.
“Mr. Ridgway, who was the publisher of all these ‘Mémoires,’ had, upon
supposition, about four hundred. These he sold for about one hundred
and eighty pounds, out of which there was eighty pounds for expenses. I
have scarce received one hundred pounds, and I have remaining, out of
eight thousand copies, eight hundred French, and three hundred English
‘Mémoires,’ for which I have received no money.
“Very soon after this execution was levied against me, my servant,
Angelica (the same who was with the countess in the Salpêtrière, we
suppose) got into bad company, and was advised to sue for her wages, to
the amount of twenty guineas. She applied to an attorney, who threatened
me with arrest. Alas! I that am nobly descended, that have been the
favourite of a queen, that have basked in the sunshine of affluence and
felt the smiles of distinction, am now nothing; and were it not for the
benevolence of some respectable characters, I might probably be reduced
to the dire necessity of returning to my former mean situation, and of
imploring charity of every passing stranger.”
And this is what ten years of struggling, scheming, intriguing,
and petitioning; of lying, swindling, forgery, theft, slander, and
depravity—and all to be lady of the manor of Fontette—have brought this
wretched woman to at last! “Misery, like a vulture, gnawing her heart,”
she says, “and poverty chasing at her very heels;” her household goods
sold for debt incurred with respect to her malicious libels; herself
threatened with arrest by the very servant whose release she procured
from the Salpêtrière, while her husband is flirting in Holland with some
flaxen-haired young _frau_. Either to console herself in the midst of
these accumulated troubles, or else—and which is by far the most likely
reason—with the view of pecuniary gain, she now writes her “Life,” in
two volumes, octavo, taking care to reiterate therein all her previous
malignant slanders against the French queen.
“Nothing,” says she, almost prophetically, “could have induced me to
undertake a task like this—to retrace a life which has already been
too long, and which, if my ideas of it are as just as I could wish, is
drawing fast to a close; nothing,” she continues, in her most high-flown
style, “could have roused me from this lethargy of grief but the desire
of rescuing my memory, when this fluttering pulse shall cease to beat,
and the hand that now guides my pen be mouldered into dust, from the
detractions of malice. Abused, insulted, and disgraced, the wounds of
bleeding honour are too deep to be closed. Do they call for vengeance?
No; there is a just and righteous Judge, before whose tribunal I shall
again meet my enemies, where neither the strong arm of oppression nor
the ‘gilded’ hand of offence will be sufficiently powerful to vanquish
innocence.”[422]
Such were the motives which inspired the countess to write her “Life.”
Curiously enough, the Duke d’Orléans chances to be in England at this
precise period—he arrived in London during October, 1789, and did not
return to France until the following July—and it is believed that he
encourages madame, by liberal bribes, to prosecute her task, even if he
does not have a hand himself in its production.[423] The count, too, is
by this time in Paris, and in communication with the government, and
there are the best of reasons for believing that the countess’s main
object in writing this work was to extort more money from a well-nigh
bankrupt royal exchequer. Be this as it may, the work is completed
towards the close of the year 1790, when the Count de la Motte is
receiving bribes both from the French ministry and the Orléans party;
but “its publication is delayed,” we are informed, “from overtures being
made for its suppression by a person pretending to be charged with a
commission for that purpose from the then highest powers in France. Some
months were wasted in fruitless negotiation, till the unexpected flight
and consequent embarrassments of the royal fugitives destroyed that
flattering prospect and pleasing hope of the countess’s being relieved
from the difficulties in which the most vindictive persecutions had
involved her. The speedy flight of the negotiator, who had impressed her
with an idea that she would soon be placed beyond the reach of fortune by
the immediate settlement of an annuity upon herself, and the liquidation
of her husband’s debts, on condition of giving up the manuscript and
printed copies of her ‘Life,’ left her to struggle with these new-created
difficulties which his flattering assurances had tended so greatly to
increase.”[424]
The struggle was but a brief one, for a very few days afterwards a
catastrophe occurred which speedily placed this wretched woman beyond
the reach of worldly trouble. According to the count, certain agents of
the Duke d’Orléans, finding themselves frustrated in their efforts to
induce Madame de la Motte to quit England, conceived the idea of having
her arrested, in the belief that, when they had her in their power, they
could by promises, and the prospect of a brilliant revenge, prevail upon
her to allow herself to be conducted to Paris. “Among these infamous
agents,” says the count, “there was one who went before a justice of
the peace and swore on the Scriptures that Madame de la Motte owed him
a hundred guineas, when he was immediately furnished with the necessary
order for her arrest. Armed with this document, the officers presented
themselves at her house, and requested her to accompany them—she being
ignorant all the while of even the name of the villain who had sworn to
the debt. Even had the debt been real, no one had the right to arrest
a married woman, and Madame de la Motte was sufficiently acquainted
with the laws of the country to be aware of this circumstance. Still,
it was necessary that she should furnish proofs of her marriage, which
she could not do, as, when she quitted Paris, all her papers remained
at the Bastille. These scoundrels, therefore, insisted upon carrying
her off; whereupon she declared to them that, if they used violence,
she would put herself under the protection of the passers-by, who would
come to her rescue. She told them, however, that she was going to send
for her lawyer, who would, if requisite, find the necessary bail, and
she despatched her servant for that purpose, cautioning her beforehand,
that if the lawyer was not at home, she was, on her return, to make her
a certain sign, and to say that he was coming, so that she might settle
within her own mind what course to pursue in this emergency. Angelica
had no sooner left, than the countess, with the view of keeping her
vile persecutors in a good humour, served them with some luncheon and a
bottle of port wine. While they were seated at table she walked about the
room, conversing with them, and looking out of the window to watch for
the return of Angelica, who, seeing her mistress at the window, and not
having found the lawyer at home, made her the sign agreed upon.
“Madame de la Motte, seizing a favourable moment, abruptly opened the
door and double-locked the scoundrels inside the room. The window being
open, one of them looked out to see whether she left the house. Her
extreme anxiety, and the state of confusion she was in owing to this
unjust aggression, were, no doubt, the reason of her not remarking the
hackney-coaches stationed before the house, into one of which she might
have got, and been driven in a few minutes into another county, when, in
the event of her persecutors discovering her retreat, it would have been
necessary for them to have procured a new writ before they could have
again arrested her. But instead of adopting this very obvious course,
and not, perhaps, imagining the fellows would be on the watch to see
what became of her, she took refuge in a neighbouring house, the people
belonging to which were known to her.
“In the meanwhile these infamous tyrants, by dint of kicking at the door
of the room, succeeded in getting themselves released. They immediately
made for the house which they had seen the countess enter, and demanded
of the owner that she should be surrendered up to them. The owner
replied that he knew no such lady, and refused to allow them to make a
search. They, however, insisted, declaring that if Madame de la Motte
were not there, they would take upon themselves all the consequences
of the trespass. Thereupon they proceeded to search the house. Not
finding the object of their search on the ground or first floors, they
ascended to the second story, the proprietor following them and renewing
his protestations. At last they arrived at a room, the door of which
being locked they demanded to have it opened. In vain they were told
that it was let to a lodger who always took his key with him when he
went out; not doubting but that Madame de la Motte was concealed here,
they threatened to burst the door open if the key were not immediately
forthcoming.
“The countess, who was really in this room, had persuaded herself that
a plot had been got up to carry her back to France, and there imprison
her again. She was consequently in a most bewildered state. Opening the
window, which looked into a yard, she got out and suspended herself
by her hands to an iron bar which served as a guard, determined to
precipitate herself to the ground if these fellows should succeed in
breaking in the door. Unfortunately it was of common deal, and a few
kicks sufficed to start the panels. The instant the countess caught
sight of the head of one of her pursuers she let go her hold and fell
with violence upon the pavement It was her misfortune not to have been
killed on the spot: her thigh was broken in two places, her left arm was
fractured, and one of her eyes was knocked out; in addition to which, her
body was a mass of bruises. In this state she lived for several weeks,
during which time I received from her a long letter giving me a detailed
account of this tragical event.
“Thus died, at the age of thirty-four, a woman whose whole life was one
long career of misery, but which might have ended happily had not the
privilege of her birth, by over-exalting her imagination, developed
beyond measure those sentiments of pride and ambition which conducted her
to her fall.”[425]
The editor of “The Life of Jeanne de St. Remy de Valois, heretofore
Countess de la Motte, written by herself,” furnished, in a supplement to
that work, a few additional particulars of the melancholy termination
of her career. He says, that “she received most of her injuries through
falling against the trunk of a tree, and that, while the feelings of
the surrounding spectators were agonized at the sight of the dreadful
spectacle which her bleeding and mangled form presented, the sheriff’s
officer, with a disgraceful apathy, was only intent to maintain the
legality of his caption, and refused to surrender the almost lifeless
body until he had good bail for its security.”[426]
Spite of the prominent place which the countess and her doings had
recently occupied in the public mind of Europe, the English journals
of the day notified the fact of her decease in such brief terms as the
following:
“August 26, 1791.—Died at her lodgings, near Astley’s Riding School,
Lambeth, the noted Countess de la Motte, of ‘Necklace’ memory, who lately
jumped out of a two pair of stairs window, to avoid the bailiffs.”[427]
Of the last surviving representative of the royal house of Valois,
Mademoiselle de Saint-Remi, the Countess’s youngest sister, a few meagre
particulars have been preserved. In Madame de la Motte’s days of grandeur
she was engaged to be married to a certain Paul François de Barras,
nephew of the Count de Barras, and a particular friend of her brother’s,
the young Baron de Valois, and who was subsequently better known as
commandant of the Convention forces against the Robespierre faction on
the 9th Thermidor, as the friend and patron of young Bonaparte, and chief
of the Directory. “My disaster,” (her sentence in regard to the Necklace
affair) naïvely observes the countess, “prevented the nuptials.”[428] In
July, 1786, we find the Abbess of Jarcy, to which convent Mademoiselle
de Saint-Remi had again retired, writing to the Baron de Breteuil on her
behalf, and thanking him for the assistance which he had accorded to
“virtue in distress.” A couple of months afterwards, when this assistance
is required to be renewed, the baron is favoured with a second letter in
the following terms:
“I consider my requests on behalf of Mademoiselle de Saint-Remi,” writes
the abbess, “founded as much on justice as on charity. The innumerable
examples of the goodness of our monarchs in such cases authorizes my
prayers. And although the example of a foreign sovereign ought not
to influence the will of our august master, I do not see that it is
wrong of me to dwell upon what the Emperor, brother of the best of
queens, has just granted to the wife and children of Count de Székély,
condemned to the pillory, the galleys, and other punishments. His goods
were confiscated, and the sovereign gave them back to his wife and
children. He did more: he preserved to them, even to the last survivor,
the perquisites which the culprit enjoyed as first lieutenant of the
Hungarian _gardes nobles_.
“Is the position of Mademoiselle de Valois less deserving of pity? Alas!
she deserves it much more. There remained some fortune to the Countess
Székély, whereas our unfortunate is alone in the world. Lastly, she is
of the blood of our kings—very respectable blood, M. le Baron, in the
estimation of both you and I.
“Shall I tell you, M. le Baron—and why should I hide it any longer?
Poison has twice failed to conduct the unhappy one to the tomb she longs
for. Without the most prompt help—without the assistance of antidotes
administered for twelve hours in succession, the unfortunate wretch would
have expired in the most frightful torments: less frightful, however,
than those which she is menaced with suffering without the alms which I
claim for her, and which you cannot refuse—I do not hesitate to say it—to
her extreme misfortunes.”[429]
Exactly one year subsequently, namely, in September, 1787, we find a
certain Abbé Phaph interesting himself very warmly in the young lady’s
affairs, and writing to the countess, who has only recently arrived in
England, urging her to sign some document which he has prepared, the
effect of which would be to give the sister a charge upon the De la Motte
property at Bar-sur-Aube. This the countess very decidedly declines to
do, and writes back requesting her sister to send her over “three gowns
which she fetched away from the mantua-maker’s”[430] just after her
arrest, and which she has ever since detained!
The next we hear of Mademoiselle de Saint-Remi is that she is living
openly with the aforesaid abbé as his mistress.[431] In April, 1787, we
find her engaged in a process against the domain for the restitution
of the family papers and deeds of succession, which she stated were
under the seals affixed to the effects of her sister; but orders having
come from Versailles for all proceedings in the matter to be suspended,
the suit had to be abandoned.[432] From this time we lose sight of
Mademoiselle de Saint-Remi until January, 1794, the height of the
Terror, when, caught up in the revolutionary vortex, she is sent to the
Port Libre prison as a _suspect_. Here she is at first mistaken for her
sister, until people call to mind that the countess has been dead some
years.[433] Six months afterwards she is transferred to the Carmes, and
in less than another month—namely, on the 22nd of August, three days
before the arrest and execution of Robespierre—she has the good fortune
to regain her liberty.[434] What subsequently became of her, and the
precise date at which she died, are involved in obscurity. Beugnot speaks
of her as having retired to some convent in Germany,[435] and a paragraph
in Count de la Motte’s “Mémoires” would lead us to suppose that her death
took place about the year 1817.[436]