according to his own statement, without previous notice or proving
his identity, or even the shadow of a legal claim, he succeeds in
obtaining from the “domain” a sum of thirty thousand francs on account,
twenty-seven thousand francs of which he stows away in his pocket-book,
and the remaining three thousand, which are in assignats, he hands to his
deliverers to dispose of as they may think proper.[456]
It was lucky for the count that he had been transferred to the
Conciergerie, for at the time the foregoing scenes were being enacted in
this prison, this is what was transpiring at La Force, where the count
was originally confined. “At one o’clock in the morning of September
3rd,” writes Maton de la Varenne,[457] “the gate leading to our quarter
was again opened. Four men in uniform, each with a drawn sabre and
blazing torch, mounted our corridor, preceded by a turnkey, and entered a
room close to ours to search a box which we heard them break open. This
done, they halted in the gallery and began questioning one Cuissa to
know where La Motte was. La Motte, they said, under a pretext of finding
a treasure which they were to share in, had swindled one of them out of
three hundred livres, having asked him to dinner for that purpose. The
wretched Cuissa, whom they had in their power, and who lost his life that
night, answered trembling that he remembered the circumstance well, but
did not know what had become of La Motte. Determined to find La Motte,
and confront him with Cuissa, they ascended to other rooms and made
further search there, but evidently without success, for I heard them
say, ‘Let’s look among the corpses then, for in God’s name he must be
found!’”
The count had not long regained his liberty before he was discovered
by his niece, daughter of Madame de la Tour, she who as a child had
taken part in the famous incantation scene enacted by Cagliostro at the
Palais-Cardinal, and of which the countess made so much at the Necklace
trial. The game of appealing and petitioning against the judgment
rendered in the Necklace trial being now up, and it being the duty of all
patriots to hurl back foreign invasion, Count de la Motte returns to his
old profession of arms, raises a company of cavalry, composed chiefly of
former friends in the gendarmerie, gets appointed captain, has his troop
reviewed by the colonel on the Boulevards, and next day finds himself
denounced by patriot Burlandeux, who charges him with being both royalist
and aristocrat, and swears that the company he has joined is composed
entirely of men of his own stamp, with not a single _sans-culotte_
among them. The count not desiring to return to his old quarters in the
Conciergerie—for again there with Danton as minister of justice, the
chances are that he would only leave them for the guillotine—is glad
enough to return his sword to its scabbard, and accept a passport for his
native town of Bar-sur-Aube.
On his arrival there he finds the great pavilion attached to his house
occupied by the provincial directory, which necessitates his furnishing
a few rooms in the house itself for his own accommodation. Having done
this, he proceeds to Tonnerre to fetch his sister and niece, who have
taken up their residence there. At Tonnerre the count stays for several
weeks, smitten with the charms, or possibly the expectations, of a young
lady, only daughter of a rich proprietor. “I was thirty-six,” remarks
he—he was upwards of thirty-eight—“but I did not look so old; she was
eighteen.” The count finding himself favoured in his suit, asks the hand
of mademoiselle in marriage, and is accepted.
Time passes pleasantly enough for the next month or two; the count is
installed in the old house at Bar-sur-Aube, and has his sister and niece
residing with him. The shooting season is on, and only give the count
his dog and his gun and he will not lack for amusement. Of course he
makes frequent journeys to Tonnerre, although something like fifty miles
of cross roads intervene between the two places; but what are these to
a man in love, who has been accustomed to the saddle too all his life?
How he manages to live at this time he does not condescend to tell us.
There are no more sealed money packages from poor old Laporte. Was it on
the balance of the assignats which he received from the domain?—if he
ever did receive what he states—or was it upon his sister, Madame de la
Tour? We think the latter the most probable. M. de la Tour had emigrated,
and the count’s anxiety that his sister should live with him arose, we
expect, from his desire to live on her.
It is at this time, November, 1792, that the king is brought to trial;
the count is nervously anxious for news of the result of the proceedings,
simply because, as he admits, he still entertained some faint hopes of
being able to obtain a further supply of cash from the dethroned monarch.
Louis XVI. dead, the count is reduced to his shadowy claim on the domain.
During the next eighteen months, De la Motte leads the life of a
country gentleman at Bar-sur-Aube. He hunts, and shoots, and fishes,
and cultivates his little plot of land, and rides constantly over to
Tonnerre. The queen is now brought to trial, and he is appealed to, he
says, to come to Paris and depose against her, but declines to do so. “In
my opinion,” observes this contemptible hypocrite, professing to believe
in his wife’s pretended intimacy with Marie-Antoinette, “the queen was
not so blamable (in the Necklace affair) as Madame de la Motte believed.
In her position it was difficult to interfere between the law and its
victim. I was persuaded this sacrifice had cost the queen much, and I had
had proofs of the goodness of her heart.”[458] In May, 1794, the count
proceeds to Paris to urge his claim against the domain, which claim of
his has now become as much his fixed idea as the revision of his sentence
in the Necklace trial was a year or two ago. He met, however, with no
success; and after two months spent in wearying appeals, returns home
again, balked in all his plans, and thoroughly disgusted to find that
Bar-sur-Aube has now its revolutionary committee, and its denouncers of
_suspects_, and is by no means a secure place to reside in. Tonnerre,
he thinks, will be more preferable, so to Tonnerre he hies, but only to
find that it also has its denouncers. The count hastens home again, and
finds his sister and niece already arrested as the wife and daughter
of an _émigré_; thinking his turn will not be long in coming, he keeps
his horse ready saddled in his stable, puts a pair of pistols in the
holsters, and prepares to ride away at the first signal of danger.
With the view of keeping in with the revolutionary party, the count gives
a supper to the members of the committee, after which proof of patriotism
they grant him a certificate of citizenship in proper form. Protected by
this, he returns to Tonnerre, and proceeds to take the necessary steps
for his marriage. But the municipality will not permit the banns to be
published until the count produces a certificate of the countess’s death,
and this, owing to the war with England, he is unable to procure. Back
to Bar-sur-Aube the count rides again and obtains such certificate as
he can from the authorities there—his uncle, M. de Suremont, the same
that had to disgorge the jewels belonging to the count which he had
appropriated—being mayor at the time. Ere, however, the count can return
to Tonnerre he is arrested by order of a government commissioner, and
carried off by a couple of _militaires_ to Troyes, to the same prison
where his sister and niece are already confined. Here the time seems to
have passed pleasantly enough with music, singing, reading of plays and
flirtations between the male and female prisoners. Among the latter is
the “wife of an _émigré_, with a charming daughter of eighteen”—eighteen
seems to have been an irresistible age with the count. “Not having,” says
he, in the coolest manner, “any further relations with the people of
Tonnerre”—although he was about setting out to his wedding at the very
time he was arrested—“I decided upon marrying this young person.”
Fortunately for the count, Robespierre’s fall takes place at this period,
and he and his fellow-prisoners regain their liberty. On returning to
Bar-sur-Aube he finds that all his arms and horses have been appropriated
by the officers who arrested him, and that they and his servants have
pretty well stripped his house between them. He at once institutes
proceedings in the local courts, obtains a judgment by default, and the
two _militaires_ are cast in damages for fifty thousand francs, which
damages the count of course hopes to get some day or other. At any rate,
thenceforward these fifty thousands francs become his fixed idea, and we
hear no more of his claim against the domain.
The count, being sadly in need of ready cash, sells his house—that
house on which so large a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the
famous Necklace had been squandered, to the postmaster of Bar-sur-Aube.
The commodious stables serve admirably for the post-master’s stud of
horses, the elegantly decorated _salons_ and _chambres à coucher_ furnish
handsome reception and sleeping rooms for his guests. The great pavilion
is reserved for the count’s own use for the space of a year; and here
he, his wife—for he has married the charming young lady of eighteen—and
his mother-in-law, for a time reside. At the commencement of 1796 they
remove to what the count describes as a charming hermitage, surrounded
by woods and waterfalls and lovely views, and where they farm their
own land, and live a life of country ease. Several years—happy ones
after a fashion, one would suppose—thus glide by, until at length the
count’s mother-in-law, weary of the woods and the waterfalls and the
charming views, urges him to go to Paris. Horses, bullocks, cows, pigs,
poultry, and standing crops are forthwith sold, and to Paris the family
betake themselves. Bonaparte is now first consul; the count obtains an
audience of him, presents a petition, and is told by the great man that
he remembers seeing him years ago at Brienne. Nothing, however, comes of
the petition, and spite of all his efforts the count cannot find the two
officers against whom he has the judgment for fifty thousand francs. For
some years he seems to live in Paris agreeably enough—no doubt on the
resources of his mother-in-law—spending his time between the Palais Royal
and the Boulevards, and ever on the look-out for the two _militaires_
who plundered his house at Bar-sur-Aube. At last, by a lucky chance,
he tracks out one of them, has him arrested, and after various legal
proceedings, is disgusted at seeing him set at liberty on the ground that
the government had granted a general amnesty for all acts done in service
of the state at this period of national trouble.
Year after year rolls by, and the count witnesses the establishment of
the Empire, the fall of Napoleon, and his consignment to the Isle of
Elba, and the return of the Bourbons to France, to bring about which
latter event he took most energetic steps. Beugnot, whom the reader will
remember as the young barrister of Bar-sur-Aube, and who has managed
to keep his head upon his shoulders during the revolutionary whirl,
finds himself appointed minister of police, having already had the
title of count conferred upon him by Napoleon. De la Motte loses not
a moment in appealing to his former rival to serve an old friend and
fellow-townsman, and Beugnot, knowing perfectly well the count’s tastes,
and precisely what he is fitted for, gets the farmer of the gambling
tables in the Palais Royal—the leases of which Beugnot, in his capacity
of police minister, had to renew—to give him some congenial berth. The
count pretends that it was simply a pension of two hundred francs a month
which he received from Bernard, the lessee of the gambling saloons, and
that he accepted this with great repugnance. It is far more probable that
he had to do something for his paltry pittance—act, for example, as decoy
duck, and entice all the game he could to fowler Bernard’s net. Whichever
it may have been, post or pension simply, the count lost it before a year
was over, when Napoleon was again ruler of France.
At the second return of the Bourbons after the battle of Waterloo, Count
Beugnot is named postmaster-general. De la Motte again seeks him out, and
obtains a letter from him to Bernard, who reinstates him in his former
position, and such as it was, the count manages to hold it for a couple
of years or so, when he gets his dismissal. Of course he flies off to
complain to Beugnot, but Beugnot can do nothing for him; he however
promises to see if he can serve the count in some other way. Eventually
he appoints the count’s sister, Madame de la Tour, postmistress at
Bar-sur-Aube, but to the count himself he gives no sort of place.
“At this epoch” (1817), writes the count, in dolorous strain, “I had
just lost successively my sister-in-law (Mademoiselle de Saint-Remi),
my wife, and my mother-in-law. My son, aged fifteen, had determined
upon proceeding to Guadaloupe with the first battalion ordered to that
colony. I was therefore alone in the world, without consolation, without
help, without even the means of existence. Sent away from one hotel
after another through default of payment, humiliated at being obliged to
receive from my acquaintances the smallest pittance, that too frequently
proved insufficient for my most pressing wants, I felt my courage
forsake me, and all I thought of was putting an end to a life of so much
misery.”[459]
Being without the means of procuring a pistol, the count informs
us that he resolved on throwing himself into the Seine. Instead,
however, of doing this from one of the quays, or from the banks of
the river in the immediate suburbs, he makes a long country journey to
Franconville-la-Garenne, several miles away from the Seine at its nearest
point. This gives him opportunity for reflection, and he abandons his
suicidal intentions and returns to Paris determined to present a petition
to the king. It is curious to find the count in his old age returning to
the old De la Motte de Valois practice of memorializing the crown. Times,
however, had changed, and there were too many petitioners with real
grievances pressing their claims upon the Bourbons for any of the De la
Motte de Valois kith or kin to stand a shadow of a chance. As luck would
have it, when the count reached Paris, after a tramp of at least twenty
miles, he encountered a friend who gave him a good breakfast, and made
him some fair promises which put him in spirits again. He now prepares
his petition, and sends it to Marshal Beurnonville with a letter for the
Duke de Chartres. In a few days the count receives a reply. The duke has
forwarded his petition to his majesty, who has remitted it, accompanied
by a recommendation of his own, to the minister of his household. The
count rubs his hands at this good news, and anxiously waits for further
intelligence. At last a friend undertakes to make inquiries for him at
the ministerial bureau, and learns _Sacré Dieu!_ that all petitions
accompanied by special recommendations from the king are stowed away in
pigeonholes on their receipt, and are never seen or heard of more. The
count hastens to the marshal in a frantic state of mind; the marshal
does what he can to pacify him, and, as a matter of course, exhorts him
to be patient. Patient! poor comfort this to a man reduced “to live upon
horse-beans and boiled potatoes without seasoning, and rarely tasting
even bread,”[460] and whose span of life is well-nigh drawn out to the
allotted three score years and ten.
The count, in his depth of misery again resolves upon suicide, and again
sets forth on a long journey before executing his purpose. When night
sets in he is almost twenty miles from Paris. Selecting a favourable
spot, the old man proceeds to put his design into execution. First of
all he ties up his pocket-book, containing the letters of the duke and
the marshal, in his handkerchief, to which he attaches a heavy stone
or two, and then sinks it in the stream. He next flings in his hat and
cane, and prepares to follow them, but his courage forsakes him. Even
at well nigh three score and ten the love of life proves too strong. In
the dark waters before him the count sees, he says, only waves of blood,
and suddenly visions of the hideous night of September 2nd rise vividly
before his eyes. Rushing from the river’s brink he gains a meadow, where
he lays himself down and sleeps. On awaking he walks for upwards of a
couple of hours in the direction of Paris, and eventually finds himself
on the road to Choisy. Seeing a light in one of the houses of the village
he makes for it, and fortunately finds a man stirring, of whom he begs
a draught of water, telling him that he has been attacked and robbed by
thieves. The man, compassionating his miserable appearance, gives him a
glass of wine instead, and a stout stick to help him forward on the road,
and after a brief rest the count resumes his journey. He goes again to
his old friend, the same who gave him the breakfast on his return from
a similar expedition, tells him of his second adventure, and is again
relieved by him.
After having allowed his process against the two _militaires_ to slumber
for some years, the count revives it again, and applies to a matrimonial
agent to take it up, but it being quite out of this man’s line of
business, he, on the tanner’s principle of there being nothing like
leather, suggests matrimony to the count as the best way of surmounting
his misfortunes—informing him that he has an old dowager on his books who
is mad to marry one of the _ancien régime_. The count is nothing loth;
so an interview is arranged, and an invitation to dinner follows; and
the count, got up for the occasion, presents himself at the old lady’s
house, of which he already looks forward to being master. He is shocked,
however, at the number of children and grandchildren he is introduced
to, and still more shocked at the want of manners of the little brats,
and especially at an episode which transpires at the dinner-table, and
which delicacy will not permit us to describe. The dinner, which was of
the noisiest, in due course comes to an end, and with it the count’s
brief courtship of the dowager who was mad to marry a man of the _ancien
régime_.
For a year or two longer the old count drags on a miserable existence.
He succeeds in getting a lawyer to take up his case against the two
officers, and obtains from him an advance of five hundred francs. Five
hundred francs! why the old count must have been as delighted as he was
in the old days when he came over from England with drafts on Perregaux
for between two and three hundred times five hundred francs. This slice
of luck puts him once more in clover for a time, but only for a time, for
although the case prospers at the outset, it is finally decided against
him, and starvation again stares him in the face. At this moment a
dislocated limb forces the wretched old man to take refuge in the Hôpital
de la Charité, and here he remains for many weary months. “It was while I
was in this hospital,” says the count, “that M. Panisset came to see me,
and found me on my bed of suffering, and made me certain proposals on the
part of M. de Lavan, prefect of police.” [461]
When the count was sufficiently recovered to come abroad, his first
visit was to M. de Lavan, at the prefecture. “In 1825,” says M. Feuillet
de Conches, “a man bowed down by age and misery presented himself at
M. de Lavan’s bureau, and was received by the chief of his cabinet,
a person of rare merit and distinguished character, M. Duplessis. It
was Count de la Motte, who came to ask bread. M. Duplessis conversed
with him respecting the Necklace affair, and suggested that he should
write his memoirs, including his reminiscences of this mysterious
incident. La Motte thereupon wrote what was suggested, and with every
appearance of good faith. His notes only confirmed the details which
were already known. The queen’s memory had no need of being cleared by a
poor broken-down wretch who, after having helped to cast dirt upon her
august fame by contributing to the atrocious calumnies of his wife, now
came forward to deny them under the stroke of misery, in presence of a
royalist government. Still it was no less precious to have an authentic
denial written by one of the principal actors in this too famous drama,
an old man, worn down by misfortune, but retaining all his intelligence,
understanding the character of the atonement, and accepting it, according
to the opinion of M. Duplessis, with resignation and good faith. Out of
respect to memories, become almost saint-like; out of respect, above
all, to the daughter of Louis XVI., (to whom the resuscitation of the
name of La Motte, upon which evil-disposed people would have been certain
to comment, would have been the cause of considerable grief,) M. de Lavan
thought it best to envelop in obscurity the few days this unfortunate
being had still to live.”[462]
“The pretensions of M. de la Motte,” remarks M. Campardon, “were
exceedingly modest. All he asked was an annuity of from three hundred
to four hundred francs for life, and his admission into the Hospice de
Chaillot.” During the last years of his existence, the count, who was
commonly known by the nickname of “Valois-Collier,”[463] is said to have
taken his daily stroll beneath the famous “Galeries de Bois” of the
Palais Royal, which stood where the present handsome Galérie d’Orléans
now stands, and from being a favourite resort of the Russian officers
belonging to the army of occupation had come to be derisively styled
the Tartars’ Camp. To the very last, therefore, the Count affected the
neighbourhood of his old haunts, the gambling saloons of the Palais
Royal. Overwhelmed by infirmity and misery, he died in the month of
November, 1831, having almost attained his eightieth year.[464]
XLIV.
1786–1866.
THE CROWN JEWELLERS.—THE END OF THE NECKLACE CASE.—HISTORY AGAIN REPEATS
ITSELF.
To render our narrative complete, it is necessary we should inform the
reader how it fared with the crown jewellers—Böhmer and Bassenge, “Au
Grand Balcon,” Rue Vendôme—and what was the final upshot of the famous
Necklace case. In the first place the jewellers never received a single
_sou_ of the rich revenues of the abbey of Saint Waast—computed to
produce 300,000 livres a year, and really yielding 225,000 livres, which
had been assigned to them. Among their many creditors was M. Nicolas
Deville, the king’s secretary, to whom they owed 900,602 livres, and
to whom they re-assigned the aforesaid revenues for the liquidation
of their debt; but unfortunately the Revolution came, and with it the
sale of the property of the church for the benefit of the nation, so
M. Nicolas Deville in his turn did not receive a _sou_. Meanwhile,
Böhmer and Bassenge became bankrupt. The Cardinal de Rohan at his death
left behind him a will by which he appointed the Princess Charlotte de
Rohan-Rochefort his residuary legatee, and she accepted administration of
the estate on condition that she should not be held responsible to the
creditors for any deficiency that might exist.
At the time of the cardinal’s decease he possessed considerable landed
property in Baden, and personal property to a large amount, consisting in
part of money lent to his relatives, the Prince and Princess de Guéménée,
and the Duke de Montbazon, which the princess neglected to recover,
and which was consequently lost. The princess sold the lands in Baden,
and divided the proceeds among a few favoured creditors, but Deville
obtained little or nothing. After the Restoration—when all the property
remaining unsold was returned to its former owners or their heirs, and an
indemnity was granted for what had been sold—the princess, it is said,
neglected the interests of the creditors by omitting to recover the sums
due to the cardinal’s estate, and especially those owing by the Guéménée
family.