The Queen`s Confession (43 page)

And after that they had the foolish Cardinal in their web. He really believed that the Comtesse had arranged that meeting with me. How could he have been so foolish? Did he really think that I would come out into the park at night to meet a man? But then he had heard those scurrilous lampoons which had assigned to me a hundred lovers, and like so many people in France he believed them. Perhaps that was why he had this impossible dream of becoming one of them.

A friend of Jeaime’s, a young lawyer, happened to have called at the house at Rue NeuveSaint-Gilles and was there when the carriage arrived bringing the adventurers back from the Grove of Venus; he wrote an account of what he saw, which I have since seen:

“Between midnight and one in the morning we heard the sound of a carriage from which emerged Monsieur and Madame de la Motte, Retaux de Villette and a young woman from twenty-five to thirty years of age with a remarkably good figure. The two women were dressed with elegance and simplicity…. They talked nonsense, laughed, sang, so that one scarcely knew whether they were on their head or their heels.

The lady I did not know shared in the general hilarity, but was timid and kept within bounds. The face of this woman had from the first thrown me into that sort of restlessness which one experiences in the presence of a face one feels certain of having seen before without being able to say where. What had puzzled me so much in her face was its perfect resemblance to that of the Queen. “

Maitre Target of the French Academy, who was one of the counsels for the Cardinal’s defence, wrote:

“It is not surprising to me that in the darkness the Cardinal should

have mistaken the girl d’Oliva for the Queen the 319 same figure, same complexion, same hair, a resemblance in physiognomy of the most striking kind.”

So the first little plot had succeeded, and now it was time to begin the greater one. Target put the case clearly when he stated on behalf of his client:

“After this fatal moment [the meeting in the Grove of Venus] the Cardinal is no longer merely confiding and credulous, he is blind and makes of his blindness an absolute duty. His submission to the orders received through Madame de la Motte is linked to the feeling of profound respect and gratitude which are to affect his whole life. He will await with resignation the moment when her reassuring kindness will fully manifest itself, and meanwhile will be absolutely obedient.

Such is the state of his soul. “

Madame de la Motte realised this. She must have been anxious as she felt her way for even her optimistic mind must have realised that one false step could bring the entire edifice of fraud and deceit tumbling to the ground.

Jeanne sought an interview with the Cardinal very shortly after the meeting and told him that the Queen most clearly favoured him, for she, who was the most generous of women, wished to bestow fifty thousand livres on a noble but impoverished family. She was a little short of money at the moment but if the Cardinal could lend her this amount . and give it to Madame de la Motte to bring to her . she would know he was truly her friend.

How could the man be such a fool! —the old question which I and countless others have asked ourselves since this wretched business came to Ught.

He believed what they said because he wanted to believe;

but all the time he was in close touch with Cagliostro, who assured him that he could see into the future and there he saw the Cardinal reaping benefits from his association with a person of very high rank.

That satisfied the superstitious and gullible Cardinal.

Being short of money he borrowed from a Jewish money320 lender, assuring him he would be honoured if he knew to what purpose the money was to be put.

In this manner Jeanne began to extract more money from the Cardinal, enough for her to be able to buy a mansion in Bar-sur-Aube, where she had once lived in such wretchedness and where she could continue with the fiction that she was now respectfully received at Court on account of her relationship with the Royal Family.

Had she been content with what she had managed to purloin she might have lived for the rest of her life in comfort. But she was an insatiably ambitious woman, and she conceived the plan for the necklace.

It was at one of her parties that she had heard of the jewellers’ trouble. Boehmer and Bassenge talked of nothing but the diamond necklace which they could not sell. They had built their hopes on the Queen, and the Queen did not want their necklace. Madame de la Motte had been boasting about her influence with the Queen; she and her husband had already extracted money from various people on the pretext that they could help them to rich posts at Court. So it was natural that the anxious jewellers should speak to her about the necklace and ask her if she could use her influence to interest me in it.

Madame de la Motte replied that this might be possible-and from that moment the scheme was conceived.

She would do her best to advise the Queen to reconsider buying the necklace. Could she herself see it? Nothing easier. The jewellers would bring it to the Rue NeuveSaintGilles.

I can well imagine how the de la Mottes were dazzled by it. I remembered when I had first seen it how startled I was. It was in truth composed of some of the finest gems in Europe. I would never have wished to wear it. Secretly I thought it vulgar; but it was certainly a magnificent piece-in fact the most splendid I have ever seen.

I can remember it perfectly now. I have seen it so often in the drawing of me which circulated through Paris, for there were many ready to believe that I had stolen the necklace and when they wished to be particularly insulting they drew it about my neck.

In a necklace fitting closely to the neck were seventeen diamonds almost as large as filberts, and this in itself would have been dazzlingly beautiful; but the jewellers had added to this, loops with pear-shaped pendants, clusters and a second rope of diamonds; there was even a third row decorated with knots and tassels of the precious stones, and one of the four tassels in itself would have been worth a fortune. There were two thousand eight hundred carats in the necklace and there had never been one like it. There never would be again neither such a valuable necklace nor such a fateful necklace.

Once having seen it Madame de la Motte could not get it out of her mind. She did not want it as a necklace, but through those brilliant loops and tassels she saw herself living like a queen for evermore. If she possessed the neck lace and broke it up and sold the stones she would be a rich woman for the rest of her life.

Her energetic mind was working fast.

“We would give a thousand louis to anyone who could find us a buyer for the necklace,” tempted Boehmer and Bassenge.

How she must have laughed. A thousand louis. And the necklace worth sixteen hundred thousand livres! She would speak to the Queen, she replied haughtily, but she would not wish her friends the jewellers to reimburse her if she were able to arouse the Queen’s interest.

I can readily imagine their joy. Meanwhile de la Motte was planning her most ambitious scheme of all. The purchaser must naturally be the Cardinal de Rohan. A few letters purporting to come from me, and the foolish man was like a fish on the hook. Of course he would enter into negotiations for the necklace if it were my wish.

Madame de la Motte told the jewellers that the purchase would go through. A very great nobleman would make it on behalf of the Queen.

She, Madame de la Motte, did not wish her name to be mentioned in the affair it would be between Cardinal de Rohan, the Queen and the jewellers.

Overcome with joy, seeing a way out of all the anxieties of the past,

the jewellers offered Madame de la Motte a 322 precious stone in payment for her services. This she refused. She was only too happy to help, she said.

To the Cardinal she explained that I wished to buy the necklace without the King’s knowledge; and that I should need to do so on credit since I was short of money at the time.

“Her Majesty will pay by instalments,” she explained, ‘and this will fall due at intervals of three months. Naturally for such an arrangement the Queen must have an intermediary. She at once thought of you. “

The Cardinal during the trial explained what had happened:

“Madame de la Motte brought me a supposed letter from the Queen in which Her Majesty showed herself anxious to buy the necklace, anA pointed out that, being without the necessary funds for the moment, and not wishing to occupy herself with the necessary arrangements in detail, she wished that I would treat the affair and take all the steps for the purchase and fix suitable periods for payments.” On receipt of this letter the Cardinal was delighted. He would be happy to do anything for Her Majesty. He would feel honoured to make any arrangement she desired. The price was fixed at sixteen hundred thousand livres, payable within two years in four six-monthly instalments. The neck lace would be handed to the Cardinal on February ist and the first instalment would be due on August ist 1785. He drew up this agreement in his own hand and gave it to Madame de la Motte to show to her dear friend the Queen. Back came the note on gilt-edged paper with the fleur-delis in the corner signed “Marie Antoinette de France’ to say that the Queen was satisfied with the arrangements made and deeply grateful to the Cardinal.

It is strange when the Cardinal saw the necklace he had his first doubts. This man who believed that I would meet him by night in the Grove of Venus, who believed that he had a chance of becoming my lover, was astonished that I could wish to wear such a vulgar ornament as the diamond necklace.

He wavered. He would wish, he told Madame de la 323 Money, to have a document signed by the Queen authorising him to buy the necklace for her.

Madame de la Motte was not disturbed. Why not? Retaux de Villette had provided other documents. Why not this one? In due course it was produced, signed in the usual way, “Marie Antoinette de France,” and the word “Approved’ was written beside each clause in what purported to be my handwriting.

How could the Cardinal have looked at that signature and not known it false? How could he have believed I would sign myself thus?

I remember these questions being asked continually during the trial and afterwards; and one pamphleteer gave a possible answer:

“People are so easily persuaded as to the truth of what they desire. It was such a mistake as might easily have been made by a man with a lively agitated mind like that of the Cardinal who was pleased, delighted even, with an arrangement which fed some sentiment, some new view, in the endless labyrinth of his imagination.”

The deal was made. On February ist Boehmer and Bassenge brought the necklace to the Cardinal, who that—same day took it to the Rue NeuveSaint-Gilles, where Madame de la Motte was waiting to receive it. He was invited to wait in a room with a glass door through which he could watch the transfer of the necklace. He saw a young man in the Queen’s livery present himself to the Comte and Comtesse de la Motte with the words “By order of the Queen.” He took the casket and disappeared.

The Cardinal took his leave, and as soon as he had gone, Retaux de Villette, who had played the part of the Queen’s messenger, returned with the casket; and the conspirators sat down at a table to gloat over the finest diamonds in Europe.

But they had not made this plan merely to look at diamonds. They must be broken up and sold. They got to work without delay.

The whole story might have been discovered much earlier, for a few days

after the Cardinal ‘had handed over the neck324 lace a jeweller called at the headquarters of the Paris police to give the information that a man had brought him some extraordinarily fine diamonds which had obviously been taken from their settings by an unskilled person. As a result, Retaux, returning to the shop, was arrested.

With great plausibility Retaux explained that the diamonds had been placed in his possession by one of the King’s relatives, the Comtesse de la Motte-Valois. He was able to prove this, and at the name of Valois the police retracted and Retaux was released.

But it had been a warning that it was a mistake to try to dispose of the best diamonds in Paris, and the Comte set out for London to sell die stones. When he returned he was a rich man—although the London jewellers had benefited greatly by the sale, for naturally he did not get the full va hie of the diamonds. Now Madame de la Motte was in her element. She was a woman who could live in the present and did not much concern herself with the future—an attitude of mind which I understood perfectly She made a royal departure to Bar-sur-Aube with servants in splendid uniforms, a carnage drawn by four English horses—carpets, tapestries, furniture and clothes, she needed twenty-four carts to carry all her possessions with which she intended to furnish her mansion. On her English berline of a delicate pearl-grey colour she had die arms of the House of Valois engraved with die mono:

“Rege ab aw sangwnem, nomen, et lilia.” From die King my ancestor I derive my blood, my name, and die lilies.

There she lived royally as she must always have longed to live since she had heard diat she had Valois blood in her veins. But surely she must have known diat it could not last. There must be a’ reckoning.

Perhaps like myself she had to learn that what one sows me must reap.

The Cardinal had been arrested and had told his story implicating Jeanne. Two days later guards arrived at Bar-sur-Aube. Jeanne knew resistance was useless; she was taken prisoner and lodged in die Bastille.

The Queen was innocent and to give greater publicity to her innocence she desired the Parlement to judge the case. The result was that the Queen was thought guilty and that discredit was thrown on the Court.

NAPOLEON AT ST.

HELENA

7 saw that he [de Rohan would be unable to appear any more at Court.

But the action, which will last several months, may have other results. It began by the issue of a warrant of arrest which suspends him from all rights, functions and faculty of performing any civil act until judgment is pronounced. Cagliostro, charlatan. La Motte and his wife together with a girl named Oliva, a mud lark of the gutters, are in the same boat. What associates for a Grand Almoner, a Rohan and a Cardinal!