IX. 1784. SOI-DISANT CONFIDANT OF THE QUEEN.—AT VERSAILLES AND LITTLE TRIANON.

In the preceding chapters we have measured the period between the year 1756, when Jeanne de Saint-Remi, now Countess de la Motte of her own creation, was born, and the close of the year 1783, when she had reached the age of twenty-seven years. We have witnessed the destitution of her early days, the dependence of her youth on the kind bounty of a noble benefactress, and the career of adventure and precarious means suddenly plunged into to avoid a life of religious seclusion. We have seen her making her escape from flagrant shame by an improvident marriage; have seen the opening of her conjugal life darkened by a new term of penury and privation, mitigated only by a system of constant appeals for charity. We have also seen that a long and patient probation in the same course had proved barren and abortive in the end, her condition being then precisely the same as it was in the beginning. We can readily conceive that her name and her pretensions had at length come to be regarded as little else than a by-word and a nuisance, and that the time was at hand when the former would have no other influence beyond provoking indignation and contempt.

The family resources proved so far insufficient, that early in the year 1784 household goods and wearing apparel were alike in pawn at the Mont de Piété, which is hardly to be wondered at, as the winter was one of unprecedented severity. Heavy and constant falls of snow rendered any kind of traffic through the streets of Paris impracticable. The Seine, too, was frozen over, so that the transport of provisions and firewood to the capital was entirely stopped.⁠[61] The times were of the hardest: the winter extended far into the year, and in the month of April the countess solicited and obtained permission to alienate her own and her brother’s pension—the sister, we presume, was obstinate, and would not dispose of hers, hence her being sent adrift to shift for herself, and becoming an inmate of the Abbey of Jarcy—to a goldsmith and money-lender, named Grenier, for the sum of nine thousand livres.⁠[62] This amount, however, was insufficient to liquidate the whole of their debts, and at midsummer the countess was forced to borrow three hundred livres from Father Loth to pay her quarter’s rent.⁠[63] The two pensions utterly gone, beggary and open vagrancy loom in the distance, for the cardinal’s gifts, however handsome they may have been at this period, go but a small way now that ever-increasing debt is supplemented by habitual extravagance. In a few months more the wretched adventurers will be forced to quit their “spacious appartement” in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Gilles, and go forth into the streets and highways, and in the name of Valois again implore charity of the passing stranger. What remedy—what desperate remedy could be devised to prevent this?

The countess’s interview with the Countess de Provence, after the fainting scene, had made some little noise, and reports were spread to the effect that Madame Elisabeth, the king’s sister, had since received her on several occasions, and had promised to support her claim for the recovery of the Valois estates, and to recommend her case again to the queen. We have no means of judging whether these reports were true, but as Madame Campan admits Madame Elisabeth to have been the countess’s “protectress,” there was in all probability some real foundation for them. Shortly afterwards, however, other reports, which were undoubted fabrications, got into circulation. The purport of these was, that Madame de la Motte had been honoured by the notice of Marie-Antoinette, that she was received privately at the Petit Trianon, and was rising rapidly in the royal favour. To give an air of probability to this assertion, the countess, who had contrived to scrape acquaintance with the gatekeeper of the Trianon, managed to be seen occasionally stealing out from thence, as though returning from one of these pretended interviews with royalty.

No sooner did it get bruited abroad that the Countess de la Motte had credit at court than she was applied to by that busy and motley group of suitors—some of them in search of places and appointments, others in quest of patronage for new inventions, or on the look-out for opportunities to submit new schemes of taxation and finance, and others again seeking redress of real or fancied grievances—who gather together in the vicinage of royalty. The daring woman saw her chance, and entering boldly on a career of imposture, began to traffic on a credit that had no foundation, and to sell an influence which she could not exercise. This new vocation bid fair to prove a much readier source of emolument than her state petitions for relief. People came to her of their own accord, waited in her antechamber for an interview, conjured and supplicated her to lend them her protection, and in the meantime to permit them to show their gratitude by anticipation, and in a substantial form.

In this new line of business she was assisted by an old acquaintance and former comrade of her husband’s in the gendarmerie, one Rétaux de Villette, son of a late director-general of excise at Lyons, and at this time about thirty years of age. Villette left Lyons when a lad, and accompanied his mother to Troyes, where he completed his education. His sister having married a captain of artillery, and being himself inclined to a military career, he followed his brother-in-law to the schools of Douai and Bapaume, and when this latter establishment was suppressed, entered the gendarmerie, where he formed a sort of intimacy with M. de la Motte—an intimacy which was afterwards renewed at Bar-sur-Aube, whither his mother had removed from the neighbouring town of Troyes. Villette having exhausted the paternal patrimony, had come to Paris to push his fortunes. His ambition was to obtain a sub-lieutenancy in the marshalsea, still he was not averse to turning his hand to anything that offered itself. He was not deficient in talent, and had a certain facility of expression; for he wrote smartish articles in the Gazette, could compose pleasing enough verses, and was a very fair musician.⁠[64] Nevertheless he was one of those indolent, careless men, without the slightest forethought, who cannot follow any regular calling, because they are only stirred into activity by sudden caprices, and who too often serve no other purpose beyond replenishing the world’s stock of rascaldom, and doing their best to save it from dying out. Finding that he was a suppliant for court favour, Madame de la Motte first of all persuaded him that she could advance his interests, then that she would procure for him some better post than a sub-lieutenancy in the marshalsea, and finally engaged him as her secretary, and by dint of “her piquant face, her bright and piercing eyes, her white and transparent skin, her fine teeth, her enchanting smile, her pretty hand and little foot, her graceful manner, and natural wit,” soon enrolled him as one of her lovers.⁠[65]⁠

We will here let the countess give her own account of her pretended intimacy with Marie-Antoinette, an intimacy which it is impossible to believe in for a single moment, since those who lived in the queen’s service and society were unanimous in maintaining that the countess was never once admitted to the queen’s presence, nor seen in the company of any lady of her court.

“One day,” she observes, “as I was paying my court to Madame (the Countess de Provence), I was attacked with a sudden indisposition (the fainting fit of which we have already spoken), which made some noise at the palace; the queen, having become acquainted with the incident, deigned to evince some interest in me; her majesty even sent for Madame Patri, the principal femme de chambre of Madame, to ascertain the particulars.

“Nothing can escape the eyes of courtiers. They remarked from that hour, that her majesty always distinguished me by a gracious look, whenever I appeared in her presence. The cardinal (de Rohan) surpassed everybody in giving full rein to his conjectures.

“As I had received his benefits, the most natural gratitude linked me to his fate ... for him I had no secrets; he had none for me ... his ambition was to be prime minister, mine to be a lady of influence at Fontette....

“Nothing could equal the astonishment into which I was thrown one day, when having placed myself in the line of the queen’s passage, her majesty condescended to honour me with one of those smiles which are so hard to be resisted. I remember that the next moment, having chanced to raise my eyes towards him (the cardinal), I saw his own sparkle with delight. ‘Do you know, countess,’ said he, ‘that my fortune is made? it is in your hands along with your own.’... He told me I ought not to hesitate to throw myself at the queen’s feet on the 2nd of February, during the procession of the blue ribbons (the order of the Holy Ghost).... Accustomed to be guided entirely by him, I promised to do what he enjoined me.

“The important day arrived.... I went to the palace in full dress, and waited in one of the saloons for the return of the procession. When the queen was passing, I flung myself at her feet, and delivering my petition, said to her, in a few words, that I was descended from the house of Valois; that as such I had been acknowledged by the king; that the fortune of my ancestors not having been transmitted to me along with their title, I had no other resource than the king’s munificence; that having found every one of the avenues leading to her majesty unrelentingly closed against me, despair had driven me at last to take the present step.

“The queen raised me up with kindness, took my petition, and, perceiving that I trembled, deigned to bid me be of good cheer. She then passed on, telling me to be at ease, and assured me that due attention should be paid to the object of my request.”

In the first private interview she pretends to have had with the queen, the countess relates that Marie-Antoinette said to her:

“‘I have read your memorial, the object of which is to urge the minister to act and bestir himself with respect to the property which belonged to your house. Having some private reasons not to second your views ... I cannot reconcile the desire I may have to serve you publicly, with the inclination I feel to see you in private ... but I shall still be able to render you indirectly the services you wish to obtain from me.’... Her majesty concluded by presenting me with a purse.”⁠[66]⁠

A few days afterwards, she tells us, she was summoned to repair to the Little Trianon, between eleven and twelve o’clock at night! when she received fresh proofs of the queen’s generosity. “She presented me at parting,” says the countess, “with a pocket-book containing ten thousand livres (francs) on the caisse d’escompte, and concluded by saying: ‘We shall meet again.’”⁠[67] Madame de la Motte then goes on to state that it is needless to tire the reader with a repetition of the frequent interviews she had with the queen, of whose munificence on these occasions she received numerous proofs. “The Cardinal de Rohan,” she says, “marked her growing favour, and insisting that his fortune was in her hands, conjured her to let no opportunity slip of mentioning his name to his sovereign.”

Let us turn now to the other side of the picture, and see what is said by persons likely to be well informed, as well as by Marie-Antoinette herself, respecting this pretended intimacy.

Lacretelle, whose truth and honesty are beyond question, says “the Countess de Valois never had the least access to this princess,” and that “one cannot read this libel (the countess’s Memoirs) without being convinced that the queen never had any kind of communication with these creatures, whose presence would have defiled the throne.”⁠[68]⁠

The Baron de Besenval speaks of the countess in his Memoirs as “one of those creatures who live by intrigue and the sale of their charms.”⁠[69] Was such a person likely to have been received privately at the Trianon? The Baron de Besenval was a regular visitor there himself, and would have heard of this strange and familiar intercourse if it had ever existed.

What does Madame Campan, first femme de chambre to the queen, who enjoyed the confidence of her royal mistress, and was, moreover, constantly in her company, and who, biased though she may seem to be in her favour, invariably speaks what she believes to be the truth—what does she say respecting this tissue of invention?

“Neither the queen herself, nor any lady about her, ever had the slightest connection with the swindler, and during her prosecution she could only point out one of the queen’s servants (a man named Declos or Leclos), a page of the queen’s chamber, to whom she pretended she had delivered Böhmer’s Necklace ... Declos,⁠[70] on being confronted with the woman La Motte, proved that she had never seen him but once, which was at the house of the wife of a surgeon-accoucher at Versailles, and that she had not given him the Necklace.” Madame Campan further states that the countess “had never even been able to make her way into the room appropriated to the queen’s women.” The same lady also furnishes this additional piece of testimony:

“The queen,” she says, “in vain endeavoured to call to mind the features of this person, whom she had so often heard spoken of as an intriguing woman, who came frequently on Sundays to the gallery at Versailles; and at the time when all France was taken up with the prosecution against the cardinal, and the portrait of the Countess de la Motte-Valois was publicly sold, her majesty desired me one day when I was going to Paris to buy her the engraving, which was said to be a tolerable likeness, that she might ascertain whether she could recollect in it any person whom she had seen in the gallery.”⁠[71]⁠

Marie-Antoinette herself, when questioned by Louis XVI. on the subject of this intimate acquaintance, assured the king that she had never seen the woman. In a few simple words she repeats her denial when confronted with the Cardinal de Rohan, immediately preceding his arrest. And in a private letter to her sister, written at a time when the affair of the Diamond Necklace was making a great noise throughout Europe, Marie-Antoinette thus denies all previous knowledge of her pretended confidant:

“I have never seen this woman La Motte; it seems she is an adventuress of the lowest class, with a good address and a bold air; she has been seen two or three times on the back staircase of the Cour des Princes; this is a scheme agreed on to deceive her dupes and to spread the belief that she is received in my closet. The Duke de Nivernois on this occasion told me that an adventuress from Paris had made her fortune in the days of Madame de Maintenon by seating herself twice a week on the stairs; one day she found the drawing-room of that lady open; she went in, and seeing no one near she walked up to the balcony over the Place d’Armes, thus proclaiming to every one that she was in favour with Madame de Maintenon. We are surrounded in this place by persons of that class.”⁠[72]⁠

Again, at the very last, only a few hours before her head was severed from her body by the guillotine, she still firmly repudiated all knowledge of any such individual. Let us refer to the report in the Moniteur of the “Procès de Marie-Antoinette,” and see what transpired in reference to the matter.

“The president to the accused: Was it not at the Little Trianon that you first met with the woman La Motte?

“The accused: I never once saw her.

“The president: Was she not your victim in the business of the famous Necklace?

“The accused: She could not have been, since she was unknown to me.

“The president: So then you persist in denying that you were acquainted with her?

“The accused: Mine is not a system of denial; what I have said is the truth, and that I will persist in.”

Of course it was the truth; had it not been, Fouquier Tinville had abundant means of proving the contrary; all France in these days was overrun with spies and informers. The public accuser had really no facts to allege against the prisoner in regard to Madame de la Motte, and confessed he had not when ordered to bring the queen to trial. Had there been the least particle of evidence to prove Marie-Antoinette’s intimacy with so abandoned a woman, the attorney-general of the Revolutionary Tribunal would have been only too glad to have brought it forward. He had not far to go, for among the witnesses actually produced were the Count d’Estaing, formerly in command at Versailles, who knew both the queen and the countess, and was a frequent dinner-guest of the latter in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Gilles; and Renée Sévin, for six years under-femme de chambre to Marie-Antoinette, yet to neither of these did he put a single question upon the subject. Again, there was Reine Millot, another old servant at Versailles, “bonne citoyenne, excellente patriote,” who did her best to sacrifice her unhappy mistress, deposing that the Count de Coigny had told her that the queen had sent two hundred million francs to her brother, the Emperor Joseph, to enable him to make war upon the Turks, and that she would end by ruining France; and further, that she knew from different people that the queen had conceived the design of assassinating the Duke d’Orléans, which when the king heard of, he ordered her to be immediately searched, and two pistols being found upon her, he commanded her to remain in her own apartment for the space of fifteen days.⁠[73] A witness such as this would have been only too eager to repeat all the scandal current at Versailles respecting the Countess de la Motte and the queen. Moreover, Count de la Motte himself was known to be living at Bar-sur-Aube at the time of the queen’s trial, and could have been readily enough produced, only Fouquier Tinville was perfectly well aware that he could depose to nothing in the slightest degree incriminatory of her whose death, though already determined on, the revolutionary party would have been glad enough to have justified on such a poor pretence even as complicity in the Necklace fraud.