Note 470 — XLV. SUMMING UP OF THE EVIDENCE AGAINST MARIE-ANTOINETTE.

Beugnot in his “Mémoires” furnishes us with a description of this bonbonnière, to which, it will be remembered, both the Count and Countess make allusion. (See ante, pp. 153, 223-4.) It would appear, from what Beugnot says, that it was never in the cardinal’s possession, though it had been got up to play a part in the fraud which was being practised upon him. Beugnot insinuates that had the officers of justice been more expeditious in their movements, they would have found in Madame de la Motte’s jewel-box this bonbonnière, which he tells us he had admired there a dozen times. “It was,” remarks he, “a black tortoiseshell box, surrounded by large diamonds, exactly alike, and of the finest water; the subject on the top of the box was a rising sun which dispersed the mists on the horizon; you touched a spring, and under this first subject was found a portrait of the queen, clothed in a simple white robe (without any other ornament on her head than her hair, raised up in the fashion of the period, and two earrings falling on her neck one on either side), and holding a rose in her hand, precisely in the same attitude and costume as the character played by Mdlle. d’Oliva in the park of Versailles. They would, moreover, have found in this box two of the cardinal’s letters, from which they would have seen that the De la Mottes had made him hope for it, as a token of reconciliation with the queen, and would have seen, too, that they had given him all the details of this magnificent jewel.”—Mémoires du Comte Beugnot, vol. i. p. 89.

Beugnot is apparently wrong in supposing that this bonbonnière escaped the vigilance of the officers of justice, as among the documents relating to the “Affaire du Collier,” preserved in the National Archives (X² 2576), is a memorandum without heading, date, or signature, which sets forth, that “among the effects found at Bar-sur-Aube in the house of Madame de la Motte, was a box with a portrait of the queen holding a rose,” which portrait, it goes on to say, the Sieur Malus, treasurer of finance, pretended he had orders to withdraw, but having been challenged by the Sieur Guichard, the procureur-général’s substitute, to produce his orders, he could only bring forward a letter addressed to him by the contrôleur-général; whereupon the Sieur Guichard notifies that on the morrow he will render an account of the above facts to the procureur-général, who there is every reason to believe will bring them to the notice of his majesty’s keeper of the seals and the Baron de Breteuil.