VI. 1780–1782. COUNTESS DE LA MOTTE.—IN BARRACKS AT LUNÉVILLE.—ON A FIFTH FLOOR IN PARIS.—ENSNARES THE GRAND ALMONER.

From the day of her marriage, in the summer of 1780, our heroine assumed the title of Countess de Valois de la Motte, though on ordinary occasions she dropped the former portion of it, retaining only the name of De la Motte, by which she afterwards became so notorious. The wedding did not take place a day too soon, for in the course of the same or following month the countess gave birth to male twins, that died a few days afterwards. Thereupon Madame de Suremont, glad of an excuse for getting rid of her new relation—the old lady used to say to Beugnot that “the most unhappy year of her life was the one she spent in the society of this demon,”—turned the newly-married couple out of her house.⁠[28] They took refuge for a time with Madame de la Tour, a married sister of the count’s—the young gendarme following the example of his wife, had likewise assumed a title—but were finally obliged to rely on their own resources, which, as may be supposed, were of the narrowest. De la Motte himself had nothing but his sword, and the countess had not even her scanty pension to depend upon. Now commenced with them that life of shifts and expedients, which is certain in the long run to disappoint those who are unhappily reduced to enter upon it, which subverts the principles, destroys the best habits of even the firmest characters, and too frequently culminates in crime. By borrowing money from friends and neighbours so long as they were disposed to lend it, by occasional loans from money-lenders at exorbitant rates of interest, by running into debt with the tradespeople, and by certain small bounties received from Paris, to assist the descendants of Henri II., in answer to supplicatory letters written by the countess, the newly-married couple dragged on as best they could.

The count’s leave of absence having at length expired, he was summoned back to garrison duty at Lunéville, a dull, decaying, fortified town, composed of straight streets and regular buildings, where in subsequent years the treaty of peace was signed between France and Austria which gave to the former the coveted frontier of the Rhine. The palace built by Philip, duke of Lorraine, grandfather of Marie-Antoinette, was then, as now, a caserne de cavalerie, and it was to this barrack that Count de la Motte took his wife to share with him his incommodious quarters. Here madame’s “lively complexion” and “excess of vivacity,” as she styles them, were not long in exercising their sway over the more susceptible of her husband’s comrades. In September of the following year the count and his wife had determined upon proceeding to Paris to urge the Marchioness de Boulainvilliers to interest herself in their behalf, a project which was knocked on the head by the count’s commanding officer, the Marquis d’Autichamp,—whose too familiar intimacy with Madame de la Motte was the talk not merely of the corps, but of the town,⁠[29] and who had himself contemplated escorting madame on her journey to the capital,—peremptorily refusing the count any further leave of absence. Just at this time intelligence reaches the De la Mottes that the Marquis and Marchioness de Boulainvilliers are at Strasbourg, only some threescore miles or so away. Commanding-officer d’Autichamp, we suppose, relents; for the count gets a few days’ leave, and to Strasbourg the pair hasten as fast as a French diligence of the eighteenth century will carry them, which is, however, not fast enough, for on their arrival they learn from the great charlatan of the age, Count Cagliostro, who just then happens to be showing off in the capital of Alsace, that the Marquis and Marchioness de Boulainvilliers have departed for Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan’s Palace at Saverne. There was nothing else but to give chase, so off the De la Mottes start, and on their arrival in the vicinity of the episcopal château, put up at some little inn, whence the countess writes to Madame de Boulainvilliers, apprising her that she is in the neighbourhood, and asking when she may be permitted to call upon her. The next day she is honoured by a visit from the marquis, who escorts her over to his wife. Some few days afterwards, while the marchioness and madame are taking a carriage drive together, they meet the Cardinal de Rohan, Grand Almoner of France, to whom Madame de Boulainvilliers introduces her protégée, and strongly recommends her to this powerful prelate’s kindly notice.⁠[30]⁠

On her return home to barrack quarters, if home indeed they could be called, the countess harped, day after day, upon her fancied claims to the three estates that formerly belonged to her family, and no wonder if she at length came to the conclusion that Paris and Versailles, rather than a dull garrison town like Lunéville, were the proper spheres for her enterprise and ambition. To Paris, therefore, she resolved to go; but, alas! how was she to obtain the means of defraying the expenses of her journey and of her sojourn in the capital? Commanding-officer d’Autichamp would willingly escort her there, and pay all travelling expenses, but just then her husband is jealous and cannot be brought to consent. Fortunately for the countess, one of her Bar-sur-Aube friends—the father of the M. Beugnot, of whom we have already spoken—came to the rescue with a loan of one thousand livres, and to her honour it may be recorded, that whenever afterwards she spoke of this service she was always much moved, and, what is perhaps more to her credit, during the period of her dishonest prosperity she paid the money, as she paid all the debts she had contracted at Bar-sur-Aube, her adopted home. However corrupt her general character may have been, she was certainly not wanting in gratitude.

This thousand livres she and her husband divided equally between them, and they then set forth in different directions it is true, but still with the same object at heart, namely, to procure the restitution of the Saint-Remi estates. The countess went to Paris to press her claims on the attention of those in power. The count resigned his post in the gendarmerie, never to do, from that hour forward, another day of honest work during the remainder of his long life, and betook himself to Fontette to search for evidence on the spot, and to ascertain the exact nature of the steps requisite to be taken to recover possession of this and the adjacent Saint-Remi domains. Arrived at his destination, he caused a Te Deum to be chanted in the church, and, as the congregation were leaving, scattered handfuls of silver among the gaping crowd, who, on experiencing this mark of favour, did not hesitate to hail him as their lord; and lord of Fontette he was by courtesy, so long as his money lasted, which, unfortunately for the rustics of the place, was not long. His last livre dissipated, the count was only too glad to get back again to Bar-sur-Aube to such a home as his sister was able to offer him.⁠[31]⁠

The countess, on her part, so soon as she arrived in Paris, proceeded to set to work. She wrote at once to young Beugnot, who was then prosecuting his legal studies in the capital, informing him that she had a letter for him from his father, and asking him to call upon her. Beugnot lost no time in complying with her request, and found the purport of the letter was to urge him thoroughly to examine the countess’s claims to the Fontette, Essoyes, and other estates, and see if there was any real foundation for them. “I took the affair,” says Beugnot, “seriously in hand as my father desired me, and readily enough found the letters patent of Henri II. which conferred the domains in question on his natural son, but I could not trace the various deeds diverting the possession of them from the Saint-Remis into the hands of the different proprietors who were in nowise connected with the family. One of the latest of these, a M. Orceau de Fontette, superintendent of Caen, had exchanged the lands held by him with the king. This was a favourable circumstance for us in the prosecution of our claim, as the king had only to forego his hold upon the property to restore to the Saint-Remis one of the possessions of their forefathers.”⁠[32]⁠

The young lawyer now proceeded to compose a “Mémoire,” wherein, in true French style, he spoke of his client’s case as “one more insult of fortune to the Valois, the hard lot of a branch detached from that ancient tree which had so long covered with its royal shade France and other European states. I interspersed my composition,” says Beugnot, “with those philosophical reflections then so much in fashion, and asked the Bourbons to pay the natural debt of those from whom they had received so magnificent a heritage. I submitted my composition to M. Elie de Beaumont, a celebrated advocate, and also a man of taste. ‘It is a pity,’ remarked he, ‘that we cannot bring this business before the Parliament; it would make your reputation.’ Alas! I did not even receive for my labour the honours of print. People said it was entirely a matter for the royal favour, and that to print the ‘Mémoire’ would be contrary to the respect due to the king.”⁠[33] Beugnot thereupon composed a new “Mémoire,” or rather petition to the crown, which was in due course presented, though without producing the result which the sanguine expectations of the countess and her advocate anticipated from it.

Early in November, 1781, either by previous invitation from the marchioness or of her own accord, Madame de la Motte presented herself at the Hôtel de Boulainvilliers, bent upon jogging the marchioness’s memory with reference to a commission in the dragoons which she had made a half promise to obtain for the count, her husband, and intending to say a few words respecting her own claim to the Saint-Remi estates, when, to her surprise and grief, she found her benefactress lying dangerously ill. She remained and tended her until her death, which took place in about three weeks; yet, strange to say, she was unable to forego her passion for intrigue even at a time like this, for she admits, while the marchioness was lying past hope of recovery, having had a tête-à-tête interview with the marquis, on the length of which she was rallied by the gentlemen staying at the hôtel. During this interview the marquis, she tells us, made her “a downright proposal” to the effect that on his wife’s death she should reside with him as his mistress, he engaging to procure for her husband a post in some regiment which should “prevent him from troubling them too often.” All this she calmly listened to, and when the marchioness was dead still continued to reside under the same roof with the man who had made this disgraceful proposition to her, exposed, as she herself admits, to his daily persecutions. The old reprobate, too, was always upbraiding her, she says, with “loving other men better than him,” and openly accused her of carrying on an intrigue beneath his roof with the old Bishop of Langres, who visited her much more frequently than the marquis thought necessary or prudent.

After a while the count, who had been rusticating ever since his Fontette expedition at Bar-sur-Aube, turned up at the Boulainvilliers hôtel to look after his wife, when the marquis, in revenge, as madame says, for the contempt with which she invariably treated him, endeavoured to arouse the jealousy of her husband by accusing her—falsely, of course—with being too intimate with his son-in-law, and of sundry unbecoming familiarities with the count’s cousin, who had pawned his watch to defray the expense of a three-days’ frolic with the countess at Versailles. However, Count de la Motte, according to his wife, “had too much good sense to give any credit to these insinuations; he listened attentively, but did not believe a single iota of them.”⁠[34]⁠

While the countess was residing under the Boulainvilliers roof she was constantly on the look-out to push her own or her husband’s fortunes, and eventually succeeded in talking over the Baron de Crussol, son-in-law of the Marquis de Boulainvilliers, to procure M. de la Motte a post in the Count d’Artois’s body-guard. This necessitated the count’s removal to Versailles; so, turning their backs on the Hôtel de Boulainvilliers, where the marquis had for some time past adopted an unpleasant system of retrenchment in order to bring madame to “his way of thinking”—in other words, had placed the descendant of the house of Valois and her tall and hungry spouse on exceedingly short commons—the pair went forth in search of whatever Fortune might please to send them.

From certain hints dropped by the countess it is evident that she had grown disgusted with the avarice and meanness rather than with what she styles the “detested attentions” of the marquis, who, had he only loosened his purse-strings, and dispensed his bounty with a liberal hand, had been looked upon favourably enough, and possibly had been the means of saving Cardinal Prince de Rohan from getting entangled in the countess’s toils.

It is not to be supposed that at this epoch of her career Madame de la Motte had forgotten her introduction to this prelate, or that she omitted to remind him of it, and of Madame de Boulainvilliers’ recommendation of her to his notice and sympathy. Was he not, in fact, Grand Almoner of France, and, by virtue of his office, dispenser of the king’s and a nation’s bounties? and humiliating though she might pretend it to be for one who had the blood of the Valois in her veins to have to appeal to the servant of the sovereign instead of to the throne itself, the pill, if a trifle bitter, must nevertheless be swallowed.

Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan, at this time in his eight-and-fortieth year, is described as a tall, portly, handsome-looking man, with a slightly ruddy complexion, bald forehead, and almost white hair. There was a noble and easy bearing about him,⁠[35] and his manners are said to have been singularly agreeable so long as he kept his temper, of late grown exceedingly choleric, under restraint. He was weak and vain, and credulous to a degree; anything but devout, and mad after women.⁠[36] Unrestricted by his priestly office, he led a notoriously dissolute life, which scandalized even the loose moralists of that loose epoch; still, he was commonly looked upon as a good-enough sort of man so far as little acts of kindness and generosity were concerned, more especially, too, when the suppliant happened to be of the fair sex, and youthful, and a beauty withal. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that he responded favourably to the countess’s first and second appeals. This gave her hope; and, the better to profit by the grand almoner’s liberality, and to secure his influence in support of her claims, she took an apartment in Paris during the summer of 1782 within a short distance of his hôtel. It was a poor sort of a lodging, consisting merely of two ill-furnished rooms on the topmost étage at the Hôtel de Reims, in the Rue de la Verrerie, a narrow, ill-paved, irregularly-built street—devoted at the present day, not to glass factories or warehouses, as its name would imply, but to grocery, soap, candle and dried fruit stores, and to locksmiths’ shops, every one of which hangs out its monster red or golden key by way of sign—running from the Rue des Lombards into the Rue de Bercy, which intersects the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, where the Hôtel de Strasbourg, or Palais-Cardinal, as it was sometimes called, in which for the moment all the countess’s hopes are centred, was situated.

This hôtel built in the year 1712 by Cardinal Constantine de Rohan, uncle of the grand almoner, on a portion of the gardens of the Hôtel de Soubise, is now the National Printing Office, and internally retains no traces of what it was when Prince Louis de Rohan lived here in state befitting the dignity of a prince of the German empire and a cardinal of the Holy Roman Church. The entrance gateway and the buildings forming the external boundaries of the court in front of the hôtel are, with the exception of some evident alterations, much the same as they were in the days when the Countess de la Motte was a frequent visitor at the Palais-Cardinal. The court itself is divided by parallel ranges of buildings at right angles with the principal front, and a gateway on the right-hand side leads to what was evidently the stable-court, where a noble bas-relief by Couston, representing the watering of the horses of the sun, with the animals full life-size, may be seen over one of the arched entrances to the stables—those stables where the horse of one of the cardinal’s heyducs dropped down dead on a memorable occasion of which we shall by-and-by have to speak.

The principal façade of the De Rohan hôtel has undergone only some slight alteration since the grand almoner’s time, but it is far different with the interior; the grand staircase has been removed, and the magnificent salons de réception have been converted into bureaux for the officials attached to the national printing establishment. In the principal waiting-room are four paintings by Boucher, said to have formed part of the original decorations of the Palais-Cardinal: one represents Mars attiring for the wars, with Venus holding his shield and Cupid handing him his helmet; another shows Mars reposing, with Venus, who looks wonderfully like a French marchioness of the eighteenth century, with even a scantier allowance of drapery than usual, reclining beside him on a cloud; a third portrays Juno with her peacock, the immortal Jove facing her, and Boreas and Æolus at his feet, blowing as though they would burst; while in the fourth subject we have Neptune ruling the waves with his trident, and a trio of lusty sea-gods spurting water out of long conch-shaped shells.

The garden front of the Palais-Cardinal is far more elegant than the one which looks upon the court; being decorated with lofty columns surmounted with enriched capitals, and having sundry emblems as well as the armorial bearings of the house of Rohan sculptured on the projections of the façade. Only a small portion of the palace garden now remains to it, the chief part being covered over with long ranges of offices in which the workpeople attached to the national printing establishment ply their several callings.

The Countess de la Motte was woman of the world enough to know that much may be accomplished by personal solicitation when written applications are of little or no avail. The Cardinal de Rohan too had a reputation for gallantry; and as for the countess herself, she tells us in her “Memoirs” that “her face, if not exactly handsome, had a certain piquancy about it which, combined with her vivacity (Beugnot admits her smile was perfectly enchanting), supplied in her the want of beauty so far as to lay her open to the importunities of designing men.” She therefore sought an audience of the grand almoner, and, finding that this would be accorded her, called upon young Beugnot the day before to beg three things of him—his carriage, his servant to follow her, and himself to accompany her. “All these,” said she, “are indispensable, since there are only two good ways of asking alms—at the church door, and in a carriage.” “I did not,” observes Beugnot, “raise any difficulties as to the first two points, but I peremptorily refused my arm, as I could only have presented myself with her before the Cardinal de Rohan in the character of her advocate, after his eminence had been notified of my coming, and had given his permission.”⁠[37] Madame was, therefore, constrained to present herself at the cardinal’s hôtel without any other escort beyond the footman lent to her by her friend.

At the first interview Madame de la Motte had with the cardinal, the latter, as might have been expected from his well-known character for gallantry, proved incapable of resisting the countess’s artful allurements, and she, bent on completing the conquest which she felt she had made, was careful on the occasion of subsequent visits to the Hôtel de Strasbourg, to pay the utmost attention to her toilet—decking herself out in her finest feathers, putting on her most coquettish airs, and making the magnificent saloons of the Rue Vielle-du-Temple redolent with the odour of her perfumes.⁠[38]⁠