XI. 1784. PRETENDED MEDIATOR BETWEEN THE CARDINAL AND THE QUEEN.—A FORGER ON THE PREMISES.—BILLETS-DOUX BORDERED WITH “VIGNETTES BLEUES.”

Before the close of spring in the year 1784, the Countess de la Motte has effectually built up her grand fabrication. Although she neglects no opportunity of giving out that the queen desires this pretended intimacy to be kept a profound secret, yet, like most other profound secrets, it becomes pretty generally known; the imposture is established as a reality, and the Grand Almoner of France has been caught in the net. This singularly credulous individual, weighed down with places and honours, but ambitious of more, is led to believe, quite as much by his own folly as the countess’s craft, that a channel has at length been opened for his reinstatement in the queen’s favour, and his elevation to the office of prime minister. All the machinery set in motion by the impostor and her confederates to make money by the abuse of the queen’s name is now directed with both energy and skill upon the Prince de Rohan, whose paternal hand is employed to diffuse the charities of a kingdom upon those suppliants who best understand how to represent their wants, and whose own annual revenue exceeds a million of livres (£40,000).

Gradually, step by step, the vigilant schemer advances, her dupe’s fancy and conceit outstepping the measured tread of the inventor, whose falsehoods are not poured forth fast enough to fill the wide throat of this insatiable gull. First she assures him that she has spoken and interceded for him with the queen, who listened to her with attention but evident suspicion; but that after having heard of several instances of his benevolence to herself and other persons, the royal prejudice had given way. The cardinal of course takes heart at this assurance, and waits resignedly for the happy progress of a negotiation which had opened so promisingly. The countess thus describes this pretended interview with Marie-Antoinette in her Memoirs:

“In one of my interviews with her majesty, the queen inquired how I had supported myself before I was introduced to her. This was the moment for naming my benefactor, but it required some caution, lest the queen should discover that I was deeper in his confidence and counsels than it was proper for me to appear. I attempted, if possible, to avoid giving the least cause for suspicion, and expatiated largely, in general terms, on the cardinal’s beneficence, charity, and benevolence; enumerated the services he had rendered to almost every one that applied; that from his generosity he had acquired the esteem he merited; and spoke with a grateful warmth of the favours he had heaped upon me.

“Her majesty regarded me with a curious and penetrating eye: she paused for some minutes, and appeared buried in thought. This was the first moment of my mentioning the cardinal’s name, and I had an opportunity of reading in her majesty’s face such a degree of aversion that gave me a very unfavourable omen of success: the strength of her antipathy I was then first acquainted with. At length, awakening from her reverie, she expressed her surprise at the information I had given her. She did not think the cardinal capable of such actions.”⁠[80]⁠

In due time the grand almoner is informed that majesty has at last relented, having been of course won over by the countess’s continuous praises of him, and by her assurances that he was far less culpable than he was represented to be by his enemies; that he was full of penitence and remorse for any errors he might have committed; that her majesty’s aversion to him was his constant affliction; and that his health was yielding to this sorrow.

“I am authorised by the queen,” the countess one day calmly said to him, “to request you to furnish her with a written explanation of the faults imputed to you.”

In compliance with this demand, the cardinal delivered to Madame de la Motte a lengthy exculpatory statement, the main purport of which was to accuse his niece, the Princess de Guéménée, of having intrigued to add to his disgrace at court while pretending to act as intercessor on his behalf. From time to time the princess appears to have allured him with specious promises of his ultimate restoration to royal favour, and the kind of return she exacted for her pretended good offices may be judged of from the following passage, which, as will presently appear, Madame de la Motte did not fail to note and profit by: “The princess was sensible of the excessive joy she gave me,⁠[81] and availed herself of it to request of me the loan of a pretty considerable sum. I would have parted with my whole fortune, thinking myself too happy in being useful to a woman to whom I was so greatly beholden. The easy compliance she had met with enticed her to make further demands, which I could not refuse, she always knowing how to accompany them with hopes, with soothing promises, and at the same time with difficulties she would find ways to overcome.”⁠[82] It is inconceivable how, after feeling convinced that he had been the dupe of one designing woman, the cardinal could have been such a dotard as to have been again deluded by an intrigante who used precisely the same arts, and who exacted from him precisely the same kind of return. Such, however, was the case.

About three weeks after the delivery of his written justification into the hands of Madame de la Motte, the grand almoner received a note, bordered with “vignettes bleues” and purporting to be written by Marie-Antoinette. This stated that she had read with indignation of the manner in which he had been deceived by his niece, assured him that she had forgotten all that had passed, and desired him never again to make the slightest allusion to a matter so unpleasant—a convenient way of tabooing a subject, the discussion of which might have proved extremely embarrassing to the countess, and have sooner or later exposed the fraud then being practised upon the cardinal. The note wound up with the following passage, the motive of which the reader will be at no loss to divine: “The account which the countess has given me of your behaviour towards her has made a stronger impression on me than all that you have written to me. I hope that you will never forget that it is to her you are indebted for your pardon.”⁠[83]⁠

The plot thickens: all at once we find ourselves in deeper water. Before we had false rumours and reports; now we have forged letters. The cardinal having received the first one as genuine, what is to prevent the success of others? Nothing, it would seem, so long as the countess exercises her customary discretion. Letters and replies thereupon follow each other in quick succession, amounting in course of time to something like a couple of hundred in number. Of these the countess pretended she preserved copies of thirty-one, which she subsequently printed by way of appendix to her autobiography. Judging from these samples, the communications which, according to her assertions, passed between the queen and the cardinal, were not merely tender and familiar, but occasionally touched upon subjects that were positively indelicate.⁠[84]⁠

It is needless to inform the reader that, so far as the letters attributed to Marie-Antoinette are concerned, they were one and all of them vile fabrications. They were penned, in fact, by the prospective sub-lieutenant of the marshalsea, of whom we have already spoken, Rétaux de Villette, who was attached to the countess in the double capacity of “cavalier servente” and secretary, and whose chief occupation seems to have consisted in forging letters on gilt-edged paper, or paper bordered with blue flowers (vignettes bleues). His cabinet de travail was madame’s bedchamber, and he worked at a little table by the bedside, on which was a writing-case with a stock of note-paper, such as the queen was known to be in the habit of using.⁠[85] Monsieur de Villette resided regularly under the De la Motte roof, for Jeanne de Saint-Remi, Countess de Valois de la Motte, having considerable traffic in forgery, found it necessary to keep a forger on the premises, just as other people find it requisite to keep a secretary or a clerk.

If we glance behind the scenes, we cannot help being impressed by this daring woman’s strength of mind, which enables her to work so calmly and leisurely while all the time the wolf is at the door. Not only has she her idle husband and herself to support, but there is at times her brother, whose pension she has sold, and her “secretary,” and she not possessed of a single sou of regular income! To add to all this, she is in debt to the landlord, the tax-gatherer, and the tradespeople; duns are calling upon her every hour—duns are even waiting in the ante-room while she is dictating forged letters to Villette. Her own pension and that of her brother being utterly gone, the family have literally no bread to eat but that of charity, and the bread of charity is so scanty and bitter that the descendant of the house of Valois has become a liar and a forger, and is preparing to become a thief, in order to add to and sweeten it. And all this while, with her thread of life drawn, so to speak, to a single hair, she is the emblem of composure, advancing “stealthily, steadfastly, with Argus eye and ever-ready brain—with nerve of iron, on shoes of felt!” whilst Cardinal Prince de Rohan, her father in years, who lives in palaces surrounded by every luxury, holds one of the highest offices in the state, is superior of numerous important religious establishments and seigneur of countless manors, and has a revenue of upwards of a million livres, is feverish with impatience.

According to his usual practice, the Cardinal, with Versailles and the Little Trianon closed against him, is spending the sultry summer-time in retirement at his stately palace of Saverne, a huge building of red sandstone in the Italian style of architecture, for the most part newly erected by himself in place of a former edifice consumed by fire a few years previously. At Saverne the Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan exercises all the authority of a petty sovereign, and keeps up a well-nigh regal state. Gentlemen of high birth do not disdain his service; and such is the prodigality that rules in his establishment, that he has no less than fourteen maîtres d’hôtel and twenty-five valets de chambre!⁠[86] Situated at the foot of the eastern slope of the Vosges, and almost within sight of the valley of the Rhine, Saverne has its upper and lower towns, in the former of which are situated the cathedral, the chancellerie, the hôtel de la régence, the ancient château, and, adjoining this last, the palatial residence of the once all-powerful De Rohans. The principal front of this vast building looked over charming gardens, laid out in the French style, with handsome terraces and arcades, geometrically-shaped beds of brilliant flowers, trees trimmed to pattern, green shady alleys, trellises covered with vines, arbours, statues, fountains, rivulets, broad sheets of water, islands, grottos, and kiosques, while beyond all this extended a beautiful park, at the outskirts of which was a pheasantry, bounded by a dense forest, whose glades in the pleasant autumn months were alive with piqueurs and packs of dogs and sportsmen in the great gold uniform of the cardinal, while the huntsman’s horn might be heard incessantly resounding.

The palace, on the garden side, presented one long façade ornamented with fluted Corinthian pilasters and richly-carved cornices and mouldings, and having countless windows of a uniform character. Its somewhat unpleasing regularity was broken by a projecting centre part with a row of open columns and balustrades, which formed a kind of gallery, handsomely decorated in its different stages with ornamental friezes, statues and bas-reliefs, and having the elaborately-sculptured armorial bearings of the family of De Rohan and its many alliances prominently displayed at either end.⁠[87]⁠

The principal entrance to the episcopal palace conducted to a handsome vestibule, from whence the grand staircase led to the magnificent suite of reception rooms where the Prince de Rohan, banished from Versailles, assembled around him a little court of his own, composed of some few members of the old nobility related to his house, discontented courtiers who disliked the young queen, certain too complaisant beauties, and petits-maîtres from the Paris salons, philosophers, prelates, and provincial magnates, military officers from the neighbouring garrison at Strasbourg, and the usual complement of fools and flatterers that invariably dance attendance on the powerful and the wealthy.

The once stately palace of Saverne is now-a-days divested of all its former splendour. It serves alike for the mairie, the court of the justice of the peace, and the corn-market; and as barracks, guard-house, forage-stores, farriery, and stables for the troops composing the garrison of the town.⁠[88]⁠

In the summer of the year 1784 couriers bound for Paris would every now and then sally forth from the palace gates with bags of letters, among which there was invariably one elaborately-sealed packet addressed to the Countess de la Motte. Enclosed in this would be a letter for the queen, begging, entreating, praying for an interview at which the writer might plead his cause and regain complete possession of his royal mistress’s favour. Days and weeks go by while he is waiting and watching for a response. Judge however, of the cardinal’s agitation when one day the countess herself arrives unexpectedly at Saverne—having travelled post all the way from Paris—and announces to him that the long and eagerly-sought interview is at length accorded to him; that the queen has consented to a midnight meeting with him in the Park of Versailles. The countess thought, and thought rightly, that a journey of nearly three hundred miles, undertaken on purpose to be the bearer of this welcome intelligence, would give it all the greater weight, and would effectually dispel any unpleasant doubts that might perchance by this time have taken possession of the cardinal’s mind.⁠[89]⁠