XL. April, 1787–May, 1792. THE COUNT HAWKS THE LIBELS ABROAD.—IS IMPRISONED IN LA FORCE AND THE CONCIERGERIE.—THE LAST OF THE DE LA MOTTE LIBELS.

Count de la Motte, having circulated copies of his wife’s “Mémoires Justificatifs” among the London booksellers and in other directions, and being, as usual, involved in debt, thinks it prudent to make an excursion to Holland, where he believes some business in these libels may be done; for it is, reasons he, just as easy to smuggle copies of them into France over the Flemish frontier as across the British Channel, and we all know that Mynheer has never been particular as to the character of the wares he trades in. To Holland, therefore, the count goes in the month of April, 1789. In tracing his career from this date we have but few materials to guide us beyond his own posthumous “Mémoires,”⁠[408] which abound in evident exaggerations, and no less evident falsehoods. The reader is therefore cautioned to accept the count’s statements with the same reserve which we have already asked of him in respect to many of the assertions of the countess. Truth would seem to have held no place in the De la Motte system of morals.

Before the count had brought his negotiations respecting an edition of his wife’s “Mémoires” to a close, news comes across the Low Countries of a rising of the people of Paris and the fall of the Bastille. The count forthwith borrows fifteen louis from one of his Dutch acquaintances, with whose daughter he has been flirting up to a point that her father speaks seriously to him of matrimony, and hurries off to Paris, where he arrives on the 18th of August. He at once addresses himself to Bailly, the newly-elected mayor, from whom he asks a safe-conduct until the judgment against him in the Necklace affair can be brought before the new tribunals. He next has an interview with Mirabeau, who, he says, had already heard of his arrival, and informed the Duke d’Orléans of it, telling the duke at the same time they might reckon upon the count joining them in the attack which they contemplated making upon the “Austrian she-wolf” (Marie-Antoinette). The count thereupon calls on the duke, who proposes to him that he shall present a petition at the bar of the National Assembly, and subsequently supplies him with funds through Mirabeau.

The count tells a mysterious story of some unknown individual calling upon him at this period, and making an appointment for him to be, between twelve and one o’clock at night, in the Avenue de Paris, at Versailles, near the iron railings of the château, where he would find Mirabeau, disguised in a long blue cloak and round hat. The count keeps the appointment, and meets with Mirabeau as described, and receives from him a form of petition, which he is to copy out by six o’clock in the morning, and then return the original draft. Mirabeau, he says, called at his hôtel at the time named, when he handed him the copy of the petition, and pretended that the draft was destroyed, pointing at the same time to some fragments of burnt paper in the grate, as proof of the fact. Out of this draft petition, in Mirabeau’s handwriting, the count sees his way to make some money. Without loss of time he takes it to M. de Montmorin, minister for foreign affairs, informs him of the nature of the intrigue which is going on, and explains who are the prime movers in it. By this means he gains over the minister, who is, of course, all affability, and speaks to him of the offer made some time back by M. de la Luzerne, which offer, he says, he is quite prepared to carry out. From this moment the count is in clover; for he obtains bribes from both parties, each of whom he of course sells to the other. After a time, matters being considered ripe, Mirabeau urges him to come to the bar of the National Assembly, and present his petition; but this the count is indisposed to do. He pretends, therefore, that he has consulted two advocates, both of whom advise him that the Assembly is not competent to deal with his case, and so manages to shuffle out of the affair, thereby however cutting himself adrift from the Orléans party.

Count de la Motte, it seems, has an old score to clear off with Father Loth for what he professes to regard as his contemptible betrayal of the countess in the Necklace affair. He ascertains that, as a reward for his treachery, the De Rohan family have got Loth appointed one of the brotherhood of the Knights of Malta, with comfortable quarters in the Temple. To the Temple, therefore, the count hies, armed with a stout club, with which he proposes knocking out poor Father Loth’s brains. “I know not,” says the count, “whether he was warned, or whether he recognised me wandering about the Temple, but the fact is he quitted the place abruptly, and I could never find out what became of him;” a lucky result for Father Loth, who thereby preserved his customary modicum of brains in an uncracked skull.

The famous march of women to Versailles took place at this period, and the Paris papers announced that Madame de la Motte led the column of Mœnades, who went to storm the château. This was a piece of pure invention, for the countess was still residing in England, where, according to the count, overtures were from time to time made to her by the agents of the Duke d’Orléans. M. de Montmorin, hearing of this, proposes furnishing an apartment for the countess, and providing her with funds to come to Paris, so that she may be beyond the duke’s influence; but the countess, having a wholesome dread of the branding-iron, and fearing that a “C” (calomniatrice) might be added to the “V” (voleuse) which already graced her shoulders, and having, too, the terrors of the Salpêtrière before her eyes, prefers remaining where she is, spite of Orléanist agents and other ills by which she is beset, a resolution which, as we shall presently see, proved most unfortunate for her.

Some short time after the receipt of the countess’s letter wherein she expresses the above determination, news reaches the count of a most frightful accident having befallen his wife, and almost immediately afterwards comes a long letter from herself, written on her bed of suffering, corroborative of the dismal intelligence. The count—who is openly living with a notorious courtesan of the period, la belle impure Seymour, as she was styled⁠[409]⁠—takes the matter very coolly; writes, no doubt, a short sympathizing note in reply, but as for hastening to the bedside of his dying wife, to watch beside it even for a few hours, and speak to her those few kind words of comfort which might have helped to assuage her sufferings and lighten the gloom of her departing moments, this never enters into the man’s thoughts. The summer days pass pleasantly enough with him; he can lounge in the Palais Royal gardens in the morning, and in the Palais Royal gambling saloons at night, and it is only from the hawkers in the streets that he gains intelligence of his wretched wife’s death. Hearing the news shouted out on the boulevards, he buys one of the broadsides and turns into a neighbouring café to read it, takes it all for granted, and, so far as we can discover, troubles himself no further on the subject.

Deprived of his helpmate, the miserable woman on whose mendicancy, vices and crimes he had lived from the very day that he married her, the count has now to labour single-handed against the government, and after a time against society itself, for the means of subsistence. He obtains an audience of M. Duport du Tertre, minister of justice, whom he presses with reference to a rehearing of the process against him in the Necklace affair, and from whom he asks, and eventually obtains, a letter d’ester à droit, which confers the right of appearing before a court of law spite of the judgment of the Parliament of Paris, still hanging over him. Of course if the count can get the case reheard, and the judgment set aside, all the De la Motte property seized at Bar-sur-Aube would be restored to him. Duport du Tertre was by no means opposed to this course, for though a minister of the crown, he sympathised with that party who wished to bring Marie-Antoinette before the new tribunals with reference to her share—for they persisted in believing her to have had a share—in the Necklace transaction.⁠[410] Meanwhile, by some skilful manœuvring of his own, the count is brought into communication with M. de Laporte, intendant of the civil list, keeper, in fact, of the king’s privy purse, who, he says, tells him that the king, having heard so good an account of his opinions, and conduct, and devotion to his person, has accorded him a certain credit on the civil list, and has commanded Laporte to say that justice shall certainly be done him in the Necklace affair. And as a sort of earnest of what the count is to expect in future, M. de Laporte at parting places in his hand a sealed packet, containing two thousand four hundred francs in assignats.

Time wears on, the troubles of the court increase, and the flight of the royal family from Paris is decided on. The count asserts that it was arranged for him to accompany an old friend of his, ex-mayor of Lyons, in a carriage, in which a large amount of specie was to have been stowed away, and that they were to have kept a short distance ahead of the royal party. For some reason not given, this arrangement, which we do not believe was ever made, is not carried out.

The count, with whom the revision of the Necklace process has become a fixed idea, persistently bores the minister of justice to order a rehearing before one of the new courts, and in November, 1791, by the king’s direction, according to the count, a sort of council is held, at which M. Duport du Tertre presides, when it is decided that the count shall appeal to the third tribunal. The president of this is a certain M. de Plane—believed to be amenable to court influence,—who, the count tells us, fought by the side of his father at the battle of Minden, and promises to do all he can to assist the son of his old comrade.

No sooner is this decision arrived at than the count obtains one thousand crowns from Laporte, who asks him to call upon him at the Tuileries that evening. The count goes, and to his astonishment finds himself in the presence of the king. His first movement, he tells us, is to throw himself at his sovereign’s feet. On his rising, the king informs him that, from what he has heard, and the good opinion which he has himself formed of him, he has decided to grant him all that he asks. He then inquires of the count whether he happens to have with him the original draft of the petition drawn up by Mirabeau. Of course, the count has brought his portfolio, and instantly produces the document in question. “Le misérable!” exclaims the king, “he deserved his fate;” which observation of his majesty satisfies the count Louis XVI. was not ignorant that Mirabeau had been poisoned. The son of the Chevalier of St. Louis, and former gendarme at Lunéville, having declared to his sovereign that he was ready to shed his last drop of blood for him, now makes his obeisance, and retires from the royal cabinet.

On January 4, 1792, Count de la Motte, having taken the precaution to go the day beforehand to La Force, and choose his cell just as a man might engage the most convenient vacant room at an hotel, proceeds to constitute himself a prisoner. His apartment being somewhat damp, he orders a large fire to be made, and retires to rest for the night, but is, by-and-by, aroused from his sleep by a sense of suffocation. Springing out of bed, he finds his cell on fire, and shouts loudly for assistance. After a time he is rescued, but not until his hair is singed half off his head, and his great-coat burnt, more or less, to tinder. Hébert’s “Père Duchesne” came out the next day with an accusation against the “Austrian she-wolf,” of having caused the prison to be set on fire to consume both M. de la Motte and the documents he was on the eve of producing implicating her in the Necklace affair. From La Force the count is transferred to the Conciergerie, and on the second day of his arrival there his old friend and former barber, Burlandeux—he to whom the De la Motte furniture was wont to be consigned to save it from being taken in execution⁠[411]⁠—pays him a visit in company with some seven or eight others, whom Burlandeux introduces as Manuel (afterwards procureur of the commune), Sergent (one of the “killers” at the ensuing September massacres), Panis (a friend of Danton’s), Robespierre, Marat, Hébert, etc., all of them having come to compliment the count upon his courage and to offer their aid, while vilifying poor Marie-Antoinette in most offensive language. De la Motte then has his say, tells his visitors that he is a voluntary prisoner, and exclaims vehemently against the old Paris parliament for having “sacrificed an innocent woman, deprived of the means of defence, that they might save a debauched prelate.” At the conclusion of the count’s harangue, his new friends, seemingly very well satisfied with what he has said to them, take their leave.

The hearing of the appeal for the revision of the Necklace process at length comes on. De la Motte pretends that the public excitement is intense, the hall being packed from floor to ceiling with Jacobins—ragged men and slatternly women for the most part—in the midst of whom he recognizes Burlandeux. According to the count, the judgment which the third tribunal eventually pronounces, at the suggestion of the president, would have had the effect of restoring to him all his property seized by the crown, if at this moment the minister of justice had not given orders for all the documents relating to the process to be remitted to the procureur du roi, who afterwards brings the whole affair before the first tribunal. The following letter, written by the count to the king, puts the matter, however, in a somewhat different light:—

“Sire,—When I voluntarily constituted myself a prisoner I should, in accordance with the promise made to me by M. Duport (du Tertre), and after the precautions which he had taken, have obtained my liberty and the entire restitution of my property within the week. For four months have I been detained and persecuted by a cabal which, disregarding all prudential considerations, seeks to give an annoying éclat to this affair. M. de Plane, president and judge of the third tribunal, was appointed to examine me, which he did in the most indecent manner, his questions having no other object than to try and compromise the queen, and principally to find the means of confronting her with me in open court, as a necessary witness and deponent of facts set forth in this horrid process.

“M. A. de la Motte.

“From the Conciergerie of the Palace of Justice, May 5th, 1792.”⁠[412]⁠

At the time the foregoing letter was written, unless there is a mistake in the month—May instead of April—judgment had actually been pronounced by the third tribunal exactly one month previously, namely on the 5th of April, a circumstance, one would imagine, of which the person most concerned could hardly have been ignorant.⁠[413]⁠

The count’s old friend Burlandeux pays him another visit at this particular juncture. “Dog of an aristocrat!” exclaims the enraged barber, thrusting his fist in the count’s face, “Capet and the Austrian she-wolf will never help you to get out of this prison.” After thus abruptly delivering himself, Burlandeux, to the count’s great relief, quietly retires.

While the De la Motte appeal was going forward, one day a stranger asks to speak to the count. He proves to be a bookseller named Gueffier, who has received, he says, from his correspondent in London the whole of the French edition of the last “Mémoires” of Madame de la Motte,⁠[414] which “Mémoires,” the count avails himself of this opportunity of stating (believe him, who pleases), were written against his advice. The count says that he communicated the above information to M. de Laporte, who obtained the king’s authority for him to treat with Gueffier for the purchase of the work. The fact, however, is that De la Motte wrote direct to the king upon the subject, as may be seen by the extract which we are enabled to give from his letter, which, curiously enough, bears the same date as his other letter to the king—namely, May 5th, 1792:

... “There has just been bought up by a bookseller of Paris, named Gueffier, ‘the Life of Madame de la Motte, written by herself,’ and printed in London. Before constituting myself a prisoner, I informed M. Duport (du Tertre) of the existence of this work, which is really by Madame de la Motte, and which she sold on certain conditions, in order to maintain herself, to a printer in London, who ought, after having received what he has advanced and his own charges, to deliver up the complete editions of the work in French and English. Your majesty has, without doubt, been informed of these facts by M. Duport, who some time since endeavoured to buy up the work, and prevent its being made public. It appears that these endeavours were without result, as the French copies have arrived at Rouen, and are to be published in a few days at the shop of this Gueffier. This is what the London printer, whom I saw two days ago, assured me.

“I have informed my counsel of these details, and they seem much alarmed for the public tranquillity, and that of your majesty and the queen, on account of the dangers of the publication of this work. They have imperatively counselled me to have it seized before it arrives in Paris, as the property of Madame de la Motte, and now belonging to me by the right of succession. But as the booksellers who have purchased it, and who advanced Madame de la Motte the money, claim what is due to them, I shall either be forced to abandon the seizure or to pay them their demand. I cannot myself make a sacrifice of twenty thousand francs. I therefore beg your majesty to put yourself to the necessary expense in order to frustrate the projects of these evil-disposed persons. My plan, if it meets with your majesty’s approval, is to seize and seal up this work at Rouen, and to offer the holders of it the amount due to them from Madame de la Motte. The whole will then be sealed up and delivered by my counsel to M. de Laporte, who will dispose of it according to your majesty’s orders.”⁠[415]⁠

Negotiations are opened with Gueffier, who offers to surrender the whole of the copies on receiving a sum of twenty-five thousand francs. The count suggests eighteen thousand, which Gueffier eventually agrees to accept, whereupon M. de Laporte forwards the count twenty thousand francs, with an intimation that he need not trouble himself to return the balance.⁠[416]⁠

An attempt, of which the king and M. de Laporte evidently knew nothing, had, it seems, been previously made to sell the manuscript of this edition of the countess’s life to Marie-Antoinette. But the queen, guided by past experience, saw clearly enough that, whether she bought the manuscript or not, the libel was equally certain to be published, and indeed it must have been printed off at the time the manuscript was offered to her. She therefore peremptorily refused to enter into any negotiation. “At the commencement of 1792,” writes Madame Campan, “an estimable priest asked of me a private interview. He had heard of a new libel of Madame de la Motte’s, and told me he had remarked that the people who came from London to get it printed in Paris⁠[417] were actuated only by the desire of gain, and that they were ready to deliver up the manuscript for one thousand louis, if some friend of the queen could be found disposed to make this sacrifice to ensure her tranquillity.

“I communicated this proposition to the queen, who declined it, and commanded me to reply that, at the time when it was possible to punish the circulators of those libels she had considered them so atrocious and so improbable that she had disdained to take any steps for arresting their course, that if she now were imprudent enough to buy up one only, the active espionage of the Jacobins would not fail to discover it, and the libel so bought would not the less be printed, and would become much more dangerous when the public learnt the means she had adopted to keep it from their knowledge.”⁠[418]⁠

M. de Laporte had the edition of the countess’s life, which had been purchased from Gueffier, conveyed to his hôtel; but after a time, growing alarmed at the daily increasing excesses of the population of Paris, and fearful that at some moment when he least expected it, an irruption might be made into his house, and these “Mémoires” carried off and distributed among the people, he gave an order for them to be burnt with all necessary precaution and secrecy. Unfortunately, the person who received this order confided the execution of it to one Riston, a dangerous intriguer, and former advocate of Nancy, escaped, a year previously, from the gallows, by favour of the new tribunals, although he had been proved guilty of fabricating impressions of the great seal, and forging decrees of the council in proceedings undertaken at the request of the king’s household. “I had,” says Bertrand de Moleville, minister of marine, “to read over to the witnesses their depositions, and to confront them with the accused, at the peril of being assassinated, not only by Riston, who, at one of the sittings, threw himself upon me with a knife, but also by the brigands in his pay, with whom the hall of audience was filled, and who were enraged at finding their threatening outcries did not prevent me from repressing the insults which the accused offered unceasingly to the witnesses who came to depose against him.

“This same Riston, who a year previously was in the toils of a capital accusation, instituted against him in the name and by order of the king, finding himself charged with a commission which interested his majesty, and the importance of which was apparent from the mystery attaching to it, troubled himself less about the best way of executing it than in making a parade of this mark of confidence. On May 30th, 1792, (at ten o’clock in the morning), he had the printed sheets conveyed in a cart, which he himself accompanied, to the porcelain manufactory at Sèvres, and caused a great fire to be made of them in the presence of all the workmen belonging to the establishment, who were expressly forbidden to approach near it. All this parade, and the suspicion to which it gave rise in these critical times, caused the matter to be publicly talked of and discussed; and the same evening it was brought before the Assembly, when Brissot, and others of the Jacobin party argued with as much effrontery as vehemence that these papers, burnt with so much secrecy, could have been nothing else but the registers and correspondence of the Austrian committee. M. de Laporte was called to the bar, and gave a most exact account of the facts. Riston was also summoned, and confirmed the account given by M. de Laporte. But these explanations, however satisfactory they ought to have been, did not appease the violent feeling which this affair had excited in the Assembly.”⁠[419]⁠

Madame Campan tells an interesting anecdote in connection with this unfortunate casualty. “One day,” observes she, “M. d’Aubin came and said to me, ‘the National Assembly has been engaged with a denunciation made by the workmen of the manufactory of Sèvres, who brought to the president’s desk a pile of pamphlets, which they said was the life of Marie-Antoinette. The director of the manufactory was called to the bar, and declared that he had received orders to burn these printed works in the kilns used for baking the porcelain.’ Whilst,” says Madame Campan, “I was giving an account of this to the queen, the king coloured and hung his head over his plate. The queen said to him, ‘Do you know anything of this, sir?’ The king did not answer. Madame Elisabeth asked him to explain what it all meant. Still the same silence. I promptly retired. A few minutes afterwards the queen came to me, and told me it was the king who, out of regard for her, had caused the whole of the edition printed from the manuscript of which I had spoken to her, to be purchased, and that M. de Laporte had not thought of any more secret way of destroying the work than having it burnt at Sèvres, in the presence of two hundred workmen, one hundred and eighty of whom were certain to be Jacobins. She told me that she had concealed her grief from the king; that he was dismayed, and that she could say nothing when she found that his tenderness and goodwill towards her had been the cause of this accident.”⁠[420]⁠

Such was the end of the last of the De la Motte libels, which were nevertheless reprinted in subsequent years, and even so recently as the year 1846, more than half a century after their first dissemination, so thorough is the vitality of calumny!

Marie-Antoinette, in reply to questions put to her at her trial, with reference to the papers burnt at Sèvres, said: “I believe it was a libel. I was not, however, consulted on the matter. I was told of it afterwards. Had I been consulted, I should have opposed the burning of any writing which was against me.”⁠[421]⁠