XLIII. 1792–1831. “NESTOR DE LA MOTTE.”—ILL GOTTEN GAIN NEVER PROSPERS.—GREEN OLD AGE.

Count de la Motte survived all the actors in the Necklace drama, and lived to see France once more in the throes of a Revolution and the Bourbons again dethroned—lived in fact, to the commencement of our own era, and heard of, if he did not see, steam-vessels daily crossing the Channel, and railways carrying passengers upwards of twenty miles an hour.

We left the count pursuing his second appeal with reference to the Necklace case. He had not long to wait for a decision, for we find that on July 27, 1792, the first tribunal gave judgment “on the appeal lodged by Marc-Nicolas la Motte from the judgment given against him on the 5th of April last by the third tribunal established at the Palais de Justice” in the following terms:—

“Whereas the complaint remitted by the procureur-général to the former Parliament of Paris on September 7, 1785, is only signed at the end and not on each sheet, which is contrary to law, the present appeal is annulled, together with the judgment given by the former Parliament of Paris on December 5, 1785.

“Nevertheless, having regard to the gravity of the offence, it is ordered that the said La Motte shall remain in custody, and that the documents in the suit shall be hereunto annexed to serve as a record of the proceedings, and that the same shall be brought before the director of the jury to decide upon as he may be advised.”⁠[455]⁠

The count pretends that in the first instance the judgment said nothing whatever about his remaining in custody, and that it was only on the Jacobin public accuser (?) rising and stating that as no notice had been taken during the proceedings of the letters patent issued by the king, he opposed the count’s being set at liberty, that the unpleasant addendum was made. According to the count, the king at once offered to withdraw the letters patent, but was overruled by the minister. In a few days it was too late; Louis XVI. was dethroned and a prisoner at the Temple, his own keeper of the seals, Duport du Tertre, sealing with the great seal the order for his arrest.

About this time poor M. de Laporte is also arrested and sent to join the count in the Conciergerie, and in a week or two, after a swift trial before the newly constituted tribunal of August 17th, the harmless old man is sent to the guillotine. Swiftly as the new tribunal does its work with the suspects, and swiftly as the newly invented guillotine seconds it, still it is not sharp enough for revolutionary patriotism, with Verdun fallen and the Duke of Brunswick in full march upon the capital. By Marat and Billaud, and Sergent and Panis and some few others, the hideous September massacres are planned, and De la Motte is horrified at learning that his name, with the fatal red cross against it, stands second on the list of proscribed prisoners in the Conciergerie. The count pretends that he and a party of fellow-prisoners secretly arm themselves and decide upon making a desperate resistance, though where they got their weapons from is by no means clear. According to his version, he is provided with a dagger and a couple of pistols, and takes up his post at the grating at the end of the corridor, where he remains on the watch, and from whence, not only did he see the prisoners tried, but slaughtered as well. Throughout the night nothing is heard but the unlocking of doors and drawing of bolts, followed by shouts, shrieks, and groans; and an hour or so before daybreak comes the sound of heavy footsteps, of loud voices demanding the keys, and sharp blows against the door at the entrance to the corridor leading to their cells. All at once the count hears his own name shouted out, and thinks the time has now come to battle for his life. A few more blows and the door gives way, and a band of strangers rushes in—friends, however, and not enemies, who caress the count, clasp him to their breasts, and carry him off triumphantly in their arms. The outside of the prison gained, they entertain him at a neighbouring café, and then summoning a vehicle, three of his liberators accompany him to the Rue de Choiseul, where they insist upon his going and at once making his demand upon the “domain” for the entire value of his effects seized at Bar-sur-Aube in virtue of the sentence passed upon him by the Parliament of Paris.

The count of course does as he is bid, and what is most surprising, according to his own statement, without previous notice or proving his identity, or even the shadow of a legal claim, he succeeds in obtaining from the “domain” a sum of thirty thousand francs on account, twenty-seven thousand francs of which he stows away in his pocket-book, and the remaining three thousand, which are in assignats, he hands to his deliverers to dispose of as they may think proper.⁠[456]⁠

It was lucky for the count that he had been transferred to the Conciergerie, for at the time the foregoing scenes were being enacted in this prison, this is what was transpiring at La Force, where the count was originally confined. “At one o’clock in the morning of September 3rd,” writes Maton de la Varenne,⁠[457] “the gate leading to our quarter was again opened. Four men in uniform, each with a drawn sabre and blazing torch, mounted our corridor, preceded by a turnkey, and entered a room close to ours to search a box which we heard them break open. This done, they halted in the gallery and began questioning one Cuissa to know where La Motte was. La Motte, they said, under a pretext of finding a treasure which they were to share in, had swindled one of them out of three hundred livres, having asked him to dinner for that purpose. The wretched Cuissa, whom they had in their power, and who lost his life that night, answered trembling that he remembered the circumstance well, but did not know what had become of La Motte. Determined to find La Motte, and confront him with Cuissa, they ascended to other rooms and made further search there, but evidently without success, for I heard them say, ‘Let’s look among the corpses then, for in God’s name he must be found!’”

The count had not long regained his liberty before he was discovered by his niece, daughter of Madame de la Tour, she who as a child had taken part in the famous incantation scene enacted by Cagliostro at the Palais-Cardinal, and of which the countess made so much at the Necklace trial. The game of appealing and petitioning against the judgment rendered in the Necklace trial being now up, and it being the duty of all patriots to hurl back foreign invasion, Count de la Motte returns to his old profession of arms, raises a company of cavalry, composed chiefly of former friends in the gendarmerie, gets appointed captain, has his troop reviewed by the colonel on the Boulevards, and next day finds himself denounced by patriot Burlandeux, who charges him with being both royalist and aristocrat, and swears that the company he has joined is composed entirely of men of his own stamp, with not a single sans-culotte among them. The count not desiring to return to his old quarters in the Conciergerie—for again there with Danton as minister of justice, the chances are that he would only leave them for the guillotine—is glad enough to return his sword to its scabbard, and accept a passport for his native town of Bar-sur-Aube.

On his arrival there he finds the great pavilion attached to his house occupied by the provincial directory, which necessitates his furnishing a few rooms in the house itself for his own accommodation. Having done this, he proceeds to Tonnerre to fetch his sister and niece, who have taken up their residence there. At Tonnerre the count stays for several weeks, smitten with the charms, or possibly the expectations, of a young lady, only daughter of a rich proprietor. “I was thirty-six,” remarks he—he was upwards of thirty-eight—“but I did not look so old; she was eighteen.” The count finding himself favoured in his suit, asks the hand of mademoiselle in marriage, and is accepted.

Time passes pleasantly enough for the next month or two; the count is installed in the old house at Bar-sur-Aube, and has his sister and niece residing with him. The shooting season is on, and only give the count his dog and his gun and he will not lack for amusement. Of course he makes frequent journeys to Tonnerre, although something like fifty miles of cross roads intervene between the two places; but what are these to a man in love, who has been accustomed to the saddle too all his life? How he manages to live at this time he does not condescend to tell us. There are no more sealed money packages from poor old Laporte. Was it on the balance of the assignats which he received from the domain?—if he ever did receive what he states—or was it upon his sister, Madame de la Tour? We think the latter the most probable. M. de la Tour had emigrated, and the count’s anxiety that his sister should live with him arose, we expect, from his desire to live on her.

It is at this time, November, 1792, that the king is brought to trial; the count is nervously anxious for news of the result of the proceedings, simply because, as he admits, he still entertained some faint hopes of being able to obtain a further supply of cash from the dethroned monarch. Louis XVI. dead, the count is reduced to his shadowy claim on the domain.

During the next eighteen months, De la Motte leads the life of a country gentleman at Bar-sur-Aube. He hunts, and shoots, and fishes, and cultivates his little plot of land, and rides constantly over to Tonnerre. The queen is now brought to trial, and he is appealed to, he says, to come to Paris and depose against her, but declines to do so. “In my opinion,” observes this contemptible hypocrite, professing to believe in his wife’s pretended intimacy with Marie-Antoinette, “the queen was not so blamable (in the Necklace affair) as Madame de la Motte believed. In her position it was difficult to interfere between the law and its victim. I was persuaded this sacrifice had cost the queen much, and I had had proofs of the goodness of her heart.”⁠[458] In May, 1794, the count proceeds to Paris to urge his claim against the domain, which claim of his has now become as much his fixed idea as the revision of his sentence in the Necklace trial was a year or two ago. He met, however, with no success; and after two months spent in wearying appeals, returns home again, balked in all his plans, and thoroughly disgusted to find that Bar-sur-Aube has now its revolutionary committee, and its denouncers of suspects, and is by no means a secure place to reside in. Tonnerre, he thinks, will be more preferable, so to Tonnerre he hies, but only to find that it also has its denouncers. The count hastens home again, and finds his sister and niece already arrested as the wife and daughter of an émigré; thinking his turn will not be long in coming, he keeps his horse ready saddled in his stable, puts a pair of pistols in the holsters, and prepares to ride away at the first signal of danger.

With the view of keeping in with the revolutionary party, the count gives a supper to the members of the committee, after which proof of patriotism they grant him a certificate of citizenship in proper form. Protected by this, he returns to Tonnerre, and proceeds to take the necessary steps for his marriage. But the municipality will not permit the banns to be published until the count produces a certificate of the countess’s death, and this, owing to the war with England, he is unable to procure. Back to Bar-sur-Aube the count rides again and obtains such certificate as he can from the authorities there—his uncle, M. de Suremont, the same that had to disgorge the jewels belonging to the count which he had appropriated—being mayor at the time. Ere, however, the count can return to Tonnerre he is arrested by order of a government commissioner, and carried off by a couple of militaires to Troyes, to the same prison where his sister and niece are already confined. Here the time seems to have passed pleasantly enough with music, singing, reading of plays and flirtations between the male and female prisoners. Among the latter is the “wife of an émigré, with a charming daughter of eighteen”—eighteen seems to have been an irresistible age with the count. “Not having,” says he, in the coolest manner, “any further relations with the people of Tonnerre”—although he was about setting out to his wedding at the very time he was arrested—“I decided upon marrying this young person.”

Fortunately for the count, Robespierre’s fall takes place at this period, and he and his fellow-prisoners regain their liberty. On returning to Bar-sur-Aube he finds that all his arms and horses have been appropriated by the officers who arrested him, and that they and his servants have pretty well stripped his house between them. He at once institutes proceedings in the local courts, obtains a judgment by default, and the two militaires are cast in damages for fifty thousand francs, which damages the count of course hopes to get some day or other. At any rate, thenceforward these fifty thousands francs become his fixed idea, and we hear no more of his claim against the domain.

The count, being sadly in need of ready cash, sells his house—that house on which so large a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the famous Necklace had been squandered, to the postmaster of Bar-sur-Aube. The commodious stables serve admirably for the post-master’s stud of horses, the elegantly decorated salons and chambres à coucher furnish handsome reception and sleeping rooms for his guests. The great pavilion is reserved for the count’s own use for the space of a year; and here he, his wife—for he has married the charming young lady of eighteen—and his mother-in-law, for a time reside. At the commencement of 1796 they remove to what the count describes as a charming hermitage, surrounded by woods and waterfalls and lovely views, and where they farm their own land, and live a life of country ease. Several years—happy ones after a fashion, one would suppose—thus glide by, until at length the count’s mother-in-law, weary of the woods and the waterfalls and the charming views, urges him to go to Paris. Horses, bullocks, cows, pigs, poultry, and standing crops are forthwith sold, and to Paris the family betake themselves. Bonaparte is now first consul; the count obtains an audience of him, presents a petition, and is told by the great man that he remembers seeing him years ago at Brienne. Nothing, however, comes of the petition, and spite of all his efforts the count cannot find the two officers against whom he has the judgment for fifty thousand francs. For some years he seems to live in Paris agreeably enough—no doubt on the resources of his mother-in-law—spending his time between the Palais Royal and the Boulevards, and ever on the look-out for the two militaires who plundered his house at Bar-sur-Aube. At last, by a lucky chance, he tracks out one of them, has him arrested, and after various legal proceedings, is disgusted at seeing him set at liberty on the ground that the government had granted a general amnesty for all acts done in service of the state at this period of national trouble.

Year after year rolls by, and the count witnesses the establishment of the Empire, the fall of Napoleon, and his consignment to the Isle of Elba, and the return of the Bourbons to France, to bring about which latter event he took most energetic steps. Beugnot, whom the reader will remember as the young barrister of Bar-sur-Aube, and who has managed to keep his head upon his shoulders during the revolutionary whirl, finds himself appointed minister of police, having already had the title of count conferred upon him by Napoleon. De la Motte loses not a moment in appealing to his former rival to serve an old friend and fellow-townsman, and Beugnot, knowing perfectly well the count’s tastes, and precisely what he is fitted for, gets the farmer of the gambling tables in the Palais Royal—the leases of which Beugnot, in his capacity of police minister, had to renew—to give him some congenial berth. The count pretends that it was simply a pension of two hundred francs a month which he received from Bernard, the lessee of the gambling saloons, and that he accepted this with great repugnance. It is far more probable that he had to do something for his paltry pittance—act, for example, as decoy duck, and entice all the game he could to fowler Bernard’s net. Whichever it may have been, post or pension simply, the count lost it before a year was over, when Napoleon was again ruler of France.

At the second return of the Bourbons after the battle of Waterloo, Count Beugnot is named postmaster-general. De la Motte again seeks him out, and obtains a letter from him to Bernard, who reinstates him in his former position, and such as it was, the count manages to hold it for a couple of years or so, when he gets his dismissal. Of course he flies off to complain to Beugnot, but Beugnot can do nothing for him; he however promises to see if he can serve the count in some other way. Eventually he appoints the count’s sister, Madame de la Tour, postmistress at Bar-sur-Aube, but to the count himself he gives no sort of place.

“At this epoch” (1817), writes the count, in dolorous strain, “I had just lost successively my sister-in-law (Mademoiselle de Saint-Remi), my wife, and my mother-in-law. My son, aged fifteen, had determined upon proceeding to Guadaloupe with the first battalion ordered to that colony. I was therefore alone in the world, without consolation, without help, without even the means of existence. Sent away from one hotel after another through default of payment, humiliated at being obliged to receive from my acquaintances the smallest pittance, that too frequently proved insufficient for my most pressing wants, I felt my courage forsake me, and all I thought of was putting an end to a life of so much misery.”⁠[459]⁠

Being without the means of procuring a pistol, the count informs us that he resolved on throwing himself into the Seine. Instead, however, of doing this from one of the quays, or from the banks of the river in the immediate suburbs, he makes a long country journey to Franconville-la-Garenne, several miles away from the Seine at its nearest point. This gives him opportunity for reflection, and he abandons his suicidal intentions and returns to Paris determined to present a petition to the king. It is curious to find the count in his old age returning to the old De la Motte de Valois practice of memorializing the crown. Times, however, had changed, and there were too many petitioners with real grievances pressing their claims upon the Bourbons for any of the De la Motte de Valois kith or kin to stand a shadow of a chance. As luck would have it, when the count reached Paris, after a tramp of at least twenty miles, he encountered a friend who gave him a good breakfast, and made him some fair promises which put him in spirits again. He now prepares his petition, and sends it to Marshal Beurnonville with a letter for the Duke de Chartres. In a few days the count receives a reply. The duke has forwarded his petition to his majesty, who has remitted it, accompanied by a recommendation of his own, to the minister of his household. The count rubs his hands at this good news, and anxiously waits for further intelligence. At last a friend undertakes to make inquiries for him at the ministerial bureau, and learns Sacré Dieu! that all petitions accompanied by special recommendations from the king are stowed away in pigeonholes on their receipt, and are never seen or heard of more. The count hastens to the marshal in a frantic state of mind; the marshal does what he can to pacify him, and, as a matter of course, exhorts him to be patient. Patient! poor comfort this to a man reduced “to live upon horse-beans and boiled potatoes without seasoning, and rarely tasting even bread,”⁠[460] and whose span of life is well-nigh drawn out to the allotted three score years and ten.

The count, in his depth of misery again resolves upon suicide, and again sets forth on a long journey before executing his purpose. When night sets in he is almost twenty miles from Paris. Selecting a favourable spot, the old man proceeds to put his design into execution. First of all he ties up his pocket-book, containing the letters of the duke and the marshal, in his handkerchief, to which he attaches a heavy stone or two, and then sinks it in the stream. He next flings in his hat and cane, and prepares to follow them, but his courage forsakes him. Even at well nigh three score and ten the love of life proves too strong. In the dark waters before him the count sees, he says, only waves of blood, and suddenly visions of the hideous night of September 2nd rise vividly before his eyes. Rushing from the river’s brink he gains a meadow, where he lays himself down and sleeps. On awaking he walks for upwards of a couple of hours in the direction of Paris, and eventually finds himself on the road to Choisy. Seeing a light in one of the houses of the village he makes for it, and fortunately finds a man stirring, of whom he begs a draught of water, telling him that he has been attacked and robbed by thieves. The man, compassionating his miserable appearance, gives him a glass of wine instead, and a stout stick to help him forward on the road, and after a brief rest the count resumes his journey. He goes again to his old friend, the same who gave him the breakfast on his return from a similar expedition, tells him of his second adventure, and is again relieved by him.

After having allowed his process against the two militaires to slumber for some years, the count revives it again, and applies to a matrimonial agent to take it up, but it being quite out of this man’s line of business, he, on the tanner’s principle of there being nothing like leather, suggests matrimony to the count as the best way of surmounting his misfortunes—informing him that he has an old dowager on his books who is mad to marry one of the ancien régime. The count is nothing loth; so an interview is arranged, and an invitation to dinner follows; and the count, got up for the occasion, presents himself at the old lady’s house, of which he already looks forward to being master. He is shocked, however, at the number of children and grandchildren he is introduced to, and still more shocked at the want of manners of the little brats, and especially at an episode which transpires at the dinner-table, and which delicacy will not permit us to describe. The dinner, which was of the noisiest, in due course comes to an end, and with it the count’s brief courtship of the dowager who was mad to marry a man of the ancien régime.

For a year or two longer the old count drags on a miserable existence. He succeeds in getting a lawyer to take up his case against the two officers, and obtains from him an advance of five hundred francs. Five hundred francs! why the old count must have been as delighted as he was in the old days when he came over from England with drafts on Perregaux for between two and three hundred times five hundred francs. This slice of luck puts him once more in clover for a time, but only for a time, for although the case prospers at the outset, it is finally decided against him, and starvation again stares him in the face. At this moment a dislocated limb forces the wretched old man to take refuge in the Hôpital de la Charité, and here he remains for many weary months. “It was while I was in this hospital,” says the count, “that M. Panisset came to see me, and found me on my bed of suffering, and made me certain proposals on the part of M. de Lavan, prefect of police.” [461]⁠

When the count was sufficiently recovered to come abroad, his first visit was to M. de Lavan, at the prefecture. “In 1825,” says M. Feuillet de Conches, “a man bowed down by age and misery presented himself at M. de Lavan’s bureau, and was received by the chief of his cabinet, a person of rare merit and distinguished character, M. Duplessis. It was Count de la Motte, who came to ask bread. M. Duplessis conversed with him respecting the Necklace affair, and suggested that he should write his memoirs, including his reminiscences of this mysterious incident. La Motte thereupon wrote what was suggested, and with every appearance of good faith. His notes only confirmed the details which were already known. The queen’s memory had no need of being cleared by a poor broken-down wretch who, after having helped to cast dirt upon her august fame by contributing to the atrocious calumnies of his wife, now came forward to deny them under the stroke of misery, in presence of a royalist government. Still it was no less precious to have an authentic denial written by one of the principal actors in this too famous drama, an old man, worn down by misfortune, but retaining all his intelligence, understanding the character of the atonement, and accepting it, according to the opinion of M. Duplessis, with resignation and good faith. Out of respect to memories, become almost saint-like; out of respect, above all, to the daughter of Louis XVI., (to whom the resuscitation of the name of La Motte, upon which evil-disposed people would have been certain to comment, would have been the cause of considerable grief,) M. de Lavan thought it best to envelop in obscurity the few days this unfortunate being had still to live.”⁠[462]⁠

“The pretensions of M. de la Motte,” remarks M. Campardon, “were exceedingly modest. All he asked was an annuity of from three hundred to four hundred francs for life, and his admission into the Hospice de Chaillot.” During the last years of his existence, the count, who was commonly known by the nickname of “Valois-Collier,”⁠[463] is said to have taken his daily stroll beneath the famous “Galeries de Bois” of the Palais Royal, which stood where the present handsome Galérie d’Orléans now stands, and from being a favourite resort of the Russian officers belonging to the army of occupation had come to be derisively styled the Tartars’ Camp. To the very last, therefore, the Count affected the neighbourhood of his old haunts, the gambling saloons of the Palais Royal. Overwhelmed by infirmity and misery, he died in the month of November, 1831, having almost attained his eightieth year.⁠[464]⁠