XXI. 1785. June 22–Aug. 6. THE GATHERING OF THE STORM.

On the 22nd of June, Count de la Motte finds himself in Paris again, with a letter of credit for the sum of 122,896 livres in his pocket-book on Perregaux the banker—the same shrewd Perregaux who, according to the popular story, after refusing the services of young Jacques Lafitte, engaged him the instant afterwards from observing him pick up and carefully preserve a common pin as in dejected mood he crossed the courtyard of the banker’s hôtel, and who subsequently took him into partnership and gave him his daughter in marriage, and so enabled him to found the great house of Lafitte and Co., of which he was so many years the distinguished head.

The count turns his letter of credit into hard cash on the following day,⁠[172] and then calls upon Regnier with some of the stones he had failed to get rid of in England, commissions him to mount the best of them round the lid of a circular box (a bonbonnière), to set others for a small pair of drop earrings which the countess intends making a present of,⁠[173] and sells him the remainder—namely, twenty brilliants, weighing in the aggregate forty-two carats, one weighing four and a quarter carats, and thirty-nine weighing fifty-nine and a half carats—for 27,000 livres, discharging at the same time Regnier’s claim for setting the two diamond rings for himself and madame, and also an old debt due for either jewellery or plate.⁠[174]⁠

The De la Mottes now make no secret of the affluence which, after years of watching and waiting, is theirs at last. Madame, they confidentially admit, is in high favour with the queen, who, they insinuate, showers gifts upon her confidant with no niggard hand. The countess’s ambition was to be lady of the manor of Fontette. She has the means of gratifying it now; nevertheless, it is not to Fontette that she goes, but to Bar-sur-Aube, which, with its somewhat free and pleasant society, has greater charms for her. On retirement for a time to Bar-sur-Aube, her heart is fixed. She and the count had been long looking forward to spending the present autumn in their new abode, which by the aid of the Parisian decorator, who for months past had been exercising his talents upon the principal apartments, was rapidly becoming a model of elegance and taste.

One little thing, however, was somewhat troubling the De la Mottes at this moment and casting its shadow across their anticipated enjoyment—namely, the affair of the Necklace, the first instalment in respect of which would soon be falling due. Still the countess, having accomplished what she had, would surely find it no very difficult task to arrange a postponement which would leave her husband and herself at liberty to enjoy their autumn holiday in peace and quietude. It is with this view that the countess calls upon the cardinal, as we have already stated, while the count, looking upon the affair as good as settled, hies down to Bar-sur-Aube to await the arrival of several waggon-loads of furniture which were on their way from Paris. Among these we may be certain there were some handsome suites of the very latest fashion, supplied, we know, by Héricourt, Fournier, and Gervais, the crack upholsterers of the period, at the cost of 50,000 livres. There was no lack of clocks too from Furet, of marble groups from Adams and Chevalier, nor of mirrors, and chandeliers, and table-glass, and Wedgwood ware, then getting into fashion in Paris, from Sikes.⁠[175] A little automaton bird too, that flew about the room all alone, and for which madame had given 1500 livres,⁠[176] would certainly not be forgotten.

It must have been at this particular juncture that the cardinal chanced to see some two or three letters actually written by Marie-Antoinette, and that, struck by the dissimilarity of the handwriting of these letters and those received from Madame de la Motte, he communicated his doubts upon the subject to the countess.⁠[177] She, with her active brain and ever ready tongue, had of course a hundred reasons to prove to the credulous cardinal that he was mistaken, and so set his mind at rest. Not so as regarded her own; she felt none of that confidence with which she could so readily inspire her dupe. She feared the mine was on the point of being sprung, and that the explosion would take place before she could make good her retreat. To reassure alike the cardinal and the jewellers she goes with her casket of jewels,—which Regnier tells her are worth 100,000 livres to her notary, one Mainguet, with whom she pawns them for a loan of 35,000 livres, 30,000 of which she takes to the Prince de Rohan to give to Böhmer and Bassenge. Then she packs off Rétaux de Villette post-haste to Bar-sur-Aube, and so much is she taken up with these urgent matters that she neither dines nor sups nor sleeps at home on that day.⁠[178]⁠

One can imagine the consternation of the Count de la Motte as, while superintending the arrangement of the new furniture and chatting with the decorator respecting the extremely satisfactory effect of the tout ensemble of madame’s boudoir, he catches sight of Villette driving up to the house in hot haste, and looking far more grave than is the fellow’s wont. The count rushes down the steps to meet him—they turn aside for a few minutes’ conversation, and after a hurried lunch, and some hasty instructions to the workpeople, the order is given to put fresh horses to the carriage, and the pair are soon rattling over the road to Paris. By dint of handsome “pourboires” to postillions, and considerable wear and tear of horseflesh, the hundred and forty miles that intervene between them and the Rue Neuve-Saint-Gilles are got over in less than the four-and-twenty hours. At noon on the following day (August 3) a council is held, at which it is decided that madame shall send a message to Bassenge, requesting him to favour her with a call. The jeweller, in the belief that the summons can only refer to the Necklace, takes the Hôtel de Strasbourg in his way, sees the cardinal, speaks to him of his own and his partner’s inquietude at the queen having taken no notice whatever of the firm’s letter of July 12, and informs him of the message he has received from Madame de la Motte, to whom he now hastens. Bassenge finds the countess alone, with no other furniture in the apartment beyond a bedstead and a couch, and everything about the house betokening a sudden “flitting.” The jeweller simply thought he was dreaming when, after the ordinary compliments had passed between them, madame, with the calmest of countenances and the firmest of voices, said to him: “I have sent for you to let you know that you have been deceived—the word ‘approuvé’ and the signature attached to the paper containing the conditions of sale of the Necklace are forgeries—the queen’s handwriting has been counterfeited. As for the rest, the cardinal, you know, is very rich; you had better look to him, and insist upon his rendering himself personally liable.”⁠[179]⁠

Bassenge, as soon as he recovered his self-possession, hurried home to communicate to his partner the astounding intelligence he had just received, but Böhmer, it will be remembered, was at Crespy with Madame Campan on this very day.⁠[180] The jeweller therefore resolved to look in again on the cardinal, and ask an explanation from him. The Prince de Rohan, on being apprised of what the countess had said, shared in the fears of the jeweller, though he dared not avow as much. He hesitated for some time ere he made a reply; then he strove to reassure Bassenge by affirming that he had in his own possession a written agreement of the queen’s, and he bade the jeweller go home and make himself perfectly easy; and home, and somewhat easier in his mind, Bassenge went. Great stress was laid at the trial on this mis-statement of the cardinal’s, still we can very well understand it to have been nothing more than an exaggeration of the fact that he was in possession of letters which he believed to be written by the queen, authorising the purchase of the Necklace on her behalf.

When Böhmer returns home from Crespy on the following day, the two partners compare notes, and decide that the queen ought to be seen without a moment’s delay. To Versailles, therefore, Böhmer hastens, but, as we have already stated, is refused an audience by Marie-Antoinette. A day or two afterwards, however, he finds himself summoned by courier to wait upon the queen, who has by this time learnt from Madame Campan the result of her conversation at Crespy with the crown jeweller, and is anxious to hear the astounding recital from his own lips. Böhmer, disregarding all that Madame Campan has told him, and in the full belief that the cardinal holds the queen’s written agreement for the purchase of the Necklace, proceeds to Versailles in all confidence, determined to be no longer trifled with, even by royalty itself. On his arrival he is ushered into the queen’s private cabinet, when Marie-Antoinette at once inquires of him: “By what fatality it is that she is still doomed to hear of his foolish pretensions about selling her an article which she had steadily refused for several years?” Böhmer, reassured by what the cardinal had told Bassenge, no longer felt any doubt as to the queen being really a party to the purchase of the Necklace, and replied, “that he was compelled, being unable to pacify his creditors any longer.” “What are your creditors to me?” inquired the queen. Böhmer then related to her seriatim all that, according to his deluded imagination, had passed between them through the intervention of the Cardinal de Rohan. She was equally thunderstruck, incensed, and surprised at everything she heard. In vain did she speak; the jeweller, alike importunate and dangerous, repeated incessantly: “Madame, this is no time for feigning; deign to confess that you have my Necklace, and order me some assistance, or else a bankruptcy will soon bring the whole affair to light.”⁠[181]⁠

Marie-Antoinette, driven almost frantic by this flagrant imposture and by the wanton manner in which her name had been abused and trifled with, immediately sent for the Abbé de Vermond, “her private secretary, her confidant, and her counsellor;”⁠[182] and subsequently for the Baron de Breteuil—the cardinal’s two bitterest enemies. Delighted at the prospect they saw of crushing the grand almoner, not merely by effecting his utter ruin at court, but by disgracing him in the eyes of all Europe, they never for a moment thought of the consequences of permitting the name of the second personage in the kingdom to be mixed up in a swindling transaction and associated with those of a profligate ecclesiastic, a wholesale forger, a Palais Royal courtesan, a sharper, and an abandoned woman and thief.

Hardly had Böhmer made his partner acquainted with what transpired at his interview with the queen, ere another courier in the royal livery dashes up to the door of the jewellers’ establishment—“Au Grand Balcon,” in the Rue Vendôme—this time with a letter from the Baron de Breteuil, minister of justice and of the king’s household, and the Prince de Rohan’s declared enemy, again requiring Böhmer’s attendance at Versailles. On the receipt of this new summons, Böhmer hurries off to the cardinal for instructions and finds his eminence by this time pretty well crazed with this same Necklace business. Nevertheless he enjoins the jeweller not to breathe a word about the queen, for should the minister discover that her majesty had purchased the detested jewel, he would certainly inform the king, and they would all be involved in one common disgrace. Should the Baron de Breteuil question him as to the meaning of the letter which the firm had sent to the queen, he had better reply that it referred to some new set of diamonds which they desired to sell to her majesty.

Primed with these equivocal instructions, the crown jeweller proceeds nervously to his interview with the minister; but whether he was as reticent as the cardinal bade him be on the subject of the sale of the Necklace we have our doubts. Böhmer’s object was to get his money; but then he dared not fly in face of the instructions he received from the minister. He therefore played fast and loose with the cardinal, not daring to break with him for fear he should loose his 1,400,000 livres, but betraying him, so far as he thought he might safely venture to do, to his acknowledged enemy. The result was that a few days afterwards, on the recommendation of the Baron de Breteuil, who assured the jewellers that they should be paid for the Necklace, a memorial was drawn up and forwarded to the queen by the crown jewellers, wherein was set forth a complete history of the negotiations which had been entered into with the cardinal, and which had resulted in the sale to him of the Necklace, as they believed, on her majesty’s account.

At this point the arch intrigante seems to have lost her head, for on the morning of the 4th, the day after she had made her damaging admission to Bassenge respecting the signature to the contract, she sends her maid to the Hôtel de Strasbourg to beg the cardinal to call upon her. He does so, when she receives him seemingly all in tears, and tells him that she is a victim to the malevolence of the courtiers of Versailles, who are jealous of the favour shown her by the queen; that she is obliged to fly to avoid their attacks, and entreats of him to afford her an asylum until she can provide herself with some safe retreat. The stupid cardinal, not even yet convinced that he has been duped, or, if so, fearing to admit as much, hesitates at first, but eventually consents to receive her, her husband, and her maid at his hôtel.⁠[183] The countess afterwards pretended that it was the cardinal who sent for her and the count; that he kept them almost prisoners, and used every argument to induce them to cross the frontier into Germany with all speed, so as to be out of the way when the storm burst forth. She even went so far as to say that the count was obliged to threaten to use force ere he could get released.⁠[184]⁠

Only one motive can be suggested for the countess taking refuge at the Palais-Cardinal. She knew, or she suspected, that the police were watching her house and tracking her footsteps, and she did not know how soon the outstretched hand of justice might be upraised to strike, and she may have thought from the cardinal’s high position, and the power and influence of his friends and connections, that the police would not dare to violate the sanctity of the episcopal domicile. For two entire days the De la Mottes remained in close seclusion at the Hôtel de Strasbourg, when finding the confinement irksome, or thinking possibly that the affair would be certain to be hushed up, or that the law if put in force would not trouble itself about a couple of fugitives hidden in some far-away country town in the Champagne, they left the cardinal’s on the evening of the 5th of August for their own house in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Gilles.

Arrived there the De la Mottes without a moment’s loss of time appear to have made arrangements for sending the forger Villette out of the way. Madame, calling him aside, confides to him what he is already well aware of, namely, that her affairs are somewhat embarrassed, and that she and the count propose retiring to Bar-sur-Aube until the storm has blown over and the atmosphere is a trifle clearer. Placing 4000 livres in bank-notes in her faithful secretary’s hand, “Go you,” said she, “to Italy for a time;” and then to console the lover, whom hard necessity forced her to abandon, she added, “I will soon recall you near me again.” The docile Villette promised to do as he was bid. A cabriolet seems to have been in waiting for him in the courtyard of the countess’s house, and into it Villette got, and a little after two o’clock in the morning he was presumed to be on his way to self-exile.⁠[185]⁠

The following morning, while the count was giving some directions respecting the last van-load of furniture, which was then being packed in the courtyard of the hôtel, Bassenge looked in, and in answer to his inquiries after madame’s health was informed by the count that she had been at Versailles for the last three days pleading for the cardinal. De la Motte added that he had only returned from Bar-sur-Aube three days before, when he heard about the Necklace business for the first time. “If,” remarked he in a jocular way, “the queen should ask you the meaning of the letter of thanks which I hear you have addressed to her, why not say it merely meant that the Necklace had always been at her disposition, and that it was only a renewal of the offers of it which had been previously made?”⁠[186]⁠

No sooner had the count seen the last van-load of furniture safely off than he went with Father Loth to Mainguet the notary, paid him his 35,000 livres, and took away the jewels which madame had deposited with him a few days previously.⁠[187] These were necessary to the coming display which the De la Mottes were bent upon making at Bar-sur-Aube. Determined to lose no further time, the count and countess set out the same evening for their country retreat; and it is said that at the moment the countess stepped into the carriage she consoled the cardinal by promising to return the very instant he should have need of her.⁠[188]⁠