XXXI. 1786. April–May. ARREST OF THE FORGER VILLETTE—HIS EXAMINATIONS AND CONFRONTATIONS.

It is now that Rétaux de Villette is unearthed with the Abbé Georgel’s sleuth-hounds in full cry. Tracked from town to town, and from village to village, he is at length run down at Geneva, having, says one account, since the news of the Necklace affair, crossed the Swiss frontier, assumed various disguises, and turning his musical talents to account, acted the part of a vagrant musician, playing on his mandoline along the streets and highways to amuse the passers-by. One version of his capture represents him as having been trepanned in some low Geneva tavern, whilst overcome by drink, into enlisting in some phantom regiment, by which adroit manœuvre he was enticed from off the “sacred republican soil,” and carried away to Paris in triumph.⁠[282] Another version affirms that he had got mixed up in a local brawl at the time the abbé’s emissaries pounced upon him, which is likely to be the truer statement of the two, as it is corroborated by his own account of his arrest. “A disturbance,” he says, “probably brought about by design, arose in the public streets between two Geneva watchmakers. A Frenchman, witness of the affair, interposed as peace-maker; whereupon he was seized, together with the two disputants. ‘Where do you come from?’ was asked of him. ‘From Lyons.’ ‘Ah! there has been a great robbery recently committed there. What brought you to Geneva?’ ‘Nothing.’ ‘What is your name?’ ‘Rétaux de Villette.’ ‘To prison with him!’ A few days afterwards an inspector of police arrived from Paris, and carried off the prisoner to the Bastille.”⁠[283]⁠

This must have been about the commencement of April, and no sooner did Villette find himself within the grip of the French police for the second time than he became quite chapfallen. On the road to Paris he was low-spirited to a degree, constantly speaking of himself as a lost man, as a victim about to be sacrificed. His distress, he tells us, was “aggravated by the jokes of the officers, in which they appeared to take a malicious pleasure.”⁠[284] Now and then when cheered with wine he would chat confidentially with police-inspector Quidor concerning his liaisons with Madame de la Motte, and would let fall scraps of information respecting the “belle demoiselle” of the Palais Royal, the part she played at the midnight meeting at Versailles, and the influence which the countess exercised over the Prince de Rohan; but with regard to everything that related to the Necklace, and the billets-doux—“gilt edged,” or bordered with “vignettes bleues,”—and the forged signature to the contract with the jewellers, he preserved a discreet silence.

When housed within the gloomy walls of the Bastille he became slightly, but only slightly, more communicative. He railed at his former mistress for having been the cause of his ruin; described how he came to Paris to obtain a situation in the marshalsea, when, unfortunately for him, he fell into the snares of the siren, who, by pretending to have influence in high quarters, won his confidence, and by promising to do something better for him than his modest expectations led him to hope for, induced him to relinquish all idea of the post he was on the point of securing. Being frequently at her house, the countess employed him in drawing up and copying memorials setting forth the claims of the house of Valois, and asking sometimes for restitution, and at others for pecuniary assistance; also memorials on behalf of individuals in whom Madame de la Motte took an interest, addressed either to the ministers, or to persons in high official positions, from whom places were solicited for the applicants.

At his first examination Villette confessed absolutely nothing but what he was well aware was already known beyond the possibility of doubt. For instance, he admitted that he was acquainted with Mademoiselle d’Oliva, and that he accompanied the count and her to Versailles on a particular day, in the evening of which she was dressed out, and went with the countess to the park, where he and the count also proceeded. In substance he admitted the acting of the part of the queen by D’Oliva, who left the park with him and the count—the countess going off with the Cardinal de Rohan and the Baron de Planta. Villette scrupulously avoided everything like an admission of having written any letters for the countess. He denied having written a letter for D’Oliva to give to the cardinal, or one for the countess to read to D’Oliva as though it were from the queen. He believed D’Oliva was paid for the part she acted, but did not know the amount; he himself carried her three hundred livres on one occasion. When questioned respecting the Necklace, he replied that he knew absolutely nothing about it, nor of the negotiation for its purchase, nor of the letters said to have passed between the cardinal and the queen relative to this purchase. He confessed he was very frequently at Versailles, but could not tell whether he was there on the particular day the Necklace is said to have been delivered. At any rate he knew nothing of the circumstances connected with its delivery, was not the bearer of any letter respecting it, and certainly did not write any such letter. Was not aware of the Necklace being taken to pieces, though he admitted having had some diamonds given to him to sell. Did not know the object of the count’s journey to London; was not aware that he sold any diamonds there, or that he returned to Paris with letters of credit for a considerable amount. He admitted having assumed the name of Augeard, but only as a disguise for carrying on intrigues with women.

Villette of course utterly denied all knowledge of the signature to the contract, but when asked if he thought the cardinal was able to discern whether the signature was genuine, he replied, that for his own part, without possessing the intelligence of the cardinal, had he been in his place he would not have been duped. During the time he was in familiar intercourse with the De la Mottes they appeared, he said, to live like persons of means, but he knew nothing of their sources of income. With respect to their opulence, although he had witnessed it, he had never shared it, save as a hanger-on—a guest who always had a seat at their table. With regard to the De la Mottes’ motive for leaving Paris in August last, he understood from madame that her circumstances were embarrassed. He admitted having received four thousand livres from madame, but only as a loan to enable him to visit Italy, where he had long desired to go; and confessed to having slept part of the night in a cabriolet in the courtyard of the De la Motte hôtel ere setting forth on his journey early on the following morning. Finally he stated that he had had no correspondence with the De la Mottes subsequent to his departure.⁠[285]⁠

Less than a month’s reflection in the Bastille seems to have sharpened Rétaux de Villette’s memory on several essential points, for he writes a letter to the Count de Vergennes, in which he confesses everything except the receipt of the casket containing the Necklace; this he persisted in denying to the last. In consequence of this letter he is again brought up for examination, when, the contract being produced and shown to him, he admits the words “approuvé” and the signature to have been written by himself alone, not in imitation, however, of the queen’s handwriting, but in his own ordinary hand.⁠[286] It was done, he said, at the request of Madame de la Motte, and on her assurance that it was to oblige the cardinal. He also confessed to having written, at the countess’s dictation, all the billets-doux—gilt-edged, or bordered with vignettes bleues—which purported to have been addressed by the queen to the Prince de Rohan, and two letters in particular, in which the queen charged Madame de la Motte to ask the cardinal, in her name, first of all for sixty (fifty) thousand livres, and secondly for one hundred thousand livres, for an immediate payment the queen had to make.⁠[287] Villette positively denied having been the bearer of a billet purporting to have been written by the queen on the evening of the 2nd of February, and of receiving the casket containing the Necklace, and he complacently referred to the striking difference that existed between the individual indicated by the Cardinal de Rohan and himself. The former, he remarked, had big black eyebrows, a pale thin face, and slender figure; whereas his eyebrows were light, his face full and somewhat rubicund, and his figure inclined to be portly. With regard to the Necklace, he knew that it had been broken up, and that the diamonds intrusted to him to sell formed part of it, but he denied having had any of the diamonds given to him, or of having received money from Madame de la Motte for appending the forged signature to the contract. “It is true she has lent me money,” observed he, “and I have kept a note of it, but whenever I have spoken to madame on the subject she has always been polite enough to say that she did not wish the matter mentioned.” Finally, he expressed his firm belief that Cagliostro was entirely innocent of any complicity in the affair.⁠[288]⁠

The countess now undergoes a second examination at which she denies that Villette wrote any letters to the cardinal in the name of the queen. Having had time to reflect upon the weight of evidence against her, she now admits the truth of the statement with respect to the meeting between the cardinal and D’Oliva in the park of Versailles, but pretends the affair was a mere pleasantry got up to quiet the restless cardinal. She still denied that she had applied to him for the several sums of fifty thousand and one hundred thousand livres, and maintained that she had never received these amounts. Denied, moreover, having ever seen the contract with the jewellers, and having got Villette to sign the same. When told that Villette had confessed, she simply replied that she could not conceive his motive for stating the signature to be his; said she first knew of the signature being forged when the cardinal showed her part of a note written by the queen. Next day, after having again reflected, we find her adhering to her text, and contenting herself with remarking that Villette had been overpersuaded to say that he signed the document, and by her orders.

At Rétaux de Villette’s first confrontation with the countess, after making the damaging admissions which he had done, he seems to have given way to feelings of remorse at having betrayed, as he says, “a woman whom I loved to adoration, and who had loaded me with benefits.” He declared that De Launay, Dupuis de Marcé, Fremyn, the Count de Vergennes, and others, had forced him to assert, with the view of saving himself, that the countess alone had instigated him to write the false signature of the queen so as to cheat the cardinal, whereupon the sitting was immediately broken up without giving him time to finish what he was about to say.⁠[289]⁠

When confronted, however, with Madame de la Motte on a subsequent occasion, he tries his hardest, though in vain, to induce her to speak the truth. He told her that her denials could be no longer accepted as proofs while he, the principal agent, and other witnesses were giving her the lie. “You will not see,” he continued, “that everybody accuses you, and that your voice necessarily loses its power. It is useless to deny that the cardinal, you, and I are culpable in this affair. You seek to destroy the avowal which I make of my own guilt. You say that I lie when I accuse myself of forgery. You ruin yourself in acting thus, and evidently do not understand your own interests.”⁠[290]⁠

Madame, however, conceived that she did, and was prepared with her rejoinder, which she made with all the tact and vehemence of the professional advocate. “The observations,” remarked she, “that M. Villette has made are only made to frighten me. I fear nothing, and am perfectly calm. To all his remarks I persist in replying that I neither urged him to write the signature nor the ‘approuvés,’ nor any other similar writing purporting to come from the queen. If M. Villette is good enough to say that he has written the signature and the ‘approuvés,’ it is owing to the fear with which he has been inspired on being told that his ordinary handwriting bore so striking a resemblance to the signature appended to the document, and that he would be certain to be condemned, by reason of this resemblance alone, to corporal punishment. He has been told that if he confessed to this, his punishment would be materially lightened. This is what has caused him to make the confession, which I maintain is false.... I repeat that I am in nowise guilty. I await with calmness the punishment that may be awarded me, and I ask no grace.

“With regard to M. le Cardinal, whom M. Villette has just said he believed to be as guilty as we two, I shall not charge myself with his defence, nor with that of any other person, not knowing whether he is guilty or no. If I were in possession of any secret that would tell against the cardinal in the Necklace affair I should not hide it, because for a long time past he has caused me much suffering. As for myself, I again say that I have no confession to make, as M. Villette pretends I have, for I am not guilty, and I am persuaded that he is no more guilty than myself. If I were guilty I would make a confession, in the hope that my punishment would be less grave. As it is, I could only make a false confession; and although M. Villette tells me that every proof has been obtained against me, and that I have only my bare assertions to oppose to these, I repeat again that I leave my judges at liberty to find me guilty, still asserting that I am innocent and free from crime.”⁠[291]⁠

With this smart peroration of madame’s the confrontations were brought to a close, and the accused were remanded back to their several quarters in the gloomy old fortress to await the next step which the law would in due course take. The revelations of D’Oliva, and more particularly those of Villette, by utterly changing the aspect of things, had sadly weakened the countess’s confidence in her line of defence, and the hold which she believed she had on the sympathy of the public. To retain so much of the latter as was possible, she published a third memorial, or summary, as it was called—her second was simply a rejoinder to Cagliostro—made up, as was her custom, of an artful combination of ingenious fallacies well calculated to perplex, if not to delude, the understanding.

M. Feuillet de Conches has, among his collection of autographs, an extensive MS. in the countess’s handwriting, consisting of her observations upon the various “Mémoires” issued on behalf of her co-accused, and of reports of what passed at her own examinations and confrontations. This was evidently prepared for the use of her advocate, M. Doillot, who drew up her memorials from materials she supplied him with, and whom it is quite certain, from the evidence furnished by this MS., Madame de la Motte did not scruple to attempt to deceive, just as she tried to deceive her judges, and, indeed, every one else with whom she came in contact.⁠[292]⁠

In neither of the countess’s memorials does she seek in any way to implicate Marie-Antoinette, nor make the least claim to that intimacy with royalty which she subsequently maintained in her “Mémoires Justificatifs” with such wanton audacity, and again in her “Life, written by herself,” but lays everything to the charge of the cardinal, fascinated, deluded, and overruled by Cagliostro. As a type of the depravity of the human heart when no moral laws restrain its licence, a book more astounding and impudent than “The Life of Jeanne de St. Remi de Valois, Countess de la Motte,”—from which, in the course of our narrative, we have extracted everything of the least importance wearing an air of truth—was, perhaps, never written.

New memorials, however, were of no use now. Her game, which had been most audaciously played, was played out. People of every class turned against her. The queen and the cardinal were no longer victims to that prejudiced and hastily-formed opinion which, without waiting for the pleadings of the lawyers or the verdict of a jury, passes sentence beforehand. Alone and apart from even her fellow-prisoners, this powerful impostor stood detected as the liar, the swindler, the thief, the contriver of the plot, the single and crafty director of a complicated fraud. And the man who was the first to betray her, and “whose villany and diabolical machinations,” to quote the countess’s own words, had caused all this to come to light, had been one of her familiars—friends she could hardly be said to have had—a constant hanger-on at her house, an almost daily guest at her table, “who, by way of rendering himself necessary,” says the countess, “pretended that, as my husband and I were young people, it was requisite we should have some trusty person to superintend our domestics. He superintended, and had the disposal of everything in the house, and when I went into the country he had all the keys, and the care of paying my servants.”⁠[293] Recalling all this to mind in her “Life,” the countess heaps on Father Loth some of her choicest expletives—“serpent” and “viper” being the most favourite. He is, for instance, “the serpent that stung me to the heart;” “the serpent that darted his envenomed sting against me;” “the dangerous viper that stung the bosom that cherished it;” “this disgrace to human nature;” “this iniquitous monk, who embezzled my money and my watch;” “this perjured and malignant monk;” “this solitary savage;” “this dexterous hypocrite;” “this hypocritical, this notorious villain;” “this monster,” “this profligate and abandoned wretch;” “this wretch who has violated every moral obligation.”⁠[294]⁠

The countess’s confederates had confessed themselves guilty, but there was this excuse for them—they were merely her tools and instruments. Villette, in his time of tribulation, might well protest that he was not that great friend and confidant of Madame de la Motte which he was represented to be, for, said he, “she had no friends, and her confidence never was bestowed absolutely on any one.” She merely instructed her instruments in what was necessary to the parts they had to perform, and kept the secret of the combinations entirely to herself.⁠[295] D’Oliva had captivated the public by her ingenuous explanation of a stratagem which, it was evident to every one, she had had no share in conceiving or conducting to its issue, although she had taken a part in it. And as to the forger Villette, he had rendered so great a service to the law by his complete exposure of the crime which had been committed, and had so disarmed resentment by his apparent contrition, as to call forth towards himself a kind of latent pity, in which contempt and disgust were to some extent mingled.

With regard to the countess, nothing seemed capable of subduing the wanton energy of this bold bad spirit. Confronted alternately with the cardinal, with the girl D’Oliva, with Cagliostro, and with Rétaux de Villette, besides several minor witnesses, she stood, as we have seen, face to face with them, unabashed against them all. At first she denied everything; accused them of the very crimes she had herself committed; charged them with inventing, conducting, and executing the fraud from first to last; even swore that her two chief confederates, standing there as witnesses against her, had been suborned by the relations of the cardinal, and had formed a conspiracy to shift their own dishonour upon her. She told her judges to remember that she was a Valois, descended from the princes who had formerly reigned over them. Perching herself on this imaginary pedestal, she seemed to forget that she was a prisoner on her trial before the country, and thundered her denunciations against her fellow-prisoners in the loudest key, every eye shrinking and quailing beneath her own. Her judges were for the moment amazed and overawed by an assurance which far surpassed anything hitherto seen in a court of justice, whilst the cardinal respectfully styled her “madame” whenever he addressed her.

Every time she was called upon to explain some circumstance with reference to which the statements of the rest of the accused tallied and directly contradicted her own assertions, those present glanced at one another expecting that she would be mute at last, and yield to the weight of evidence against her. But no; her fertile invention, like that of Napoleon at Marengo, supplied her at a moment’s warning with some new combination. When asked to explain the source whence she had derived the means of supporting her extravagant expenditure during her twelve months of display, she replied that she had met with princely benefactors. The Cardinal de Rohan had alone given her 203,720 livres. Observing the looks of incredulity with which this statement was received, to account for the cardinal’s unheard-of liberality, she explained to her judges that relations of a very tender nature existed between her and the grand almoner.⁠[296] She asserted, moreover, that she had got up the scene with D’Oliva in the park of Versailles to revenge herself upon the cardinal for an infidelity of which he had been guilty.⁠[297] Among her other “princely benefactors” she enumerated Madame, the Countess de Provence, who, she stated, had given her 13,200 livres, while the Duke d’Orléans had given her 12,000 livres, the Duke and Duchess de Chartres 26,000, the Duke de Choiseul 12,000, the Duke de Penthièvre 8,400, M. de Castries 3,000, and the contrôleur-général 6,000. All these statements were of course false. For instance, the Countess de Provence had only given her twelve or fifteen louis, and this immediately after the fainting scene, we imagine; the contrôleur-général had given her about fifty louis; and M. de Castries eight hundred, instead of three thousand livres. M. d’Ormesson, whose name she does not mention, said he had sent her a few louis by the hands of the police; while, as regards the eight thousand four hundred livres which she pretended she had received from the Duke de Penthièvre, the chief of his council, the Abbé de Noir, who happened to be present, rose up and indignantly declared the countess’s assertion to be false.⁠[298] Being asked to explain what she had done with the 150,000 livres extorted from the Cardinal de Rohan in August and October, 1784, in the queen’s name, Madame de la Motte calmly smiled, and with a look of offended dignity and wounded innocence, vowed that she had never so much as seen the money.

As each damaging fact came to light the countess did not content herself with launching tirades of abuse merely against the witnesses, “who swore,” she tells us, “precisely what the cardinal’s advocates pleased to put into their mouths.” According to her own admissions, she on more than one occasion abused her judges to their faces,⁠[299] while behind their backs she heaped upon them every variety of vituperative epithet. Commissary Chénon was “a wretch and a cunning dissembler;”⁠[300] Fremyn was her “inveterate enemy;”⁠[301] Dupuis de Marcé was “bought over,” was a “creature of the house of Rohan,” was “a monster,” “a sly and venomous serpent,” “a perfidious miscreant,” and “prevaricated to a scandalous excess.”⁠[302] Both he and Fremyn were “dissemblers,” both “would convict the innocent rather than hear the truth;” “every ray of evidence which would have made in my favour was refracted and broken by the medium through which it passed;”⁠[303] both had “the villany to alter and interpolate the records.”⁠[304] She further accused the deputy procureur-général and the judges of having “caballed against her;”⁠[305] maintained that even the registrar, Le Breton, was “in the cardinal’s interest.”⁠[306] So, too, was the governor of the Bastille, rigorous old De Launay, to whom she moreover applies the epithet of “this perfidious governor.”⁠[307]⁠

While these examinations were proceeding, and when it was perfectly well known that Count de la Motte was residing in security on the other side of the Channel, an abundance of legal formalities were gone through to ensure his arrest, had he only happened to have been within the jurisdiction of the Paris Parliament. For instance, on the 15th of December, 1785, a writ of capture of the count’s body was decreed, and on the 15th of the following January, Regnault, “huissier of our said court,” was despatched to Bar-sur-Aube to execute the writ in question. On the 13th of February it was ordered that the said Marc-Antoine-Nicolas de la Motte should be summoned that day se’nnight by public proclamation, to have law and justice done upon him, which summoning accordingly took place in the town of Bar-sur-Aube, and subsequently at Paris, “by Simonin, sole sworn crier of the king, provost and viscount of Paris, and huissier of the Châtelet of Paris, accompanied by Regnault, huissier of our said court.”⁠[308] Count de la Motte, however, failed to put in an appearance at either place.