XXXIV. 1786. June. THE SENTENCES CARRIED OUT.—“WHAT IS RESERVED FOR THE BLOOD OF THE BOURBONS?”

The evening following that on which judgment was pronounced, the gates of the Bastille were opened to the cardinal, who returned to the Palais-Cardinal at half-past ten o’clock at night. There he found the members of his family and the people of the quartier waiting to receive him, and testify their joy at his acquittal.⁠[348]⁠

Cagliostro shared the popular ovations. He, too, was conducted back in a sort of triumph to the Bastille, where he remained until he recovered possession of the portfolio and other effects, minus, however, the one hundred thousand francs in cash and bills seized in his house, he tells us, by Commissary Chénon. He left the Bastille late at night in a hackney coach. The evening, he says, was dark, the part of the city he lived in retired, but when he arrived at his house in the Rue Saint-Claude he found himself welcomed by the acclamations of thousands. The doors of his hôtel had been burst open; the courtyard, the staircase, the very apartments—indeed, every corner of the house was crowded with people.⁠[349]⁠

As for Rétaux de Villette, he himself tells us that he was recommended by both the gaoler and the executioner to take his departure as rapidly as possible—advice which he was only too ready to follow. “Outside the city gate,” he says, “a great man, who belonged, I believe, to the cardinal, took me on one side, and gave me a purse of fifty-five louis, and a note to the Abbé d’Aimar, to whom, he told me, I was to make known my future wants. When, however, I desired to profit by these instructions, I could obtain no reply.”⁠[350] Cagliostro says that Villette was banished in the ignominious sense of the term—that is, led out of prison, with a rope round his neck, by the executioner, who, when they arrived together at the city gate, gave him, first of all, a loaf, and then a kick behind, with strict injunctions never to return.⁠[351] The fifty-five louis, however, were some sort of salve to the indignity offered to the person of the ex-gendarme.

Mademoiselle d’Oliva, on being told that she was adjudged “hors de cour,” thought it to be a prohibition against her going to Versailles any more, and faithfully promised to observe it.⁠[352]⁠

It will be readily understood that the sentences of the Parliament excited the indignation of both the king and the queen. The former inveighed against the judgment as being a most outrageous one. The cardinal, he said, knew too well the usages of the Court to have been idiot enough to believe that Madame de la Motte was admitted near the queen, or was charged with any such commission as that of the purchase of the Necklace.⁠[353]⁠

As for Marie-Antoinette, she was profoundly afflicted. “Come and weep with me, come and console your friend, my dear Polignac,” she writes; “the judgment which has just been pronounced is a shameful insult. I am bathed in tears of grief and despair. One can flatter oneself with nothing when perversity exhausts every means to crush my spirit. What ingratitude! But I shall triumph over the wicked by tripling the good which I have always tried to do. They will feel greater pleasure in afflicting me than I shall in revenging myself upon them. Come, my dear heart.”⁠[354]⁠

In writing to her sister, the queen does not restrain her indignation that the cardinal, whom she believed to be the most guilty in the affair, should have been allowed to escape. It is thus she expresses herself:—

“1st June, 1786.

“I need not tell you, my dear sister, how indignant I feel at the judgment which has just been pronounced by the parliament. It has no respect for royalty; it is a shameful insult, and I am bathed in tears of despair. What! a man who had the audacity to lend himself to that indecent and infamous scene in the arbour, who supposed that he had an assignation with the Queen of France, with the wife of his king, that the queen had received a rose from him,⁠[355] and had suffered him to throw himself at her feet, should not, when a throne is concerned, be held guilty of high treason, but should be simply regarded as one who had been deceived! It is odious and revolting. Pity me, my good sister; I did not merit this injury, I who have endeavoured to do good to all who surround me, and who only remember that I am the daughter of Marie-Thérèse, to show myself, as she recommended me when embracing me at my departure, French to the very bottom of my heart. To be so sacrificed to a perjured priest, to a lewd intriguer, how grievous! But do not think that I shall allow myself to do anything unworthy of me. I have declared that I will never seek to revenge myself beyond doubling the good which I have already done. I need not tell you that the king is indignant like myself; he exiles the cardinal to La Chaise-Dieu, and Cagliostro is expelled from France. Adieu! My children are well. We all embrace you, and press you to our hearts.”⁠[356]⁠

To Madame Campan, who knew more of the particulars of the intrigue than any one else about the queen, Marie-Antoinette mournfully said: “Make me your compliments of condolence; the intriguer who wished to ruin me, or to obtain money by abusing my name, and forging my signature, has just been acquitted. But as a Frenchwoman, also receive my compliments of condolence. A people is indeed unhappy to have for supreme tribunal a set of men who are swayed by their own passions, many of whom are susceptible of corruption, while the remainder are possessed of an audacity which they are only too ready to manifest against authority, as they have just shown in so marked a manner.”⁠[357]⁠

“At this epoch,” says Madame Campan, “the happy days of the queen terminated. Adieu for ever to the peaceful and simple pleasures of Trianon, to the fêtes where once shone the magnificence, intellect, and good taste of the court of France; adieu, above all, to that consideration and respect, the forms of which surround the throne, but of which the reality alone is its solid base.”⁠[358]⁠

Spite of the judgment of the Parliament, the cardinal was not allowed to go entirely scot-free. The king at once wrote to the Baron de Breteuil, requiring him to demand from the cardinal the resignation of his office of grand almoner, and the surrender of the various orders the king had conferred upon him. Accompanying this letter was a lettre-de-cachet banishing the cardinal within three days to his abbey of the Chaise-Dieu, in the midst of the Auvergne mountains, where the king sarcastically intimated he would not be likely to receive much company. Until his departure he was commanded to see no one, except his relatives and counsel. If nothing else could be done, a stop could, at any rate, be put to receptions and ovations at the Palais-Cardinal.

On receiving the above instructions, the Baron de Breteuil who was suffering from gout in the stomach, rose, it is said, from his bed completely resuscitated at the prospect of being the bearer to the cardinal of such agreeable news.⁠[359] He presented himself to the Prince de Rohan, on the morning after the release of the latter from the Bastille, and just as he had ordered his carriage intending to go round and thank his judges. The prince without appearing the least disquieted informed the minister that he would observe two of the orders of the king with the fidelity, the exactitude, and the submission which the Rohans had always shown for the sovereign’s commands; but, with regard to his resignation of the office of grand almoner, he could not confide this to M. de Breteuil, as he had had the honour of sending it to the king an hour ago through the Count de Vergennes.⁠[360] The minister pressed the prince to sign some further paper in reference to this resignation, observing that he did so with regret, but was obliged to obey the orders of the king his master. “Monsieur,” replied the cardinal, in a nettled tone, “the king himself has already done justice on me. I have no need of an executioner.” This mot speedily circulated all over Paris, and the minister was henceforth styled “Bourreau (executioner) Breteuil.”⁠[361] Louis XVI.’s minister of justice experienced a more severe rebuff when charged, a few years later, with carrying out the terms of a lettre-de-cachet banishing the Duke d’Orléans to his château of Villers-Cotterets for his famous protest at the “royal session,” when, as Carlyle remarks, he “cut his court moorings.” The baron wished to accompany the duke in his carriage, in order that, in accordance with the king’s commands, he might not lose sight of him, whereupon the duke observed, with disdainful pride, “Ah, well! jump up behind.”

On June 2, the day after Cagliostro’s release from the Bastille, police-inspector Brugnières entered his apartment and addressed him “in the king’s name,” at which ominous words his heart, he says, sank within him. The order of which Brugnières was the bearer was dated on the day preceding, and enjoined the count to leave Paris in three days, and the kingdom within three weeks. Next day Cagliostro removed to Passy, and some few days after to St.-Denis, whence he started with his wife to Boulogne-sur-Mer. On the 16th they embarked for England under circumstances the most sentimental, if we can credit the count’s narrative of the affair. “The shores that I quitted,” observes he, “were lined by a crowd of citizens of all classes, who blessed and thanked me for the good I had done their brethren, addressing to me the most touching farewells. The winds carried me far away from them, and I heard them no more, but I saw them again on their knees, with their hands raised towards heaven, and it was my turn to bless them, and to cry out and repeat, as though they could hear me: ‘Adieu, Frenchmen! adieu, my children! adieu, my country!’”⁠[362]⁠

The Countess de la Motte remained for three weeks in the Conciergerie ignorant of the true nature of her sentence, and hoping, whatever it might be, that it would not be carried out. “At length,” she tells us, “the twenty-first of June arrived, that eventful day which will live in my remembrance as long as memory itself shall live—that day the most accursed in the calendar of my misfortunes.

“One of the gaolers came to my chamber, and told me that he had come from my counsel M. Doillot, ‘who,’ said the deceiver, ‘is now in the greffe, (the record office,) and desires to see you as he is going immediately into the country, which is the reason why he comes so early in the morning. It is to read you a letter which he has received from Versailles. It will be unnecessary for you to regard your dress, because he is in so great a hurry.’ I threw on hastily a morning gown, and followed this impostor, who made me descend a small staircase which I used to pass every morning to go to the lodge of the concierge. He went before me and entered first. I pushed the door from me to get through, which I had scarce half effected when I found the door forcibly pushed to by a person on the other side with as much violence as if he wished to secure an ox, whom he was fearful would escape. Some one immediately seized me by the right arm, and dragged me into the greffe, where another laid hold of my other arm, and bound me fast. The first thing I observed was the huissier Breton holding some papers in his hand, which I conceived, as the concierge had told me, would be read, announcing my pretended banishment. ‘No, certainly,’ said I to Breton, ‘I will not endure to hear so unjust a sentence, nor fall upon my knees to receive the condemnation of an iniquitous cabal, predetermined to sacrifice me!’ A great number of strange persons were present, many of whom seized me rudely round the waist, and others by the legs to oblige me to kneel down, but not being able to succeed they held me suspended at a distance from the ground. While I was in this posture the huissier read my sentence, but the cries I uttered almost drowned his voice.

“Overpowered by superior strength my resistance became more feeble, and in this condition I was dragged to the place where the sacrifice was to be completed. Weary and faint, exhausted by my cries and the ineffectual struggles I had already made, entreating those around me to avenge the innocent and the blood of their good King Henry II.! I at length lost all sense of reason. I could see nothing, could feel nothing which could serve to show me what they intended to do.”⁠[363]⁠

We will supplement Madame de la Motte’s own account of the infliction of the sentence passed upon her, by some extracts from contemporary memoirs which furnish several curious additional particulars.

“Madame de la Motte,” writes the Hon. Mr. Eden to Mr. Pitt, “was called up at five, and informed that the Court wished to see her. She had no suspicion of the judgment, which is not communicated here to the accused, except in the case of a capital sentence. She went in an undress, without stays, which proved convenient. Upon the registrar reading the sentence, her surprise, rage, and shrieks were beyond description. The bourreau (executioner) and his assistants instantly seized her, and carried her into an outer court, where she was fastened to a cart with a halter round her neck. The bourreau talked to her like a tooth-drawer, and assured her most politely that it would soon be over. The whipping was slight and pro formâ, but the branding was done with some severity. It is a good idea that the ‘V’ (voleuse—thief) on her shoulders stands also for Valois.”⁠[364]⁠

The Countess de Sabran, writing on the day of the occurrence to the Chevalier de Boufflers, says—“Madame de la Motte was punished to-day, at 6 o’clock in the morning, in order to avoid too great a concourse of curious people. The unfortunate woman was sleeping profoundly when they came to tell her, that her lawyer was waiting to talk with her about her affairs; they had adopted this course the more easily to effect their object. She got up, not fearing anything, put on a small petticoat and a cloak, and descended quickly to the room where she beheld eight men and M. Le Breton, the registrar, who held her sentence in his hand. At this sight she was much agitated, and tried to fly; whereupon they threw themselves upon her, and tied her little delicate hands, which people called charming and which are certainly very dexterous. ‘Why such precautions?’ she boldly asked. ‘I shall not escape you; if you were executioners, you could not treat me worse.’ She believed that it was only a question of removing her to a convent, there to pass a few years. They told her to go down on her knees, and as she was not inclined to do so, one of the executioners gave her a blow on the ham-strings which brought her to the ground. M. Le Breton then read her sentence. At the moment she heard she was going to be whipped and branded, she went into convulsions and into a fearful fit of passion, biting everything that was near her, tearing her clothes, pulling out her hair, &c. In spite of this the executioners seized her and carried her to the place of punishment. There, they put the rope round her neck, and tried in vain to undress her; she defended herself like a lion, with feet, hands, and teeth, and so obstinately that they were obliged to cut her clothes and even her chemise in order to make an end of the affair; which was very indecent, as in spite of the unreasonable hour which had been chosen with the object of keeping people away, spectators were present in very great numbers.

“She uttered loud cries, always saying: ‘Spare the blood of the Valois.’ She hurled forth curses against the Parliament, the cardinal, and even some one more sacred, and struggled so that the executioner could not perform the operation of branding her as perfectly as he wished, and scored her all down the back. After the infliction of this sanguinary punishment, they conveyed her in a hackney coach to the Salpêtrière.”⁠[365]⁠

Nougaret, author of the “Anecdotes of the reign of Louis XVI.,” says, that “on the countess being conducted before her judges, the registrar proceeded to read her sentence; on hearing which, astonishment, fury, rage, and despair seemed all of a sudden to take possession of her. Determined not to hear her sentence to the end, she flung herself on the ground and rolled about like a person convulsed, giving vent to the most horrible yells. The executioner and his assistants had the greatest difficulty in removing her to the court of the palace, where her sentence was to be inflicted. Immediately she perceived the instruments of punishment, she seized one of the executioners by the collar, and in a moment of frenzy bit a piece out of his hand, then sunk on the ground in convulsions far more violent than those she had recently recovered from. It was found necessary to tear her clothes off from her to mark her with the red-hot iron on her shoulders. During this operation, her cries and imprecations were redoubled. A few hours afterwards there circulated all over Paris the following epigram on the countess’s pretensions to the honours of the house of Valois”—the fleur-de-lis, (the arms of the Valois,) it should be remembered, invariably formed part of any mark with which culprits were branded:

Louis Blanc, in his “History of the French Revolution,” quoting mainly the Baron de Besenval and the Abbé Georgel, says: “Tied with cords, and dragged into the court of the Palais, she commenced to utter cries, not of terror, but of fury. Addressing herself to the people, she exclaimed, ‘If they treat thus the blood of the Valois, what is the lot reserved for that of the Bourbons?’ And in the midst of the groans which indignation drew from the crowd, these characteristic words were heard:—‘It is my own fault that I suffer this ignominy; I had only to say one word, and I should have been hung.’ [She not only said this word, but launched forth a succession of impure and calumnious charges against the queen, couched, too, in the foulest language.] Then like as was done to Lally Tollendal, they placed a gag in her mouth, and as she was struggling with despair in the hands of the executioner, the red-hot iron, which ought to have marked her on the shoulder, glanced off and marked her on the breast.”

Rétaux de Villette asserts that “people were posted in the court of the palace to make a great noise, so that none of the public who chanced to be present might hear what Madame de la Motte said. The sentence executed, she was thrown half dead into a coach, and driven at full gallop to the Salpêtrière,”⁠[367] the prison where abandoned women were confined. One of the doors of the vehicle having flown open on the road, the officers in charge of the countess were only just in time to save her from springing out and throwing herself under the wheels. When she arrived at the Salpêtrière, she made a further attempt to destroy herself by forcing the coverlid of her miserable truckle bed into her mouth.⁠[368]⁠

On the day the Countess de Valois de la Motte underwent the infliction of the first portion of her sentence, Louis XVI. set out on a royal progress to Cherbourg, to be present at the submerging of the first cone for the foundation of the gigantic breakwater there. As this was being slowly lowered into the sea amidst shouts of Vive le Roi! from thousands of lusty Norman throats, we may be quite certain that, what might chance to be “in reserve for the blood of the Bourbons” was one of the very last things the king was likely to trouble himself about.