by Juliet Grey
As he perused Herr Böhmer’s recitation of events the baron’s face grew more florid by the moment. “And you say you have never met this comtesse de Lamotte-Valois?” he asked me pointedly.
“Not only have I never met her, I have never heard of her.” I sniffed. “There are thousands of people milling about Versailles every day—any woman can gain entry. And, it seems, anyone can go about calling themselves a comtesse, or any other member of the nobility as long as there are people gullible enough to believe them.” According to Herr Böhmer, it was this soi-disant comtesse who had informed the jewelers that they had handed the cardinal their priceless necklace on the basis of a false contract with a forged signature. How she ascertained this, I knew not.
“And you do not have the necklace?” the baron asked me.
“I do not have it, nor have I ever wanted it, nor did I enter into any arrangement to purchase it,” I replied tensely.
Brandishing the purported contract, the baron declared, “I’ll wager that this paper is the single greatest crime perpetrated against the Crown in memory! Regrettably, this is far too grave a matter to conceal between us.”
My stomach grew weak when he insisted that everything be shared with the king.
Louis’s habit of dithering angered me even more. Before he would take the matter in hand he insisted on speaking with one of the cardinal’s kinsmen, sending for the prince de Soubise on August 14, to determine what role the Grand Almoner had played in this increasingly confusing charade. But as things transpired, Soubise was nowhere near Versailles. The jewelers wanted their money, and I demanded prompt answers. Consequently, Louis would have to confront the cardinal directly.
The following day, August 15, was a sacred one—the Feast of the Assumption as well as my name day. And the cardinal had a leading role to play in the proceedings. I could scarcely bring myself to look at His Arrogance, adorned for High Mass with an alb worth 10,000 livres, created with millions of infinitesimal petit point stitches depicting the Rohan arms and device.
Before Mass, Louis invited the cardinal into his private study. Also present were a trio of high-ranking ministers—baron de Breteuil; the comte de Vergennes, France’s Foreign Affairs minister; and the Keeper of the Seals, Monsieur de Miromesnil, all clad in their finest silk suits and long waistcoats heavily embroidered with gold and silver bullion.
“Please be seated, Your Eminence.” The king’s manner was as mild and even-tempered as ever; mine, on the other hand, was swarming with metaphorical hornets. Louis unlocked his desk and removed Herr Böhmer’s statement, sworn to and notarized by a Parisian official.
After showing the document to the Grand Almoner, Louis inquired, “Monsieur le prince, did you purchase the necklace the jeweler alludes to?”
As he glanced about the room at the cluster of ministers, I could see that it was an effort for the cardinal to maintain his composure. “I did, Sire—on behalf of the queen.”
“But what could possibly have induced you to indulge in this fantasy?” I interrupted. “Are we on such intimate terms that I have made you my errand boy? Non! I have not addressed a single word to you since your return from Vienna a decade ago, not even across the font when you baptized my children. No man at court has incurred my displeasure as much as you have done!”
The prince de Rohan leered at me. “Strong words from a woman who met me on a moonless night in the Grove of Venus and handed me a rose. I keep it in a special box, you know. A remembrance of that glorious rendezvous where I dared to kiss your slipper.”
A monstrous tale began to emerge: a veiled woman in white, a clandestine tryst. “It-it was all arranged by the-the comtesse de Lamotte-Valois,” the cardinal insisted, stammering as he realized he might as well have been standing on a sandy beach during a receding tide. “She gave me to understand that you wished to honor me with the commission.”
I threw my hands in the air in utter disgust. “This is the second time I have heard this name mentioned, and I assure you, monsieur, that I do not know such a woman. Not only is she not an intimate of mine, and you may interview any of my ladies—Campan, Polignac, Lamballe, all of whom are longtime companions—for verification, but I have never even met the comtesse you refer to. Frankly, I doubt this personage exists. The baron de Breteuil has quite convinced me that you have devised this entire scheme in order to bring about my downfall.”
Breteuil nodded vehemently. “The notion that Her Majesty—who has always detested the cardinal for his weak morals and his antipathy to her Hapsburg relations—would entrust him with such a prodigious and delicate responsibility is preposterous.”
Louis raised his arms in a placating gesture. “Please—everyone. I wish to get to the bottom of this morass in a rational manner and without further accusations. Your Eminence, who instructed you to purchase the ‘slave’s collar’?”
Perspiring heavily now, the Grand Almoner said weakly, “The comtesse de Lamotte-Valois, claiming that she was acting as Her Majesty’s interlocutor. But as the queen insists that this person is unknown to her, I see that I may have been the dupe of a woman who invented and feigned a friendship that never existed. My honest intention and desire to please Her Majesty blinded me.”
Louis removed the contract from his desk and handed it to the cardinal. “So you say, monsieur. But I fail to see how you could be taken in by this.”
“That is not even my handwriting!” I cried.
The cardinal’s expression was both haughty and disbelieving. “With all due respect, Majesté, I do not recall whether I have ever had the occasion to see a document penned by you, in order to form a comparison,” he replied testily.
I blushed so furiously that tears came to my eyes.
“Oh, come, come, monsieur!” shouted the baron de Breteuil.
“I have seen much in the past several years—vile cartoons and caricatures, and cruel poems and pamphlets; but I have never been so insulted as this. By this man.” My shoulders heaved with sobbing.
Moved by my tears, Louis took one of my hands in his, caressing it reassuringly. He raised his other hand in a request for silence. “Perhaps it is true that you have never seen the queen’s handwriting—but, sir, how could you possibly—a man of your experience and renown—a prince—not be aware that this could never be Her Majesty’s signature?! Read that aloud, monsieur.”
“Marie Antoinette de France,” the cardinal mumbled.
“Louder,” commanded the king. The prince de Rohan complied. “Now then: an ignorant forger might not know it, but any genuine member of the nobility, in fact anyone with a rudimentary education, knows that monarchs sign only their Christian names. It is quite understood what country they rule. Not only is this not the queen’s hand, but it is clearly not her signature, for if she were to put her name to anything, she would write merely Marie Antoinette.”
The Grand Almoner grew pale, then turned a sickly shade of green. Louis handed him a paper and quill, and indicating the inkstand, instructed him to compose his statement of events on the spot. Fifteen minutes later, the king collected the document and dismissed the prince from his sight. As all this transpired, I had been unable to contain my weeping, thoroughly convinced that the prince de Rohan was no better than a charlatan bent on destroying my good name.
Louis conferred with the baron de Breteuil, who was emphatically in favor of immediately arresting the cardinal, though I could tell that, true to his wont, the king was unwilling to take a decisive tack. Convulsed with sobs, I became certain that even my husband was betraying me, choosing to favor his duplicitous Grand Almoner over his devoted wife.
The men rose and quit the study, heading for the Hall of Mirrors. A few moments later, I gathered my skirts and followed. Suddenly, above the hubbub of people gathered in the Galerie des Glaces, the baron’s booming voice declared, “By the king’s order, arrest Cardinal de Rohan!”
A thousand people turned as one shocked body to stare at the Grand Almoner. When they found their respective tong
ues, a cacophony of excited questions buzzed about the hall. The entire royal family was present, preparing to head to the chapel, our procession witnessed by hundreds of spectactors who considered it a privilege and an honor to be in attendance.
They continued to gawk as the officers of the guard openly humiliated the prince de Rohan by apprehending him in public. At first he endeavored to shrug them off, doubling over as though afflicted with a bellyache. “Attendez, messieurs,” he said, with a dismissive wave. “Wait.”
“Allow me to adjust the buckle of my garter,” said the cardinal smoothly. “My hose are slipping.” Must keep my wits, he thought as he bent over. Thank heaven for the prescient Cagliostro who had convinced him it was good luck to conceal a stub of pencil and a scrap of paper upon his person at all times.
After being conveyed under guard to his residence at Versailles, his rank allowing him the courtesy of preparing for his inevitable incarceration, the cardinal summoned his valet, Herr Schreiber; and, handing him the hastily scribbled note, murmured, “Take this to the Palais Cardinal and immediately burn all my papers pertaining to this incident.” The valet galloped off at full tilt, and by the time the prince and his escorts reached Paris where they were met at his residence by the Lieutenant General of Police, the incriminating documents, as well as the billets-doux exchanged between the cardinal and several prominent ladies of the court, had already been consigned to the flames.
At eleven-thirty that evening, another visitor arrived. “I bear a lettre de cachet, remanding the Grand Almoner to the Bastille,” announced the comte d’Agout. The king’s seal was unmistakably imprinted upon it. Incapable of concealing his distress, the cardinal informed the comte of the role that Jeanne de Lamotte-Valois had played in the entire scenario, furnishing the addresses of all her residences.
Upon the arrival of the comte de Launay, the genial elderly governor of the Bastille, come to escort his illustrious detainee to the prison fortress, the prince de Rohan took one last, lingering look at his room full of treasures and priceless furnishings, making a silent vow to return before too much dust had gathered.
At four o’clock the following morning, a heavy knock on the front door of the comtesse de Lamotte-Valois’s country estate produced the châtelaine. Though wild-eyed, Jeanne was fully awake. Having heard the news from the royal court, she had spent the night destroying her intimate correspondence with the cardinal, including a considerable number of billets-doux.
“Is the warrant written for the arrest of the comte de Lamotte-Valois as well?” she inquired defiantly. After rereading the document, the police lieutenant replied in the negative. Favoring the man with her warmest smile, despite the panic in her belly, she apologized. “Excusez-moi. This is all rather frightening, and I find I must relieve myself.” With his permission, she darted through the hall on the pretext of locating a chamber pot.
“Hsst!” She prodded her slumbering husband, who groggily tugged the eiderdown coverlet about him. “Wake up! You must go!” A moment later, Nicolas bolted upright. “Save yourself,” she told him hysterically. “Collect as much of our money and plate as you can carry—including the candlesticks—climb out the back window, and mount the fastest horse in the stables. Ride to the coast and board the first ship for England. I don’t know where they plan to take me, but I will try to send you word at Nerot’s hotel in King Street, Mayfair.” They enjoyed one final, desperate embrace before the sturdy former military man accepted his marching orders and fled into the approaching dawn.
The sky was tinged with pearlescent yellow by the time the comtesse was greeted by the Bastille’s governor, still wearing his olive silk banyan with a cloth about his head. In this garb, with his morning ablutions still to be made, the comte de Launay interrogated his new prisoner, informing her that she was being charged with stealing a diamond necklace worth 1.8 million livres from the court jewelers.
“Preposterous!” Jeanne exclaimed. “If I were in possession of such a priceless item, would I still be living modestly at Bar-sur-Aube?” She nearly cackled with panic. “I demand that you send someone there—or go and see for yourself! Search the house, every cupboard and closet, from cellar to attic, and see whether the necklace is there. For you won’t find a thing, I assure you. If you want to know who controls the cardinal and encourages him to every vice imaginable, question that arch-conjurer who resides under his roof. Cagliostro is the one who alleges that he can make gold and diamonds appear. I’ll wager he knows how to make them disappear as well, for how else can he work his alchemy?”
Evidently, there had been other swindlers involved in the mad scheme to depict me as the covetous and covert purchaser of the “slave’s collar.” On the same afternoon that the comtesse de Lamotte-Valois was apprehended, the vastly popular Count Cagliostro and his illiterate blond wife Serafina were placed under arrest as well. When the police lieutenant demanded of the self-proclaimed mystic whether he knew the reason for his apprehension, Cagliostro declared that he hadn’t the faintest suspicion, unless he was finally being taken into custody for the murder of the great Roman general Pompey—protesting that he was blameless, as he had undertaken the assassination on the orders of the pharaoh. I had never even met the renowned mystic and could not imagine what he had to do with the plot, until Madame Campan told me that the cardinal had opened his home to him and believed the mysterious count could create gold and diamonds out of thin air.
“Then why did Cagliostro not conjure a necklace for his deluded host?” I exclaimed bitterly. “It would have saved everyone so much trouble!”
The authorities had trapped nearly all the flies. One culprit, however, had yet to be accounted for. Still on the wing was Rétaux de Villette, the comtesse’s erstwhile secretary, who had escaped their notice and flown eastward for the Swiss border.
Imprisonment was only the beginning. I desired the whole of France, nay the world, to know what sort of character the Grand Almoner had. An inquest is not enough, I told Louis. “He must be tried by the Parlement de Paris.”
Oddly enough, it was the first time any wish of mine had coincided with the cardinal’s.
TWENTY-FIVE
We All Have Much to Prove
November 1785
My Dearest Sophie:
Two more alleged conspirators in l’affaire were apprehended in September: a man named Rétaux de Villette, and a fair-haired demimondaine, one Mademoiselle Leguay d’Oliva, well known about the upper reaches of the theater and the cafés near the Palais Royal. The mademoiselle had fled to Brussels after the cardinal’s apprehension. No sooner were they arrested than both parties are said to have become quite voluble regarding their involvement in the matter.
That is the good news. The bad, alas, is that the stories being repeated in the provinces, by those who know nothing and are only regurgitating hearsay, are appalling. People refuse to believe that the purchase of the necklace and the forged documents are the real reason for the cardinal’s imprisonment. They have heard that he is a long-standing nemesis of Her Majesty’s and they are convinced that she forced the king’s hand to sign a lettre de cachet consigning him to the Bastille. In Paris, where the cardinal’s manner of high living is well known, they are saying nonetheless that the queen used her wiles to induce him to buy the diamond necklace and then passed the money on to her brother in Austria.
Yet even His Imperial Majesty, who has had nothing whatsoever to do with the entire business and certainly received no funds from his sister, is unwilling to believe that the cardinal is “light-minded and hopelessly extravagant and capable of such rascality, of so black a crime as that of which he has been accused.”
No sooner was the prince arrested but a hue and cry went up from the ranks of the nobility as well as the clergy, who are openly defiant of authority and have become bitter enemies of the queen. One has only to frequent the salons and cafés of Paris, particularly in the vicinity of the Palais Royal, to hear the throne openly censured.
The trial briefs have
sold by the thousands, snapped up the moment they are published; some of the defendants’ respective attorneys are making their names and all are amassing a small fortune from the sale of this propaganda. These efforts to elicit sympathy and exonerate their clients in the public arena are a pure invention of the testimony given during the depositions; the lawyers are not even permitted to accompany their clients to the preliminary hearings. The testimony is being conducted by the magistrates appointed by the president of the Parlement de Paris, Monsieur d’Aligre, rumored to be among the comtesse de Lamotte-Valois’s cadre of lovers—which infuriates the poor queen all the more, for she fears she will never receive justice from such a corrupt body.
Believe me when I say that it is now considered bon ton to pay one’s respects to the cardinal in the Bastille. Thanks to the influence of the Rohan famille, which includes the powerful Guéménés, the Soubises, and the Lorraines—the last being relations of the queen’s late father—and to his trial briefs, so cleverly penned by his lawyer, Maître Target, few can believe that such an eminent sophisticate as Prince Louis de Rohan, Grand Almoner of France, a cardinal as well as a bishop, could have been taken in by a provincial woman of little importance.
As the interviews have progressed, Her Majesty withdraws more and more, like a wounded lioness, to le Petit Trianon. She is expecting a fourth child now, and instead of rejoicing in such a blessed event, she despairs. She is most unhappy, and her courage, which is admirable beyond compare, makes her yet more attractive. But her spirit is no longer blithe. She is afraid. And the more unfortunate her state, the more she is forsaken by those who once clamored for her companionship.
We are alone together at Trianon three to four times a week when I am at Versailles. My only trouble is that I cannot compensate for her sufferings, and I can never make her as happy as she deserves. I am completely devoted to her, my dear Sophie, and wish I could dry her lovely tears.
