The Queen`s Confession

by Виктория Холт

  I remember these questions being asked continually during the trial and afterwards; and one pamphleteer gave a possible answer:

  “People are so easily persuaded as to the truth of what they desire. It was such a mistake as might easily have been made by a man with a lively agitated mind like that of the Cardinal who was pleased, delighted even, with an arrangement which fed some sentiment, some new view, in the endless labyrinth of his imagination.”

  The deal was made. On February 1st Boehmer and Bassenge brought the necklace to the Cardinal, who that—same day took it to the Rue NeuveSaint-Gilles, where Madame de la Motte was waiting to receive it. He was invited to wait in a room with a glass door through which he could watch the transfer of the necklace. He saw a young man in the Queen’s livery present himself to the Comte and Comtesse de la Motte with the words “By order of the Queen.” He took the casket and disappeared.

  The Cardinal took his leave, and as soon as he had gone, Retaux de Villette, who had played the part of the Queen’s messenger, returned with the casket; and the conspirators sat down at a table to gloat over the finest diamonds in Europe.

  But they had not made this plan merely to look at diamonds. They must be broken up and sold. They got to work without delay.

  The whole story might have been discovered much earlier, for a few days after the Cardinal ‘had handed over the necklace a jeweller called at the headquarters of the Paris police to give the information that a man had brought him some extraordinarily fine diamonds which had obviously been taken from their settings by an unskilled person. As a result, Retaux, returning to the shop, was arrested.

  With great plausibility Retaux explained that the diamonds had been placed in his possession by one of the King’s relatives, the Comtesse de la Motte-Valois. He was able to prove this, and at the name of Valois the police retracted and Retaux was released.

  But it had been a warning that it was a mistake to try to dispose of the best diamonds in Paris, and the Comte set out for London to sell die stones. When he returned he was a rich man—although the London jewellers had benefited greatly by the sale, for naturally he did not get the full va hie of the diamonds. Now Madame de la Motte was in her element. She was a woman who could live in the present and did not much concern herself with the future—an attitude of mind which I understood perfectly She made a royal departure to Bar-sur-Aube with servants in splendid uniforms, a carnage drawn by four English horses—carpets, tapestries, furniture and clothes, she needed twenty-four carts to carry all her possessions with which she intended to furnish her mansion. On her English berline of a delicate pearl-grey colour she had die arms of the House of Valois engraved with die mono:

  “Rege ab aw sangwnem, nomen, et lilia.” From die King my ancestor I derive my blood, my name, and die lilies.

  There she lived royally as she must always have longed to live since she had heard diat she had Valois blood in her veins. But surely she must have known diat it could not last. There must be a’ reckoning.

  Perhaps like myself she had to learn that what one sows me must reap.

  The Cardinal had been arrested and had told his story implicating Jeanne. Two days later guards arrived at Bar-sur-Aube. Jeanne knew resistance was useless; she was taken prisoner and lodged in die Bastille.

  The Trial

  The Queen was innocent and to give greater publicity to her innocence she desired the Parlement to judge the case. The result was that the Queen was thought guilty and that discredit was thrown on the Court.

  NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA

  I saw that he (de Rohan) would be unable to appear any more at Court.

  But the action, which will last several months, may have other results. It began by the issue of a warrant of arrest which suspends him from all rights, functions and faculty of performing any civil act until judgment is pronounced. Cagliostro, charlatan. La Motte and his wife together with a girl named Oliva, a mud lark of the gutters, are in the same boat. What associates for a Grand Almoner, a Rohan and a Cardinal!

  MARIE ANTOINETTE TO JOSEPH

  The Queen’s grief was extreme. “Come,* said Her Majesty to me, ‘come, and lament for Your Queen, insulted and sacrificed by cabal and injustice …” The King came in and said to me: “You find the Queen much afflicted; she has great reason to be so.”

  MADAME CAMPAN MEMOIRS

  All the actors in die Diamond Necklace affair were in the Bastille, with the exception of the Comte de la Motte, who had escaped to London with what was left of the necklace, and the whole of the court and the country was working itself up into a fever of excitement and expectation.

  Each day Paris was filled with excited crowds. No one talked of anything but the coming trial. The Cardinal had changed completely. He was lodged in a fine apartment at the Bastille, very different from that used by ordinary prisoners, and there he took three of his servants to look after him. He-paid one hundred and twenty livres a day for his lodging; and he was allowed to receive visits from his family, his secretaries, and of course his counsel, with whom he was preparing his defence. The drawbridge of the Bastille had to be kept lowered all through the day, so many visitors were there; he even gave a banquet in his rooms at which champagne was served. He continued to administer the business his position demanded as though the Bastille were another of his palaces which for the sake of convenience he was temporarily obliged to occupy. He took daily exercise in the Governor’s garden or walked on the platform of the towers.

  Supported by his powerful family he was gaining confidence When he heard that Louis had appointed Breteuil as one of his interrogators he immediately protested on the grounds that Breteuil was an enemy.

  Louis, eager to be fair, at once agreed to make a change and substituted Vergennes, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, for Breteuil, and instead of Breteuil’s assistant he ordered that Marshal de Castries, Minister of Marine, should assist Vergennes.

  In less comfortable quarters in the Bastille Madame de la Motte was preparing her defence. Her fertile imagination was to invent many a fantastic story during the trial; but when Retaux and the Baroness d’OUva were arrested she must have been very uneasy. She had warned Oliva that she might be arrested, for it was very much to Madame de la Motte’s interest that the girl was not able to tell of that scene in the Grove of Venus. Oliva had tried to escape with her lover, Toussaint de Beaussire, but they had been arrested at Brussels. Retaux de Villette was caught in Geneva; and these two with the Comte and Comtesse de Cagliostro were in the Bastille. So important was the affair considered that great efforts had been made to bring the Comte de la Motte back to France. England did not recognise extradition and would do nothing to help, so the Comte was wiser than his co-adventurers in escaping to that country. His whereabouts were discovered to be on the border between England and Scotland; an elaborate plot was made and a ship was sent to Newcastle-on-Tyne, where his landlord and landlady were asked to slip a drug into his wine so that he might be bundled into a sack, carried on board and brought to France; but he discovered the plot in time and escaped.

  When the prisoners were arrested, wild rumours filled the streets. The Cardinal was named as the biggest scoundrel France had ever known.

  Stories of the orgies which took place at Saveme were circulated; every woman whose name was temporarily in the news was said to have been his mistress.

  Paris was against the Cardinal; but the Court was against me. I suddenly became aware of this in the looks which came my way and in the sorrow of friends like my dear Campan and Elisabeth. Gabrielle was uncertain; she was surrounded by her family, and the Cardinal belonged to one of the greatest houses in France. That was the crux of the matter. The Cardinal had been publicly arrested, and that was an insult to the nobility.

  It gradually began to dawn on me how much I was hated, and to doubt the depth of these people who had always shown me such respect and, as I thought, affection.

  Then suddenly public opinion changed: as it will without reason, it seems—but I sup
pose nothing happens without reason. The people of Paris, so quick to sense a turn in affairs, were now giving their allegiance to the Cardinal. He had ceased to be the villain of the piece; he was the maligned hero. There had to be a villain, of course-or a vfflainess. The Comtesse de la Motte? Well, she was deeply involved, but the story would be more intriguing if there was a sinister and shadowy figure in the background-and that figure was a Queen.

  But for the Queen, it was whispered, none’ of this could have happened.

  Every day, accounts of the affair were published. One printer produced a day-to-day account of events, and people could scarcely wait for his sheets to come from the press. The Cardinal was again the Belle

  Eminence—so dignified, so handsome; and the fashionable colour for ribbon was half red, half yellow called Cardinal sin la pa ille Stories were told about him. His lechery had now become gallantry. When he had been arrested he had managed while pretending to latch his shoe to scribble a note to his confidant the Abbe Georgel asking him to destroy certain papers concerning the necklace affair which were in his Paris mansion. The Abbe had obeyed, removing a great deal of valuable evidence. This was talked of now, and instead of accepting the fact that the Cardinal had made a bid to avoid incriminating himself, this was construed as his desire to prevent a Certain Person’s being involved.

  I was pregnant again; I was worried about the health of my eldest son, I was becoming more serieuse, more aware, and this must necessarily depress me. I was spending more and more time with my family, but the affair of the diamond necklace could not be kept out of my private life. I was deeply involved—even though I had taken no part in it.

  The Cardinal’s counsels were the finest in Paris. Men such as Target, de Bonnieres, and Larget-Bardelin; Target was recognised as one of the shining lights of the French Bar. Sixty-year-old Maitre Doillot acted for Madame de la Motte, and she so fascinated him that he became merely her mouthpiece and in fact she defended herself through this medium. As this turned out, it was not an advantage for the prisoner, but it did mean that the most fantastic explanations of what had taken place were given. Oliva was given a young advocate fresh from school who was immediately attracted by her.

  The excitement was becoming more and more intense. There was no conversation except that which concerned the affair of the necklace.

  Madame Cagliostro had been released as she was proved to have had nothing to do with the affair. She went to her hotel in the Rue Saint Claude, there to await the verdict; and when the highest people in the land called to imply that they believed she had been wronged, she received them with signs of weeping on her face. Indeed, it was considered fashionable to call on the lady.

  The people were already beginning to whisper that it was one who was not standing trial who was really guilty.

  According to custom, the consultations between prisoners and their advocates were published; these were sold in large numbers; the speeches for the defence were published before they were spoken and therefore the people could follow the way the trial was going.

  So much has been written of this affair; so many theories have been brought forward; and how can I say which is the true one?

  I believed then that the Cardinal was guilty; I could not understand how he could have been deceived as so many people believed he had been. But everyone else believed him innocent.

  Madame de la Motte made the most extraordinary allegations about everyone, but she did not mention my name. When one of her stories was proved wrong she would immediately produce another. In the Court, where one accused was allowed to question another, she confounded the Cardinal when he asked her how she came by such sudden wealth. He should know, was her answer. He was a generous lover and she had been his mistress; she reproached Oliva for her loose conduct; Cagliostro so incensed her that she picked up one of the candlesticks and threw it at him.

  Cagliostro responded with his own invective—words, which most could not understand; they concerned his mysticism and his aloofness from ordinary men.

  But when she was confronted with Oliva’s and Retaux de Villette’s account of the scene in the Grove of Venus she raged and stormed, and since she could not deny this took place, fainted. When the turnkey tried to help her she revived suddenly and bit him in the neck.

  With Madame de la Motte’s wild behaviour and Cagliostro’s weird pronouncements the Cardinal stood out as a man of great breeding and even honour. Each day his popularity rose, and as the stories emerged and the judges and the people tried to make sense of them, they became more and more certain that the Cardinal had been the dune of scoundrels.

  Oliva, who in the Bastille had given birth to a child which her lover immediately accepted as his, made an instant appeal to the spectators’ chivalry. She had done no wrong. She had impersonated me it was true, but she had had no idea for what purpose, and when she was called to give her evidence she was feeding her newly-born baby and begged the Lords of Parlement to be kind enough to wait until her little son had finished his meal. Everyone was deeply moved and the lords patiently waited and it was reported in the news sheets that “The Law was silenced in the presence of Nature.” What an impression she made with her bodice loosened and her long hair, so much like my own, escaping round her shoulders! When she showed signs of faintness the severest of the lawyers was ready to catch her in his arms. Everyone was convinced that such a charming creature had been the tool of scheming people and was herself entirely innocent—which I am sure was the case.

  And then Cagliostro, in green silk embroidered with gold.

  “Who are you and whence do you come?” he was asked.

  “I am an illustrious traveller,” he cried in loud tones which provoked laughter; but he soon silenced that with his colourful invective, and I believe that there were many who though they laughed in the courtroom by day were in truth afraid of what such a notorious sorcerer might do to them.

  And so they stood before the judges—the handsome Cardinal, the wild, beautiful and scheming Comtesse, the charming young courtesan with her baby at her breast, the adventurer Villette, and the fantastic magician, sorcerer or wise man. Everyone was awaiting the verdict of the judges which was of the utmost importance to all these people on trial—and perhaps equally so to me.

  The judgment was given on Wednesday 31st May and the court opened at six o’clock in the morning. From five o’clock the streets had been filling and crowds had gathered in front of the Palais de Justice.

  Guards, mounted and on foot, kept the crowds in order from the Font Neuf to the Rue de la Barillerie.

  In the entrance of the Grande Chambre members of Rohan’s family had assembled; they were all dressed in mourning and had doubtless placed themselves there as a warning to the judges who must pass by them. They wished to imply that to do anything but acquit the Cardinal would be an outrage against the nobility.

  It became quite clear that the Rohans were determined to bring their relative out of that court acquitted of all guilt. For this reason, as Madame de la Motte was judged first and judged guilty for how could it be otherwise in view of the evidence two of the judges declared their intention to press for the death penalty. This was a ruse on the part of these men because if a case was being judged which might incur the death penalty no cleric must sit in judgment. Of the thirteen clerics among the judges only two were favour able to Rohan, therefore by removing them from the seat of judgment, although the Rohans lost two votes in their favour, they rid themselves of eleven against. Such was the power of the Rohans.

  Madame de la Motte was not sentenced to death but she was condemned to be whipped naked by the executioner, marked with the letter V for volense on her shoulder, and imprisoned in the Salpetriere for the rest of her life. Her husband though not present to pay the penalty of his crimes was sentenced to the galleys for life; Retaux de Villette was exiled and Oliva was acquitted, but not without blame, for she had actually taken part in the scheme to impersonate me.

  Cagliostro was dismissed
from every charge.

  There remained the chief figure in the drama the one whose presence in it was responsible for the great interest throughout the country.

  An absolute acquittal was demanded. The Cardinal had been the dupe of scoundrels but his good faith was un deniable. He was absolutely innocent.

  “It is innocence, gentlemen,” declared his counsel, ‘that I am defending, as a man and as a judge; and I am so thoroughly penetrated with my belief that I would allow myself to be hacked to pieces in maintaining it. “

  The battle was over. After sixteen hours of deliberation the Car d inal was acquitted without a stain on his character.

  In the streets they were shouting. The women of the fish-market had assembled outside the Bastille with roses and jasmine. The Parisian crowds—the most easily excited in the world—were roaring their approval.

  “Long live the Parlement. Long live the Cardinal.*

  When I heard the verdict I suddenly realised its implicaon.

  This was the biggest defeat I had ever suffered. In giving their verdict the Parlement had implied that it was not unnatural for the Cardinal de Rohan to expect that I would make arrangements to meet him in the park at Versailles; it was not unnatural to think that I could be bought by a diamond necklace!

  I was overcome with honor. I threw myself on to my bed and wept. When Madame Campan found me there she was alarmed by my wild grief and sent for Gabrielle to come and comfort me.

  When I saw them there in my bedchamber, those two dear women whom I trusted and knew to be my friends, I cried:

  “Come and lament for your Queen, insulted and sacrificed by cabals and injustice.” Then I was angry suddenly. The French hated me. In that moment I hated them.

  “But rather let me pity you as Frenchwomen,” I went on.

  “If I have not met with equitable judges in a matter which affected my reputation, what could you’ hope for in a suit in which your fortune and your character were at stake?”