Flaunting, Extravagant Queen

by Jean Plaidy

  As for the other three – their cases needed greater consideration. The Comte de Lamotte, who was absent in England, was sentenced to the galleys. He could laugh at the sentence because he was not in their hands that they might carry it out.

  Jeanne was found guilty of stealing, and her sentence was a violent one. She was to be taken to the prison of Salpêtrière, where she would be whipped and branded on the shoulder with the letter V, thus proclaiming her ‘Voleuse’ to the world; then she was to be imprisoned for life.

  But it was the verdict regarding the Cardinal which was so significant. He was declared innocent of every indictment. And as he came out into the streets of Paris, those who had gathered together all during the day went wild with joy.

  ‘Vive le Cardinal!’ they cried. And there was laughter in Bellevue and the Palais Royal.

  The verdict meant that the judges considered the Queen a light woman, since the Cardinal had quite reasonably supposed that she might leave the Palace in the darkness to come out and meet a man in the Grove of Venus.

  Crowds went in a body to the prison of Salpêtrière and there saw Jeanne de Lamotte stripped and beaten; they saw her wriggling and screaming as the irons were heated with which to brand her, twisting in the arms of her tormenters so that instead of receiving the V on her shoulder it was implanted on her breast; they saw her carried away fainting to her prison, where she was sentenced to spend the rest of her days dressed only in sackcloth and sabots, and to exist on black bread and lentils.

  ‘And what of the woman behind all this?’ was being asked. ‘She will be living in one of her many palaces; she will be dressed in her silks and velvets, made by that arrogant Madame Bertin; she will be feasting on the fat of the land and mayhap peeping into her jewel box at a diamond necklace to gain which she has brought suffering and misery to so many.’

  The Queen was furious when she heard the news.

  She raged up and down her apartment. The Princesse de Lamballe and Madame de Campan in vain tried to soothe her.

  ‘You should lament with your Queen,’ cried Antoinette, ‘who has been insulted and sacrificed by cabal and injustice.’

  The King came in. He was angry and bewildered.

  ‘You have reason to be sorrowful,’ he said. ‘This is an insult to the crown.’

  ‘What will you do about it?’ demanded the Queen.

  Louis shook his head. The verdict had been given. They had been wrong to have the affair tried by the Parlement. They had given too much publicity to the matter. It would have been better to have quietly paid the jeweller and said nothing.

  ‘Nay,’ said the Queen. ‘My honour was tarnished. We had to do all in our power to throw light in these dark and secret places. But this verdict is iniquitous.’

  ‘The Freemasons were against us,’ declared the King, ‘and with them the Rohan family.’

  ‘You are the King, are you not?’ cried Antoinette.

  The King wondered if it would not be wiser to let the matter rest; but he had to placate his infuriated wife, so he ordered the Cardinal to resign from his position as Grand Almoner, and signed a lettre de cachet which exiled him to the Abbéy of Chaise-Dieu in the mountains of Auvergne. As for Cagliostro, he banished him from the country.

  These gestures were typical of Louis’ timidity. They did not go far enough.

  Had he disbanded the Parlement, he would have shown his strength, and at that time the powerful members of the Rohan family would have had to come to heel.

  But his tepid action merely aroused the wrath of the Parlement; and there he had created a dangerous situation. There was now a wide rift between King and Parlement. The people went to the Salpêtrière prison and watched Jeanne de Lamotte taking her exercise in the courtyard.

  ‘Poor woman,’ they said. ‘She is bearing all the blame in this matter of the necklace. Is this justice?’

  The murmuring against the Austrian woman grew. The pamphlets were distributed in increasing numbers and they became more obscene.

  Pictures were passed round the cafés and smuggled into the Palace; they still found their way into the apartments of the King and Queen. And in all of them was depicted the woman – her hair looming ridiculously above her haughty face; she was referred to as ‘Madame Déficit’, and about her neck there would always appear a magnificent necklace of diamonds.

  Chapter X

  THE FOURTEENTH OF JULY

  Disasters came thick and fast in the year which followed. The baby, who had been born a few weeks after that terrible day when the verdict on the Diamond Necklace affair had been given, was a girl. Antoinette called her Sophie Beatrix; she lacked the strength of her sister, Madame Royale, and was going to be as sickly as the little Dauphin.

  Antoinette was so unhappy about this child that she ceased to brood on the implication of the verdict; she ceased to care what the people said of her.

  Her anxieties over her son and daughter had sobered her considerably. No more did she act on the stage of her gilded theatre at Trianon. She would sit with the sick child in her arms, staring bleakly before her.

  And less than twelve months after her birth little Sophie Beatrix died in her mother’s arms.

  There was another death that year in the royal family. Madame Louise, the Carmelite nun, passed piously away that November, crying as she did so: ‘To Paradise, quick, at full gallop!’ She believed that a special coach had been sent from heaven to convey her there. Mesdames Adelaide and Victoire still lived on at Bellevue, vindictive, never losing an opportunity to vilify the Queen.

  ‘Oh, Elisabeth,’ said Antoinette to her sister-in-law who had helped her nurse the sick child, ‘sometimes I wonder whether I shall ever be gay again.’

  Elisabeth wept with her; Antoinette was beginning to realise that her quiet little sister-in-law was the best friend she had, and one of the very few whom she could trust.

  Her unpopularity was growing every day. She was aware of the gathering malice all about her. Once someone called after her as she passed through the Oeil-de-Boeuf to the King’s apartments: ‘A Queen who does her duty should keep to her apartments and concern herself with knitting.’ Madame Vigée le Brun was afraid to hang her portrait of the Queen in the Salon lest it should be the signal for riots; and Antoinette had realised that it was best for her not to appear too often in the Capital.

  During the months of sorrow it was beginning to be clear to her that the affairs of the country were in a dangerous state. As she pondered these matters a change came over her, so that she felt impatient with the giddy person she had been. She remembered that she was a Habsburg and that the Habsburgs were rulers; she thought often of her mother, and she began to wonder whether in the years ahead of her she might not grow a little like her. The King she saw as kindly but very weak; and what France needed now was a strong ruler. Louis – Poor Louis – even in his magnificent robes of state could not look like a King. His appearance was against him no less than his character.

  Calonne was bringing further disaster upon the country with his policy of borrowing; the yearly deficit was now over 100,000,000 livres. It was impossible to keep the true state of affairs from the King any longer, and when Louis heard this alarming news he was filled with horror.

  Calonne, ever optimistic, ever ready with schemes (never mind if there was no possibility of carrying them out, they were still schemes with which to lull the fearful) decided to gather round him a body of men from the nobility and clergy who should help him to govern. These he called the ‘Notables’, and he gave out that he expected great things from them. The announcement was received with scorn by the people, who promptly gave the new assembly the Anglo-French title of ‘Not-Ables’. They had little power, since only the Estates-General could impose taxes; and after a great deal of argument and no achievement Calonne begged the Notables to adjourn; after which he himself was dismissed from office.

  The country was calling for Necker, but the King was against his recall and firmly refused to have him back.r />
  Antoinette, who had been watching the struggle with growing understanding, thought that the Archbishop of Toulouse, Lomenie de Brienne, would be a good man to take Calonne’s place. He was therefore appointed to the Treasury, but the people were against him from the start, merely because he had been recommended by the Queen.

  He dissolved the Notables, who returned to their estates and lost no time in informing all those with whom they came into contact that the exchequer was verging on bankruptcy.

  The Parlement determined to oppose every scheme which Brienne laid before it. The minister made one great mistake. He declared that the Queen should have a place at the meetings of the Council and thus help to govern.

  The people were outraged. ‘We are being governed by Madame Déficit,’ they cried. And the rumours increased; the affair of the Diamond Necklace was discussed and garnished with fresh libels. In Bellevue and the Palais Royal it was said: ‘It is not the King who is at fault. It is the Queen.’

  Everywhere a cry went up for an Estates-General. Brienne started borrowing again; he planned to float new loans; the Parlement would not agree.

  The King then rose and declared: ‘I command you to carry out what you have heard.’

  Orléans leaped to his feet and, knowing that he had more than the support of those who nightly gathered in the Palais Royal behind him, assured the King that what he had said was illegal.

  Louis, angry and weary with the continual conflict, lost his habitual calm for once and shouted: ‘You are banished, Monsieur d’Orléans. You will leave at once for your estates in Villers-Cotterets.’

  That was a sign. The rift between the King and the Parlement was now an open one.

  But if he had subdued the Parlement of Paris, this was not the case with the provincial parlements. They stood firmly beside the Paris Parlement; they refused to accept the edicts proposed by Brienne, and rioting broke out all over the country.

  The demand for an Estates-General was renewed. This time a promise had to be given that it should be elected and called for the following year.

  The people were calling for the return of Necker, and in this also the King had to give way.

  Those were days which seemed to be oppressive with foreboding.

  Antoinette had at last begun to understand the need for reform. Now that she took her place as a Privy Councillor she was beginning to see – even more clearly than did the King – what great danger the country was in.

  She set about reforming her household, and when Madame Bertin presented herself she was sadly received.

  ‘I shall not be sending for you often,’ Antoinette told the dressmaker. ‘I have many dresses in my wardrobe. These will suffice for a while.’

  ‘But Your Majesty is joking,’ cried the dressmaker. ‘We have the honour of France to uphold. I have here a delicious velvet …’

  ‘No,’ said the Queen. ‘Go now, my dear Bertin. I will not discuss dresses now. If I should need your services I will send for you.’

  Inwardly fuming with rage Madame Bertin left the Palace. She saw her lucrative business being snatched from her. ‘What is this new fad?’ she demanded when she returned to her workroom. ‘What is that empty-headed idiot up to now?’ Then she laughed. ‘She’ll be calling for me to-morrow. She’ll not be able to resist the new velvet.’

  And when the Queen did not call for her, Madame Bertin’s rage was beyond her control. She spat out insults against the Queen, who had been so good to her; she chatted in les Holies with the market-women; and she vilified the Queen as loudly as any of them.

  Antoinette then called the Duc de Polignac to her and told him that she must relieve him of his post as Director-General of her horses. For this she had paid him 50,000 livres a year and, as it had been necessary to fill her stables with horses in order to make the post something more than a sinecure, this had been a further expense. Polignac was deeply hurt. The Queen would ruin him, he declared. ‘It may be necessary for some of us to be ruined,’ Antoinette told him, ‘in order to save France.’

  She summoned Vaudreuil and told him that he must give up his post of Grand Falconer, which was not exactly essential.

  Vaudreuil was horrified.

  ‘I shall be bankrupt,’ he declared.

  ‘That may be,’ answered Antoinette sadly, ‘but it is better that you rather than your country should be so.’

  This was outrageous, this was unthinkable. Was the Queen deserting her friends?

  ‘I hope that is something I shall never do,’ she told them. ‘But the times are dangerous. Have you not heard of these riots? Do you not know that an Estates-General is to be called? We must cut down expenses everywhere … everywhere.’

  ‘The Queen has gone mad,’ said Vaudreuil to his mistress Gabrielle.

  It was not often that Antoinette appeared in public now. She always dreaded such appearances.

  But there had come a request from the Opéra House, where a gala performance was to take place. How could there be a gala performance without the presence of the King and Queen?

  ‘I dread going,’ she told Louis. ‘It is always the same. It is I whom they hate. You they accept and excuse. You are the King and a Bourbon. They cannot forget that I am a Habsburg and a foreigner.’

  ‘We are expected to go,’ said Louis.

  She knew it was a duty she could not evade.

  She rode to the Opéra House with the King. There were some in the brilliant assembly there to cheer them; but the cheers were for the King, and Antoinette’s ears were alert for the whisper, which could grow to a shout, of ‘Madame Déficit’; she was trying to catch the hisses among the cheers.

  And as she stepped into the royal box she saw what had been pinned there. It was a placard and on it had been scribbled in huge letters:

  ‘Tremble, Tyrants. Your reign is nearly over.’

  A servant hastily removed it but all during that performance it seemed to dance before the Queen’s eyes, and wherever she looked, from the stage to the glittering audience, she saw those words, ‘Tremble, Tyrants’.

  And she did tremble.

  The terrible sense of foreboding stayed with her.

  Soon the members of the Estates-General would be in Versailles; with this new foresight, which had come to Antoinette in her new mood of seriousness, she had begged Louis to hold the assembly in some provincial town, somewhere far distant from Paris, where storms were not so likely to blow up. But Louis was adamant. He was bewildered by what was happening, but he continued to look upon himself as the father of his people, and if he showed no sensitivity to the rising storms, neither did he show fear.

  Certainly the Estates-General must come to Versailles and the Capital.

  ‘The Estates-General are elected members from all classes of society,’ she reminded him. ‘It is the first time men have been elected from the lower ranks of society to take a part in the country’s government. Louis, it is a complete turnabout. It will rob you of your power.’

  ‘It was necessary,’ said the King.

  And she was afraid of the Estates-General.

  But there was one matter which caused her greater sadness. The health of her eldest son was rapidly failing.

  The little Dauphin was subject to sudden attacks of fever; one of his legs was shorter than the other, and his spine was twisted; he was unable to stand, for he suffered from that complaint which had affected so many Bourbons: rickets.

  Each day his mother sat beside him and wondered whether it would be his last. Often she would remember how Louis loved their children, even as she did; how kind and gentle he always was to them. She said to Madame de Campan: ‘Do you remember how the King used to sit up with me night after night when Madame Royale was a baby and she was sick?’

  Madame de Campan remembered.

  ‘The King is a good man,’ said Antoinette. She put out a hand suddenly to Madame de Campan. ‘I will go to my rest now,’ she said. ‘It is a big day to-morrow.’

  The Princesse de Lamballe said:
‘You will wear your dress of violet, white and silver. It is a beautiful dress, one of the best Your Majesty ever had.’

  Antoinette did not answer.

  ‘And your ostrich plume headdress is so becoming,’ went on the Princesse.

  But still Antoinette was not listening. ‘Light my candles,’ she said. ‘I will go to bed now.’

  They lighted four candles on her dressing-table and as they took off her elaborate headdress one of them went out. Madame de Campan relighted it, but almost at once the second candle went out.

  ‘What is wrong with the candles to-night?’ said the Queen.

  ‘There is a draught coming from somewhere,’ replied Madame de Campan.

  ‘Pray shut the windows. I do not like to see the candles going out like this. It frightens me.’

  The windows were shut and the room seemed very quiet, and then the third candle went out.

  The Queen turned suddenly to the Princesse and caught her in an embrace. ‘My misfortunes make me superstitious,’ she said. ‘I am afraid of something … something near me … something evil. I feel that the candles are warning me to-night. I believe that if the fourth candle goes out it will be an omen of overwhelming evil.’

  ‘You are distraught,’ said the Princesse. ‘It is the ordeal of to-morrow of which you think. But be assured, dearest, that it will soon be over and …’

  The Princesse had stopped. The three women were all looking at the fourth candle which had gone out.

  ‘Maman,’ said the Dauphin, ‘how beautiful you are!’

  She smiled and danced daintily before him in the violet, white and silver gown.