The Queen's Necklace

by Antal Szerb

  So how did they make their living, Jeanne and her husband? Partly by their basic quality as fraudsters, their lordly self-confidence. They could always find trusting souls to believe them. One particular line of business that occasionally did very well for them was to buy dress material or something similar on credit, and immediately pawn it. Sometimes they received donations from high-ranking people, in response to their begging letters. They were even supported by loyal old retainers of the Ancien Régime, and were fed for quite some time by the mother of a chambermaid called Jeanne Rosalie.

  But we should not think that Jeanne was idle in her penury, or that, like Rohan, she was simply waiting for a miracle to turn her fortunes round. A miracle, yes, but one she intended to bring about herself. Her plan was to recover her ancestral estates (or supposed estates) through royal favour. In this novelettish fantasy she had worked out in great detail how unjustly her illustrious forebears had been stripped of their land. Now was the moment for the King to put everything right. The estates should revert to the royal fisc, then the King, in a kindly gesture, would return them overnight to his distant relatives, the Valois.

  The King had after all done far greater things for his followers in this period. All it needed was for someone who had influence in the Court to sponsor her. Patronage has always existed in the world, but in eighteenth-century France there was only one officially recognised and sanctioned way of getting anything done. It was called the royal favour. The royal favour had of course to be earned. But Jeanne had yet to learn that winning it would not be simple.

  In addition to her house in Paris she took a place at Versailles, and she moved constantly between the two venues. Residence at Versailles served partly to make her Parisian creditors, and anyone else to whom she owed money, believe that she was a regular visitor at the Palace, but it also served as a place from which she could watch for any gaps through which she might scuttle into the realm of her heart’s desire, the all-powerful world of the Court.

  One day Jeanne ‘fainted’ in the antechamber of Madame Royale, the King’s sister the Princess Elisabeth, and when she came to she informed those around her that the reason was that she, the offspring of the Valois, had been destroyed by poverty. The kind-hearted Madame intervened on her behalf and raised another pension for her. But the tiny amount it brought in was of little use to Jeanne.

  However, since the fainting idea had worked so well, she tried it again, this time in the antechamber of the Comtesse d’Artois, the King’s sister-in-law. It failed completely. There was a third such attempt, even more daring than the first two—in the famous Hall of Mirrors in Versailles, where Marie-Antoinette herself was finally to encounter her—but there was such a throng of people around the Queen that she entirely failed to notice.

  Jeanne and her husband tried everything; but there was one step that did not occur to them—to work. In their defence, this was a possibility that would not have occurred to any member of the nobility at the time, not even those very much wiser than themselves. If an aristocrat became bankrupt he looked to the sunshine of royal providence in the same way as, at a later date, the so-called historical classes sought employment with the state or county authority when their lands and fortunes vanished beneath their feet. But when the nobility sank too low to qualify for royal notice, they became fraudsters, trading on the display of rank: the man would become a card-sharper or gigolo, while the woman sold herself. Actual work would have been unthinkable. It would have offended against the ancient order of things, which assigned that role to the middle classes and the peasantry. The concept is difficult to connect with our modern view of the world, but its very absurdity follows directly from the fact that everything in the old order was so fine and wonderful—with everything in its eternally appointed place and moving in fixed circles like the stars. There was no changing your lot in life at will: it was assigned to you forever, by birth. If you fell below your appointed station, you couldn’t just swap it for another—you simply plummeted into the void. The aristocrat who settled for the life of confidence trickery rather than work for his living (and besides what work could he do, since by virtue of his rank he had neither craft nor skills?) was effectively keeping a kind of inverted faith with the aristocratic order of things, just as the hypocrite keeps faith with the moral order—if he didn’t fundamentally respect morality, he would not pretend to possess it but openly admit his wickedness.

  Thus in the eighteenth century, the twilight of the aristocracy, there were a great many fraudsters in France.

  All the same, during these years of genteel poverty Jeanne did study for a profession that consorted with her high rank, and even called for a degree of talent. She became a faiseuse d’affaires, or, as we would say in Budapest, a lobbyist. It is in the nature of things that business of this type will thrive in the heyday of favour. Like large numbers of her kind, Jeanne was able to persuade middle-class people and tradesmen that she could be useful to them in all sorts of ways through her connections at the Court.

  Mercier writes: “For some years now, women have openly played the role of entremetteuse d’affaires. They write twenty letters a day, are relentless in their demands, lay siege to ministers, weary the draughtsmen of legislation to death; they have proper offices and keep records, and to get the wheels of fortune turning they find positions for their lovers, their favourites, their husbands and indeed anyone who will pay them.”

  There certainly were some genuine lobbyists, who produced real results and raised the standing of their trade. But Jeanne was a pseudo-lobbyist. Apart from one royal footman she did not know a single soul at the Court. When she did visit Versailles she shut herself away in an inn to make people believe she was at Court. (It was said that she was not alone on these occasions, but with the hostess’s son—the only service that would secure the accommodation.)

  For all that, it does appear to have been a profitable line of business. Before very long we find the Rue St Gilles household apparently thriving. It saw a steady procession of guests, and not all of the lowest class. They included: a genuine Comte, who was later forced to resign his officer’s rank as a result of the necklace trial; the young lawyer Beugnot, who subsequently left some very interesting observations; Father Loth, a Franciscan, who conducted daily mass for the Countess; and above all, one Réteaux de Villette. Villette was a good-looking nobleman of around thirty, from La Motte’s old regiment. His chief qualification was his exquisite, rather effeminate, handwriting. We shall discover soon enough just how important a factor that was.

  The household was by now considerable. There were footmen, a cook, a coachman, a jockey, two concierges (a married couple), a chambermaid, a reader (a poor female relation); then Father Loth doubling as major-domo, confessor and drawing-room vicar, in his fine black-lace cassock; a military officer, with whom the Count played a form of draughts called tric-trac; a secretary (Réteaux), a family friend (again Réteaux) … what more could one want?

  But the freedom from want was an illusion. In fact the only difference now was the greatly increased scale of their debt, and the even greater peril hanging over their heads. Small-scale measures would no longer serve: they needed a master plan, a stroke of genius.

  By now we might be thinking that Jeanne had become every bit as obsessed with the Queen as the Cardinal was. Obsession is part of genius. News would naturally have reached her about Her Majesty’s intense friendships with the radiantly beautiful Princesse de Lamballe and the Duchesse de Polignac. Perhaps the wonderful woman might take up with her too? For her perverse and twisted nature this was a much more appropriate erotic fantasy than the usual banal notion of the ‘wealthy admirer’. To become the King’s favourite mistress would be a wonderful thing—one that every Frenchwoman dreamt about then, and continued to do so for over a century, and that Hollywood dreams about still. But to become the Queen’s minion would be a hundred times more interesting. Meanwhile her Valois fantasies must have taken on ever more colourful hues. One day the Queen
would suddenly discover her. “Ma chère cousine,” she would say, “I need someone to whom I can open my heart, someone with whom I can be as one human being with another,” and, taking her hand, would lead her into the secret, velvet interiors of Le Petit Trianon. In Jeanne’s mind the boundary between dreams and reality had long been blurred. Alongside the reality of everyday life, another, more brilliant and surreal reality—the Valois reality—existed for her, as it had ever since her childhood as a beggar. And who could possibly say where the truth began and ended? Thus, by degrees, she persuaded herself that she really was the Queen’s confidante. She must have believed it. Had she not, she would not have been able to lie so convincingly. She felt this ‘Valois-reality’ as an actual something, and it was her duty to find a way to bring it to Paris, and into the Rue St Gilles.

  The Queen’s intimate friendships had planted ideas in other women’s heads before Jeanne’s. Earlier, two female fraudsters had put it about that they were royal confidantes. One was Mme de Cahouet de Villiers (or ‘Villers’, according to Mme Campan) who with the help of the King’s financial intendant got her hands on some samples of the Queen’s signature, learnt to reproduce them with remarkable fidelity, and swindled an extremely expensive dress from Mme Bertin; she then wrote herself a letter in the Queen’s name asking her secretly to borrow 200,000 francs on her behalf, and the fermier général Beranger had paid out. The deception duly came to light, the woman was incarcerated in the St Pelagia prison, and her husband had to repay the ‘royal loan’. In 1782, a second lady claimed that she was a close friend not only of the Queen but also of Mesdames de Lamballe and de Polignac. She signed nothing in the Queen’s name, but instead requisitioned goods under a royal seal which the Princesse de Polignac had misappropriated from the Queen’s table. Strangest of all, this woman’s name was also de la Motte, her husband being a relation of Jeanne’s. When she was released from the Bastille, where she too was sent for her various frauds, the two ladies took up the connection.

  This latter episode showed Jeanne what she should have realised after the first: that the idea of posing as an intimate of the Queen was not original. She was in the same situation—for a person of genius—as Shakespeare’s contemporaries. Like them, Shakespeare had learnt everything he knew, in terms of subject matter, style and method, from those who had gone before—and yet his work stands at the apex of human achievement, towering over all others.

  A rather neat saying of Chamfort, who was one of Jeanne’s contemporaries, comes to mind: “There is no species of virtue that can raise the social rank of a woman; only vice can accomplish that.”

  How it all started, no one can say. We cannot be certain at what precise moment the idea struck her, and the artist herself shrouded the circumstances in mystery. We have no idea by what sort of skilful overtures she prepared the way, or even how she broached the subject with the Cardinal. All we can be certain about is the way the plan worked and the unstoppable course it took.

  According to the Abbé Georgel it was Rohan who complained to her in confidence about how much the Queen’s attitude and behaviour distressed him. “That confidence,” the Abbé tells us, “suddenly made her proposed deception easy. It was one that has few parallels in the long annals of human folly.”

  Jeanne told the Cardinal about her ‘intimate friendship’ with the Queen. Thereafter, from time to time, as in the strictest confidence, she would show him letters written on white, watermarked paper, with pale borders and the royal lily of France in the left-hand corners, supposedly written by Marie-Antoinette to her cousine, Jeanne de Valois.

  She must certainly have managed this part with some skill, since the Cardinal finally asked her to put a word in for him with her friend. She quickly brought news that she had spoken about him to the Queen. The Queen had heard her out in silence, but without any show of sympathy. She felt that the situation was hopeless.

  Then she appeared with altogether more cheering news of her latest secret trip to Versailles. The Queen was taking her more and more into her confidence, and was slowly starting to reconsider her long-established prejudice against the Cardinal. She was beginning to see through the base intrigues of Comte Mercy-Argenteau, which had always represented Rohan in a bad light, and she had been touched by the magnanimity Rohan had shown over the trouble that had befallen his nephew, the Prince de Guéménée. In short, she was coming round to the view that the Cardinal was a fundamentally decent man. Finally in May, having faithfully promised Rohan that she would do everything she could to advance his interests, Jeanne was able to announce, with a radiant smile, that it would not be long before he was restored to royal favour.

  Rohan, the most uncritical child of that most critical age, believed everything. Success increased Jeanne’s boldness. She told him to observe the Queen carefully when she passed beside him in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, when she would make a sign with her head in his direction. (When I was a child, my father similarly suggested that the Emperor Franz Josef would acknowledge me in Fürdo˝ street.) And Rohan believed that too. When the Queen raised her head, it would be a subtle indication of her increasing friendliness. The gesture was of course intended not for him but for anyone who happened to be standing there.

  Then Jeanne took another step forward. She instructed him, in the Queen’s name, to write a petition justifying his actions vis-à-vis the accusations made against him. Rohan composed his document with the greatest of care, tearing it up twenty times before finally handing it over.

  The reply was swift. “I am most glad,” the Queen wrote, “not to have to consider you guilty any longer. I cannot at present grant you the audience you ask for, but I will send you a sign as soon as circumstances permit. Be discreet.”

  This was the Queen’s first letter to Rohan. “Those few words,” the Abbé Georgel wrote afterwards, “threw the Cardinal into raptures it would be difficult to describe. Mme de la Motte was from that point onwards his guardian angel, smoothing his path to happiness. From that moment on, she could have whatever she wanted from him.”

  On her advice, the Cardinal replied expressing his delight. The Queen’s next response was followed by a rapid exchange of letters. None has survived, for reasons which will be made clear. But the Abbé Georgel, who saw and read them, affirmed that those written by the Queen showed a clearly discernible progression. The tone becomes increasingly cordial, seeming to promise more and more. They give the impression of Jeanne’s well-judged pleadings and Rohan’s well-worded letters working their effect, and the Queen’s heart steadily softening towards her admirer.

  Now the Cardinal sat, in his official residence, the Hôtel de Strasbourg, in almost continuous conference with his advisors, Cagliostro and the Swiss Baron Planta. The whole Palace was filled with a hopeful, springlike air of expectation. Perhaps nothing was said openly, but everywhere he was met with conspiratorial smiles of congratulation. Those letters were about more than the Queen’s general goodwill. She was letting him know personally that she would receive him back into favour as soon as she could summon him openly. And then, in the silence of the night …

  Elsewhere too, the days were spent in a fever of excitement. Everywhere the very ground under people’s feet seemed to be becoming less certain. Finance Minister Calonne was a kind and intelligent man, but he could do nothing: that terrifying chasm the deficit yawned wider and wider, threatening to swallow everything. Paris sweltered in the appalling, pestilential heat of summer. Far better at such a time to be at Saverne … but Rohan continued to wait in the Hôtel de Strasbourg—to wait, and believe that his star was approaching its zenith.

  Finally the longed-for moment arrived. The Queen’s message read: “Be in the park at Versailles, tomorrow night, in the Bosquet de Vénus.” ‘Tomorrow’ would be 11th August 1784.

  In the Bosquet de Vénus: Venus’ Bower … How much promise lay in that name!

  The following evening Rohan was in the park. He wore a large black cloak, as agreed, and a broad-brimmed hat pull
ed down low over his eyes and, thus attired, wandered along the deserted pathways. From time to time he encountered amorous couples out late; sometimes he was startled by the sudden calling of birds. If the romantic drama had then been in existence, we might have thought of him as one of its heroes. But it wasn’t. Rohan was a precursor.

  He walked until late. The night was very dark. He finally withdrew beside a broad flight of steps. This was the Bower of Venus, so called because there were plans to set up a statue to the goddess there. It was never erected, and the bower was later named the Bosquet de la Reine, in memory of this particular night.

  Inside the bower it was particularly dark. Not a single light shone in the windows of the vast palace. The eternal fountains were silent, the trees tossed and whispered to one another, and the statues of classical gods were a ghostly white presence among the bushes.

  Footsteps were heard. Three people were approaching: two women and a man. The man Rohan recognised as the Comte de la Motte. One of the women was Jeanne de Valois. The other woman …

  The Comte and Comtesse stopped outside, and the woman stepped hesitantly into the bower. Now he recognised her: it was the face … or rather, he seemed to discern the contours … the way she walked … the dress he knew very well: it was the full Gallic cloak recently painted by Mme Vigée-Lebrun in the portrait now hanging in the Salon. Rohan made a deep bow and kissed the hem of her dress. It was not an empty gesture: it was the only way he could express what he was feeling.

  The lady murmured something in a low voice; extremely low. But Rohan understood, or thought that he understood, the words:

  “You may hope. Let us forget the past.” And a rose fell from her hand.