Stories about Famous Precious Stones Part 10

The cardinal was exalted with joy. To be not only redeemed from disgrace, but to be in possession of the haughty Queen's affections was beyond his wildest hopes or aspirations.

Still acting upon the suggestions of the countess the cardinal bought the necklace, and, for the satisfaction of the jewelers, drew up a promissory note, which was intended to be submitted to Her Majesty and was in fact returned, approved and signed, _Marie Antoinette de France_.

This letter came through the hands of Madame de la Motte in the same mysterious fashion in which the correspondence had hitherto been conducted. The cardinal thereupon brought the necklace to Madame de la Motte's house at Versailles, delivered it over to the supposed lackeys of the Queen, and went away rejoicing. Madame herself was feasted sumptuously by the grateful jewelers, who were profuse in their thanks for her aid. They even pressed her to accept a diamond ornament as a slight token of their grat.i.tude! Madame de la Motte dining with her dupes, graciously receiving their thanks and magnanimously declining their presents, was certainly a spectacle for G.o.ds and men.

The cardinal, not content with his _billets-deaux_ from the Queen, was to be further gratified by a midnight interview with Her Majesty in the gardens of the Trianon. A lady dressed in the simple shepherdess costume affected by Marie Antoinette did indeed meet him in a dark-shadowed alley of the garden, and as he was ecstatically pressing the hem of her garment to his lips she did present to him a rose which he clasped to his breast in speechless rapture. The lady of this scene and the Queen of the cardinal's fancy was a common girl off the streets, who bore a striking resemblance to Marie Antoinette. She was dressed up by the clever countess and was told to act according to certain instructions, but strange as it may seem she did not in the least suspect who it was she was representing--so skillfully was it all arranged by the astute Madame de la Motte who never let one tool know what another was doing for fear of spoiling her web of iniquity. The cardinal was totally ignorant of the imposture, and this although he knew the Queen well; but the night was dark and Madame de la Motte executed a sudden surprise by means of her husband, so that the pair were separated before the superst.i.tious Queen had occasion to use her voice, the sound of which might have aroused the suspicions of even the blinded cardinal.

In possession of four hundred thousand dollars worth of diamonds, Madame de la Motte's next difficulty was to sell them. This appeared to be impossible in Paris, for when she commissioned her friend Villette to sell a dozen or so, he was at once arrested as a suspicious person, and anxious inquiries were made as to whether there had been any diamond robbery of late. But no--there had been nothing of the kind. n.o.body complained of having been robbed; court jewelers and cardinal were still in the happy antic.i.p.ation of coming favors. The man Villette was the writer of the Queen's letters to the cardinal, he was also the lackey who had taken charge of the necklace for the writer of those letters. He was a very useful friend to Madame de la Motte until at last he turned king's evidence and explained the whole fraud.

The Count de la Motte next proceeded to London and there sold several hundreds of diamonds. Some stones he disposed of to Mr. Eliason the dealer who in after years it will be remembered had the Blue diamond in his possession. Upon the proceeds of these sales the la Mottes lived in Oriental splendor both in Paris and at their country seat at Bar-sur-Aube. This was in the spring of 1785, and until the first installment, due in July, became payable they seemed to live on absolutely oblivious of the danger ahead. "Those whom the G.o.ds wish to destroy they first make mad," is the cla.s.sic proverb which must be resorted to in this case. On no other supposition can their remaining in Paris be explained. Madame used diamonds for her pocket money and tendered them for everything she wanted, exchanging one for a couple of pots of pomade.

The first payment not having been made, and the Queen having never addressed the cardinal in public nor ever worn the necklace, both prelate and jeweler began to be surprised. The latter wrote to the Queen an humble but mysterious letter expressive of his willingness to await Her Majesty's convenience if she could not pay up punctually. Marie Antoinette read the letter, but not understanding it, twisted it up into a taper and lighted it at her candle. She then bade Madame Campan find out what "madman Bohmer" wanted. Madame Campan saw the jeweler, heard his explanation, told him the Queen never had had the necklace at all, and that it was some dreadful mistake, and then in the greatest distress besought her royal mistress to inquire carefully into the story, as she greatly feared some scandal was being effected in the Queen's name.

Hearing a rumor of trouble Madame de la Motte visited the jewelers, warned them to be on their guard (as she feared they were being imposed upon!) and then inexplicably remained in Paris, instead of escaping beyond the reach of the Bastile. The cardinal heard the rumor also; he was disturbed, but relied though with dawning doubt upon these letters from the Queen signed _Marie Antoinette de France_.

The fifteenth of August was and is a great day in all Catholic countries. It is the feast of the a.s.sumption, an occasion upon which prelates don their most splendid robes and appear in all their dignity.

During the reign of Louis XVI. it was an especially honored day, being besides a religious festival also the name day of the Queen. On this day in 1785 at Versailles, Cardinal de Rohan in his purple and scarlet vestments was suddenly placed under arrest, and thus humiliated was conducted from the King's cabinet through the crowd of amazed courtiers who thronged the Oeil de Boeuf into the guard-room. The scene in the King's cabinet had been brief. The cardinal, summoned to the royal presence, found Louis, Marie Antoinette, and the first Minister of State awaiting him, all in evident agitation.

"You have lately bought a diamond necklace," said the King abruptly.

"What have you done with it?"

The cardinal glanced imploringly at the Queen who turned upon him eyes blazing with anger.

"Sire, I have been deceived," cried the cardinal, becoming suddenly pale, "I will pay for the necklace myself."

More angry questions from the King, more faltering confused answers from the cardinal, and meanwhile the stern implacable face of the incensed Queen turned towards him. The door opens, a captain of the guard enters: "In the King's name follow me!" says the officer, and grand-almoner of France, the cardinal-prince of Rohan is led off under arrest.

Thus far the action of every one concerned is comprehensible enough, but after this it becomes so extraordinary that it is no wonder if the enemies of the Queen pretended there was a dark mystery behind which had yet to be revealed. The unrelenting hatred of Marie Antoinette, which made her demand the cardinal's head in vengeance for his audacity in aiming at her affections, seems to have blinded her to every other consideration but that of ruining her enemy. Madame de la Motte was, it is true, arrested and thrown into the Bastile, but so bent were the royal party upon destroying the cardinal that they held out hopes of acquittal to the adventuress herself if she would accuse the cardinal.

Nay, more, they offered to pay for the hateful jewel if Bohmer would give damaging evidence against the cardinal. Having thus completely put themselves in the wrong the case came on for trial before a bench of judges, who seem to have acted with perfect uprightness and impartiality. And this, too, when public feeling was running very high in Paris and the Reign of Terror only five years off.

All the perpetrators of the crime, except Madame de la Motte, confessed to their share in it; so the whole series of gigantic cheats and trickeries was exposed. The forger confessed to his forgery, and the girl confessed to the scene she had acted in the gardens of the Trianon.

At length the cardinal had to admit to himself that the woman la Motte, who had bewitched his senses to the detriment of his fair fame, had also cheated his purse to an almost fabulous extent and had involved him in the crime of high treason which in days of more absolute power would undoubtedly have cost him his head. The cardinal was acquitted of the capital crime, but was condemned to lose his post of grand-almoner, to retire into the country during the King's pleasure, and to beg their Majesties' most humble pardon--a sufficiently severe sentence one would suppose for having been made a fool of by a designing woman. Marie Antoinette heard of the cardinal's "acquittal," as she called it, with a burst of tearful rage which transpires through her letters to her sisters at the time. She laments in them the pa.s.s to which the world had come when she could do nothing but weep over her wrongs and was powerless to avenge them.

The rest of those concerned were variously dealt with. The Count de la Motte was condemned to the galleys for life, but he had already escaped to London, so the sentence did not much matter in his case. The forger Villette was banished. In his case the decree of the court was carried out in the old-fashioned way: he was led to the prison gate with a halter round his neck, where the executioner gave him a loaf of bread and a kick and bade him begone forever. The sentence on Madame de la Motte was sufficiently rigorous. She was to be whipped at the cart's tail, branded, and then imprisoned for life. The whipping was but slightly administered, but a large V (_voleuse_-thief) was marked with a red-hot iron on her shoulder: a fact which caused the jocose to say that she was marked with her own royal initial, V standing for Valois as well as for _voleuse_.

After a couple of years in prison the authorities connived at her escape, in pursuance it was believed of orders from Versailles. Marie Antoinette's unpopularity was, if possible, increased by the affair of the necklace, and the cardinal became a hero for a short time until others more conspicuous arose to overshadow him. Even yet, however, the unhappy necklace continued to work for evil towards the Queen. Safe in England Madame de la Motte wrote her Memoirs, which are nothing but a ma.s.s of libels and a tissue of falsehood all directed against the Queen.

For private political purposes it suited the Duke of Orleans to spread them as much as possible, for the great aim of his life was to discredit the Queen.

Madame de la Motte died miserably in London from the effects of a jump from a second story window which she took to escape from bailiffs who were arresting her for debt. All the money she obtained from the diamond necklace was not able to save her from want and misery. She was only thirty-four years old at the time of her death. The Count de la Motte lived on into the reign of Charles X. and begging to the last also died in want. The Cardinal de Rohan became an emigre after his brief hour of Parisian popularity and died in exile. The jewelers became bankrupt and the firm sank into oblivion.

And Marie Antoinette?

Ah well, she had nothing to say to the direful necklace. She never probably so much as touched it with a finger-tip during the whole course of her life, but she was taxed with its theft on her way to the scaffold, and a generation ago her memory was again loaded with the crime by M. Louis Blanc. Marie Antoinette has had every possible and impossible crime cast upon her by writers who sought in her person to degrade the idea of a monarchy, but slowly history is removing this dirt from the garment of her reputation. She was silly and headstrong in her youth and did harm by her thoughtlessness, but she was neither so silly nor so headstrong as many of the queens, her predecessors, nor did she do one t.i.the of the mischief that some of them attempted. She chanced, however, upon troublous times, and therefore everything she did was reckoned a crime, as also many things which she did not do, such as the stealing of the Diamond Necklace.

XII.

THE TARA BROOCH AND THE SHRINE OF ST. PATRICK'S BELL.

The two jewels which it is now our intention to describe differ essentially from all those with which we have made acquaintance. They are not enriched with stones of any great value, but the setting of such pebbles as have been used is of a kind to render them unique. The most careful ill.u.s.tration conveys but a poor idea of the splendor and delicacy of the metal-work which literally covers these masterpieces of the goldsmith's art. We have nowadays a firm and in the main a well-founded conviction of our superiority in all things over the men of primitive ages. But in the presence of the Tara Brooch the most skillful jeweler of modern times is obliged to admit his inferiority. With all our skill it is impossible to imitate the delicacy of the workmanship and the wonderful grace and variety of the design displayed upon this truly royal gem.

Its history is of the meagerest. It was found in the month of August, 1850, on the strand at Drogheda, washed up from the deep by some especially generous tide, and left there for two little boys to pick up.

The mother of the children carried their find to a dealer in old iron, but he refused to buy so small and insignificant an object. She then tried a watchmaker, who gave her eighteen pence (thirty six cents) for the brooch. The watchmaker cleaned it up and then beheld what he conceived to be a jewel of silver covered with gold filagree. He thereupon proceeded to Dublin and sold it to Messrs. Waterhouse, the jewelers, for twelve pounds (sixty dollars), which it must be admitted was a very fair profit upon his original outlay.

Messrs. Waterhouse exhibited far and wide this jewel which was by them called the Royal Tara Brooch--a name which serves well enough to distinguish it from other brooches, but which cannot be said to have any historical appropriateness. Whatever truth there may be in the legendary magnificence of "Tara's Halls," there is no reason to suppose that this brooch was ever displayed within its walls. These walls, whatever their nature, were represented by green mounds and gra.s.sy rath-circles, such as may be seen to-day, when the so-called Tara Brooch left the hands of the craftsman who made it.

After a time the Tara Brooch was sold to the Royal Irish Academy for two hundred pounds (one thousand dollars) which, though by no means an exorbitant price, was again a very fair profit for Messrs. Waterhouse.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TARA BROOCH.]

The form and workmanship of the Brooch are of an early Celtic type, and it is believed by competent authorities to be extremely ancient, dating probably from before the eighth century. At any rate, it may with confidence be placed before the eleventh century, for a certain design known as the divergent-spiral or trumpet-pattern, which though common before disappeared from Irish art about that period, is to be seen among its intricate ornamentation. The groundwork of the jewel is not silver, as was at first supposed, but white metal, a compound of tin and copper. It is however the beautiful gold tracery laid upon this white metal which renders it so famous. No description can give an idea of what it is. The Tara Brooch must be seen to be understood.

If the Tara Brooch appeals to our imagination by reason of the mystery of its past, Saint Patrick's Bell has a contrary but even stronger hold upon us. It seems really to be an authentic relic of the Saint to whom it is ascribed, and at any rate it can be shown to have undergone a long and varied career. In the course of these narratives we have met with many kings and queens; it is now our intention to introduce the reader to a saint. As it seems to be decreed by inscrutable destiny that no statement concerning Ireland shall ever be made without its being at once contradicted, we shall endeavor to shelter ourselves behind the wisdom of competent authorities. As Saint Patrick was an Irish saint it would be in the usual course of things for his very existence to be vehemently denied. It is thus denied by some writers who have been at pains to indite learned books upon the subject.

The following details concerning him are taken in the main from Dr.

Todd's _Life of Saint Patrick_, and from the Saint's own works as edited and translated by the Reverend George Stokes, Professor of Ecclesiastical History in Dublin. Not being learned in Irish nor yet in Latin, we accept the translations of these able scholars.

As in the case of many great men the honor of being the birthplace of Saint Patrick is claimed on behalf of several places in England, Ireland, Scotland and France. The reader may choose which country he likes and he will find clever and ingenious arguments to support his theory. The Saint himself says that his father's name was Calp.o.r.nius and that he dwelt in the village of Bannaven Tabernia, and the learned, if agreed upon no other point, are at least at one upon this--that they don't know where that village was. Saint Patrick's father had a small farm and seems to have been of n.o.ble birth, but the Saint invariably speaks of himself as the rudest of men, and deplores his want of learning. "I, Patrick a sinner, the rudest and the least of all the faithful and most contemptible to very many," is the beginning of his Confession, a work written by himself and containing most of the few facts known about his life.

At the age of sixteen he was taken captive, whether from Armorica in Brittany, or from Dumbarton on the Clyde, it is impossible to say, and carried "along with many thousands of others" into barbarous Ireland.

This evidently occurred in one of those predatory expeditions of the Irish, or Scots as they were then called, which under the chieftainship of Niall of the Nine Hostages extended to all the neighboring coasts.

Dumbarton suffered repeatedly in this manner, a fact evidenced by the numbers of Roman coins found all along the coast of Antrim in Ireland.

Dumbarton, an important military position, was the western limit of the Roman Wall constructed by Agricola, A. D. 80, to cut off the ravaging Picts from the rest of Britain, but the Romans, although so near, never set foot in Ireland.

Having been thus carried off to Ireland Saint Patrick became the slave of Milchu who dwelt in Dalaradia in a place now identified with the valley of the Braid, in the very heart of the county Antrim. As a slave the Saint's duty was to tend sheep, and six years he spent in this humble occupation. The fervent zeal and burning piety which were destined to exalt him among men began to show themselves even in his youth. He used to pray both day and night, he tells us, even in the frost and snow never feeling any laziness.

At the end of six years he escaped, made his way to the seacoast, and finding a vessel ready to start was at length suffered to embark. They sailed for three days and then wandered twenty days in a desert. This item does not help us as to the locality, for the coasts either of Brittany or Scotland, suffering as they did from the frequent visits of the Irish, were likely enough to be deserts. Patrick's first converts seem to have been the crew of this ship, for being on the point of starvation they appealed to the Christian to help them, and the Saint prayed, whereupon a drove of swine appeared, the grateful sailors "gave great thanks to G.o.d, and I" [Patrick writes] "was honored in their eyes."

After a brief stay with his parents the young man impelled by his zeal set out again for Ireland, determined to bring its pagan inhabitants into the light of Christianity. There is some variety of opinion as to the date of the Saint's arrival in the home of his choice, but 432 is the date commonly received, at which time he appears to have been something under twenty-five years of age. He first went to the north with the intention of seeking out Milchu his master. But this individual burnt up both himself and his house on the approach of the Saint in order not to be converted. So at least ancient annals declare. It must be confessed that this paganism was of the most robust type.

Having failed in this quarter he then proceeded to the Boyne. This is one of the most picturesque of rivers winding about among its wooded banks. Both sides of the river are now dotted with handsome and carefully-kept parks where ornamental trees and cows stand in pleasing and picturesque groups, while the smoothly-mown gra.s.s rolls like green velvet down to the water's edge. The water itself is limpid and clear as crystal, and in the deep pools the silvery salmon leap high into the air after heedless flies who come within reach. It looks very different from the days when Saint Patrick paddled up in his wicker and bull's-hide canoe. Probably the holy man himself would not recognize it; nothing is the same except the salmon, the flies, the limpid, clear water.

At Slane, a hill on the riverside about eight miles from its mouth, Saint Patrick built a beacon-fire. He was in consequence of this immediately summoned to appear before King Laoghaire who held his court on the neighboring height of Tara to answer how he dared light a fire, when according to ancient custom as well as by royal mandate all fires were to be extinguished. The interview between the Saint and the King ended if not in the latter's conversion at least in his tolerating the new comer, and eventually this occasioned the change in the religion of the whole tribe.

Thus began the apostleship of Saint Patrick, who in the course of his long ministry traversed most parts of Ireland undeterred by the dread of starvation or the fear of murder. He baptized many thousands of the natives, planted churches in numerous places, founded schools and established monasteries.

His most famous foundation is undoubtedly that of Armagh, the legend about which is preserved in a celebrated old Irish ma.n.u.script known as the Book of Armagh. The Saint begged of a certain rich man some high land upon which to build him a church, but the rich man refused him the hill, offering in its stead a lower piece of ground near Ardd-Machae, and "there Saint Patrick dwelt with his followers."

Upon all the churches which he founded Saint Patrick is said to have bestowed bells, several of which under distinctive names have become famous in history. One of these venerable relics, a small hand-bell made of two iron plates, something over seven inches high and three pounds ten ounces in weight, is known especially as the Bell of the Will of Saint Patrick. It is with this small rude object, not unlike the sheep-bell of to-day, that we have to deal.

Sixty years after the death of Saint Patrick another Irish saint, Columkill, obtained this bell from the tomb of the former where it had ever since lain on the Saint's breast, and by Columkill it was bestowed on Armagh as a most precious relic. This bell is mentioned under the date 552 by the compiler of the Annals of Ulster. A poem of a later date, though still far back in the Dark Ages, speaks fondly of the bell, saying "there shall be red gold round its borders," and many shall be the kings who will treasure it, while woe is to be the portion of the person or house or tribe that hides it away.

Armagh suffered much and frequently from fires, as was indeed natural in a village built entirely of wood as seems to have been the case during the first centuries of its existence. In 1020 it was burnt to the ground, all except the library alone. The steeple or round tower was burned with its bells. And again in 1074, on the Tuesday after May Day, it was burnt with all its churches and all its bells. But among these bells was not the Clog-Phadriug (the Bell of Saint Patrick). That was confided to the custody of a maer (keeper) whose honor and emolument depended upon the safety of the trust reposed in him. The keeper of the Bell was the head of the O'Maelchallans. The ancient poem already quoted refers thus to the elected keepers:

"I command for the safe keeping of my bell Eight who shall be n.o.ble ill.u.s.trious: A priest and a deacon among them, That my bell may not deteriorate."

The Bell of Saint Patrick was regarded as more and more holy as the centuries rolled on, and by the middle of the eleventh century any profanation of its sanct.i.ty was visited with the severest penalties.