The Queen's Confession Part 24

"I will bring them to Your Majesty."

"I want to warn you, cousin," said the King, "that you are about to be arrested."

He looked stricken. "Your Majesty knows I shall always obey your orders, but I beg you spare me the pain of being arrested in these pontifical robes."

I saw my husband waver. He wanted to spare the man this disgrace. I clenched my hands. Louis glanced at me almost apologetically and my lips tightened. He was going to allow his pity for my enemy to overcome his desire to please me.

I showed him by my expression how I should regard such an action and he said: "I fear it must be so."

"Your Majesty will remember the close ties of our families," went on Rohan.

I could see that my husband was visibly moved and the tears of rage filled my eyes. He saw these tears and he said: "Monsieur, I shall console your family as best I can. I should be extremely pleased if you can prove yourself innocent. But I must do my duty as a King and a husband."

Monsieur de Breteuil was on my side. He signed to the Cardinal to make his way to the door which opened onto the Salon de la Pendule. On such an occasion this was naturally crowded; all members of the Court were present, some in the oeil de boeuf, others in the long gallery, in the council and state rooms.

Breteuil shouted to the Captain of the bodyguard the extraordinary command. It echoed through the Galerie des Glaces: "Arrest the Cardinal de Rohan."

I was triumphant - triumphantly blind. "There," I said, "that matter is settled. This wicked man will be proved to be a cheat and be punished for all his sins."

I sat down to write to my brother Joseph: "As far as I am concerned, I am delighted at the thought of not having to hear this miserable business talked of again."

I do not understand now how I could have deceived myself and whether I actually believed that or deep in my heart, realizing the enormity of this affair, refused to see it. I have come to believe I was adept at deceiving myself.

I expected congratulations from my friends. I expected them to say how pleased they were to see that wicked man brought to an account of his sins at last. But there was an odd brooding silence in my apartments. Gabrielle did not visit me; it did not occur to me that her family might be advising her to keep away. Madame de Campan was quiet and restrained, as though she were involved in the affair. I should have been warned. She really cared for me and when I was in danger, her love for me would make her anxious while her intelligence would not allow her to deceive herself. The Princesse de Lamballe agreed with me that it was a good thing, but then, as Vermond had once pointed out, she had a reputation for stupidity; and Elisabeth was sad, but then she was so pious that she always deplored trouble of any sort even for those whom she knew deserved it. My sisters-in-law seemed smugly pleased. But there was so much to think of. What of The Barber of Seville? Nothing must interfere with that production.

I decided to leave Versailles at once for the Pet.i.t Trianon.

"We must continue with the rehearsals this ridiculous affair of the necklace has interrupted," I declared.

So I went to the Trianon and thought of nothing else but my part.

When Campan told me that Rohan's family were furious because he had been arrested and sent to the Bastille, I merely laughed. "It is where he should have been long ago," I retorted. "Now hear me in the first act."

How strange that the dialogue in this very play was like a grim warning. I remember now Basile's speech on calumny, but strangely enough I took no heed of it then.

Now it comes back to me: "Calumny! You don't know what you are disdaining when you disdain that. I have seen people of the utmost probity laid low by it. Believe me there is no false report however crude, no abomination, no ridiculous falsehood which the idlers in a great city cannot, if they take the trouble, make universally believed - and here we have t.i.ttle-tattlers who are past masters of the art ..."

How true that was to prove and how foolish I was to believe that I had heard the last of the affair of the diamond necklace.

But I thought of nothing then but my performance.

At the end I stood triumphantly on the stage to receive the applause; I had played as rarely before.

Such a play in my own theater, myself playing the princ.i.p.al role! I was happy and excited with my success, and I had no notion then that this was the last time I should play there.

CHAPTER 17.

"Madame de Boulainvilliers once saw from her terrace two pretty little peasant girls, each labouring under a heavy bundle of sticks; the priest of the village who was walking with her, told her that the children possessed some curious papers, and that he had no doubt they were descendants of a Valois, an illegitimate son of one of the Princes of that Name."

-Madame Campan's Memoirs "The face of this woman (Baronne d'Oliva) had from the first thrown me into that sort of restlessness which one experiences in the presence of a face one feels certain of having seen before without being able to say where ... What had puzzled me so much in her face was her perfect resemblance to the Queen."

-Beugnot "After this fatal moment (the meeting in the Grove of Venus) the Cardinal is no longer merely confiding and credulous, he is blind and makes of his blindness an absolute duty. His submission to the orders received through Madame de la Motte is enchained to the feelings of profound respect which are to affect his whole life. He will await with resignation the moment when her rea.s.suring kindness will fully manifest itself, and meanwhile will be absolutely obedient. Such is the state of his soul."

-Monsieur de Target, advocate for the Cardinal de Rohan at the time of the trial Events Leading to the Trial LOOKING BACK, I SEE THE AFFAIR of the necklace as the beginning, as the first rumble of thunder in the mighty storm which was to break about my head.

I was determined that Rohan should be judged and found guilty; he must be exposed as the swindler I believed him to be. Should he be excused because he was a prince of a n.o.ble family? I owed it to my mother as well as my own dignity as Queen of France to have him proved guilty of all the sins which I was certain he had committed.

I laughed when I considered what I was sure his family expected. They would imagine that the King would exercise his right to inflict a mild punishment on the Cardinal, perhaps send him a lettre de cachet, which would mean a brief exile; then he could return to Court and the incident be forgotten.

I was determined that this should not be.

Louis, as usual, wavered. His good sense told him that he should listen to wise counselors and obey his own instincts in the matter, which were that the less universally known about the matter the better for us all; but his sentiments toward me - and he loved me truly - insisted that he listen to my outbursts of fury against a man who had dared presume that I would enter into an underhand negotiation with him. Whenever Rohan's name was mentioned, I would burst into an angry tirade, which often ended in tears.

"The Cardinal must be punished."

Louis pointed out that the Cardinal belonged to one of the oldest families in France; he was related to the Condes, the Soubises, and the Marsans; they believed that they had been personally insulted, since a member of their family had been arrested publicly like a common felon.

"Which he is!" I declared. "And the whole world should know it."

"Yes, yes," replied my husband, "you are right of course. Yet not only his family but Rome itself is displeased that a Cardinal of Holy Church should have been submitted to this insult."

"And why not," I demanded, "when he deserves his fate more than some man who steals bread because he is hungry." "You are right," said my husband.

I embraced him warmly. "You will never allow a man who has insulted me to go free, I know."

"He shall have his just rewards."

All the same, Louis allowed the Cardinal to decide whether he would be judged by the King or the Parlement.

He quickly made his choice and wrote to the King, and it struck me at the time that the man who had written that letter to my husband had changed a great deal from the frightened creature who had been summoned to the King's cabinet on the day he was arrested.

He had written: Sire, I had hoped through confrontation to obtain proofs that would have convinced Your Majesty beyond doubt of the fraud of which I have been the plaything and I should then have desired no judges except your justice and your kindness. Refused confrontation and deprived of this hope, I accept with most respectful grat.i.tude the permission which Your Majesty gives me to prove my innocence through judicial forms; and consequently I beg Your Majesty to give the necessary orders for my affair to be sent and a.s.signed to the Parlement of Paris, to the a.s.sembled chambers.

Nevertheless if I could hope that the inquiries which have been made, and which are unknown to me, could have led Your Majesty to decide that I am only guilty of having been deceived, I should then beg you, Sire, to decide according to your justice and your kindness. My relations, penetrated with the same sentiments as myself, have signed.

I am, with the deepest respect, Cardinal de Rohan, De Rohan, Prince de Montbazon.

Prince de Rohan, Archbishop of Cambrai.

L.M. Prince de Soubise.

When my husband read this letter, he was disturbed. He too was struck by the change in Rohan. His imprisonment in the Bastille had changed him from a very frightened man to an arrogant one.

I could see the speculation in his eyes. He said to me: "If I admitted that the Cardinal is merely a man who has been deceived into taking part in this fraud, he would not wish to be tried by the Parlement."

I laughed aloud. "I daresay not. He would rather have your leniency than a judicial sentence when he is proved guilty."

"What if he is not proved guilty?"

"You are joking. Of course he will be proved guilty. He is guilty."

My husband looked at the letter; he was staring at those names at the foot of it - some of the most influential in the country.

I knew that he was hoping that the matter might be hushed up in some way, which I told myself was just what Rohan's n.o.ble family wanted. But I was determined to bring this affair into the open.

My folly makes me shudder even now.

The most important affair in France was the trial. Information was leaking out daily. The Comtesse de la Motte-Valois had been arrested; so had Cagliostro, the notorious magician, and his wife; and so had another creature, a girl of light morals who was known as the Baroness d'Oliva and who was said to have impersonated me. The story was growing more and more fantastic every day. There had been nothing compared with this since the ascent of the balloon which had amazed everyone. But this was even more exciting; this was a trial of a great Cardinal; it was the story of great fraud, a fabulous diamond necklace which had disappeared completely from the scene; it was a story of scandal and intrigue and at the very heart of it was the Queen of France.

I was unaware then of all the twists and turns of this incredible story; but I have since heard many versions, of it. In fact I have never ceased to hear of it. It was not really so much the Cardinal de Rohan who stood on trial; it was the Queen of France.

How could I have prevented what was to happen? By being a different woman. By never having entered on a life of selfish pleasure. I was not guilty of all of which I was accused in this nightmare story of a diamond necklace. My tragedy was that my reputation was such that I could have been.

I must set down the story of the Diamond Necklace, which gradually came to my knowledge while the tension was growing over that trial - and during it.

As I learned it I lost my carelessness. I believe this was the first time I really began to understand the mood of France, that I first became aware of that crumbling pedestal which supported the Monarchy.

The Prince de Rohan was at the very center of the drama; he was the dupe, it seemed; but how a man of his education and culture could have been so easily duped it is difficult to understand; perhaps it had something to do with the strange Cagliostro, who was arrested with Rohan and who remains a vague and shadowy figure, the mystery man - magician or charlatan? That is something I shall never know. Perhaps the most important figure in the whole unsavory affair was the Comtesse de la Motte-Valois, that woman who, from afar, since this unfortunate affair occurred has been writing her sensational lying and p.o.r.nographic stories of my life - my enemy whom I have never met, to whom I have done no harm except to have ascended the throne of France. Hers was an unusual story. She claims descent from the royal Valois, that branch of the family of France which ruled before the Bourbons. She was the daughter of a certain Jacques Saint-Remy who claimed descent from King Henri II. This appeared to be the truth, for Henri II had had an illegitimate son by a certain Nicole de Savigny and this child, christened Henri after him, was legitimized by him and created Baron de Luz and de Valois.

Jeanne suffered great poverty in her childhood, but she had heard that she was descended from the Valois and never forgot it. In the days when she was living on the proceeds of her great fraud, she bore the arms of her family - d'argent a une fasce d'azur, chargee de trois fleurs de lis d'or - on her carriage, in her house, anywhere she could put it.

The child Jeanne was brought up in a state of abject poverty and this, added to the knowledge that she was of royal blood, may well have been at the root of her hatred for me and her desire to gain, at any cost, the status which she believed belonged to her.

No doubt when Henri de Saint-Remy, son of Henri II, lived in the chateau, it had been a beautiful place, but during the years which followed, the Saint-Remys found it impossible to keep up their standard of living; the ditches about the chateau became filled with stagnant water; the roof had fallen in and the upper part was exposed to the weather. By the time Jeanne's father was born, it was a ruin. He was a man of great physical strength but had no desire to regain his family's fortunes if it meant work. He was only interested in drink and debauchery and gradually sold, little by little, all that remained of the chateau.

He seduced one of the village girls named Jossel and, when their child was born, married her. She was a woman of loose morals and as Jeanne's father cared only for drink, she soon began to dominate the household.

Jeanne was one of three children; neither parent cared for them, and they were kept in a miserable hut, naked, for they had no clothes and they would have starved to death but for the efforts of the Cure and some of the peasants who took pity on them.

When I think of all this now, I can forgive her, because I know misery even greater than she must have endured as a child; but at that time it was difficult to understand. Now I see that she felt a need to take revenge on society; and I can even feel it in my heart to be sorry for this woman.

How wretched the child must have been, but while she was naked and shivering with cold and hunger, she never lost sight of the fact that she was descended from the royal Valois.

There came a time when the family decided to take to the road. There were four children, Jacques, Jeanne, Marguerite-Anne, and Marie-Anne. Poor little Marie-Anne was a year and a half and could only totter, so they decided they could not take her with them; they wrapped her in swaddling clothes and hung her on the door of a farmhouse. Leaving her there, they set out and now began the real nightmare for the children. Their mother was a strong handsome peasant and she decided to make use of her attractions; their father was ailing, so she turned him out and took up with a soldier as depraved and cruel as herself. The children were sent out to beg and, if they did not return with money, were severely beaten. Then came Jeanne's stroke of luck. Her cry when she stood by the roadside begging was: "Give alms to a poor orphan sprung from the blood of the Valois." This naturally provoked jeers now and then, but it did attract some attention and one day the Marchioness de Boulainvilliers pa.s.sing in her carriage heard what the child said, was curious, and stopped to question her. She was immediately struck by the child's beauty and proud bearing; she believed the story of royal descent and decided to help. She took Jeanne and her little sister Marguerite-Anne and sent them to school, where very soon Marguerite-Anne caught smallpox and died. Meanwhile Jeanne's father had died in great poverty in the Hotel Dieu in Paris; her mother's paramour left her and she returned with Jacques to Bar-sur-Aube, her native town, where she took up a life of prost.i.tution. Jacques ran away to sea and joined a ship at Toulon, where with the help of Madame de Boulainvilliers he made a good career in the Navy and actually died at the time the affair of the necklace came to light.

Jeanne had left her nightmare childhood behind her; and it is not surprising that she made up her mind that never would she fall into such dire misery again.

Madame de Boulainvilliers was good to her and, when she was old enough to leave school, placed her with a dressmaker in the Faubourg Saint-Germain; but Jeanne was too proud to remain there. In her autobiography, which she produced after the trial and which of course everyone was eager to read, she said she became a "Washerwoman, a water carrier, a cook, an ironer, a needlewoman, everything except a happy and respected girl."

That was what Jeanne craved for above everything - to win the respect which she considered due to her rank.

Madame de Boulainvilliers was a kindly woman; she realized that Jeanne could never settle down and understood the reason, so she took her into her home and there Jeanne lived for a while as a member of the household. Madame de Boulainvilliers did not forget little Marie-Anne, who had had the good fortune to be taken in by the good-hearted farmer when he had discovered her hanging on his door; the good lady sent for her and, since she had grown into a well-mannered girl, decided that she should go with her sister Jeanne to a finishing school for young ladies. Now Jeanne was not only a beautiful young woman of twenty-one, she was an educated one, but remembering she had sprung from the Valois, she wanted to be treated as a royal personage.

When Jeanne was twenty-four, she was still restless and dissatisfied and she then met a soldier some two years older than herself. This was Mark-Antoine-Nicolas de la Motte, an officer in the gendarmerie. They became lovers and it was necessary for them to marry hastily. Twins were born a month after the wedding, but in a few days they were dead. Jeanne was the leading spirit in this union, it appeared, and de la Motte soon learned that he must do as he was told. One of the first things he was obliged to do was to a.s.sume the t.i.tle of Comte. He obeyed his wife, and her haughty manners, her habit of reminding everyone that she was descended from the Valois soon made everyone accept the t.i.tle as a natural one. They became known as the Comte and Comtesse de la Motte-Valois.

Jeanne and her husband; in need of money, for how could a descendant of the Royal House of Valois be expected to live on the pay of an officer of the gendarmerie, immediately began to make plans. An opportunity arose when Madame de Boulainvilliers visited Strasbourg as a guest in the chateau of Saverne, the magnificent home of the Cardinal de Rohan. Jeanne remembered that the Cardinal was notoriously fond of women and she was undoubtedly attractive. With her air of haughty refinement, her lovely chestnut hair and blue eyes under black eyebrows, her coloring was startling.

She decided to use the Cardinal, but at this stage she was not sure how. That wildest of plans would occur to her later when a series of strange events fell into their places, setting the stage and making possible this plot which would otherwise have seemed too incredible for reality.

I have already written much of the Cardinal de Rohan. I shall never be able to get that man out of my mind and even now when I have become resigned to my fate and my understanding of others has grown - I still feel a great revulsion every time I hear his name or allow his image to cloud my thoughts.

I suppose he was handsome in his way, for he was known as La Belle Eminence. Sometimes I think he was an extremely foolish man - indeed he must have been, for who but a simpleton would have allowed himself to be used as he was?

I can recall his face clearly; there is something childlike about it - round and like a doll's, unwrinkled and highly colored; the only aging feature was his white hair, which grew far back from his forehead, and even this merely accentuated the ruddy roundness of his face. He was very tall and carried himself with grace and great dignity; and in his Cardinal's robes he was a figure of magnificence. He held the Bishopric of Strasbourg, which was the richest in France; he was a Prince of the Empire, Landgrave of Alsace, Abbe of the Grand Abbey of Saint-Vaast and Chaise-Dieu, Provisor of Sorbonne, Grand Almoner of France, Superior-General of the Royal Hospital of the Quinze-Vingts, and Commander of the Order of the Holy Ghost. And this was the man who had been arrested at Versailles like a common felon - as his family said.

At the time he made the acquaintance of Jeanne de la Motte-Valois, the Cardinal was under the spell of Cagliostro.

I do not know the truth about Cagliostro. Who does? Some laugh at him. Others say that he was in possession of some of the great secrets of the universe. The fact remains that while he was close to the Cardinal, the Cardinal accepted ridiculous falsehoods as truth.

There were so many stories about the magician. I have heard descriptions of him from my servants who waited in the streets to catch a glimpse of him. His coat was of blue silk, his shoes were fastened by buckles made of diamonds; even his stockings were studded with gold; he glittered as he walked, for diamonds and rubies covered his hands; his flowered waistcoat was set with gems which sparkled so fiercely that they dazzled the eyes of all who beheld them.

When he was arrested, shortly after the Cardinal, I heard many stories of his strangeness. The one which most impressed me was that of how he stopped in the square of Strasbourg before a crucifix and declared in a loud voice which could be heard by all those around - and there was always a crowd following him: "How could an artist who had never seen him have made such a perfect likeness?"

"Your lordship knew Christ?" asked a hushed voice close by.

"We were on terms of friendship," was the answer. "How many times we strolled together on the shady sh.o.r.e of Lake Tiberias. His voice was of great sweetness, but he would not listen to me. He loved to walk on the sh.o.r.e, where he picked up a band of fishermen. This and his preaching brought him to a bad end." Then to his servant he added: "Do you remember that day when they crucified Christ in Jerusalem?"

Then came the astonishing climax to the story: "No, my lord," replied the servant in the hushed tones of reverence with which the great man was addressed. "Your lordship forgets I have only been in your service for the last fifteen hundred years."

He was a small fat man with the appearance of being in his forties; he had large bright animated eyes and a strong voice. He was undoubtedly fascinating, for often those who went to him to jeer at him and expose him as a fraud became his most earnest admirers.

Of course there were those who said he talked gibberish, which people thought was brilliant wit and wisdom because they could not understand it. He had a formula for certain questions and, when he was asked who he was, would reply: "I am he who is!" and would add: "I am he who is not!" which was so baffling that most people who heard became very deferential and pretended they were the wise ones who could understand the meaning of his imagery.

There were countless sinister murmurs about him. He was a Freemason and wished to set up Egyptian Freemasonry in France; he was in the pay of secret societies and his motives were more devious than the duping of a foolish Cardinal. He had discovered the philosopher's stone and could trans.m.u.te base metals into gold and make precious stones. Stories of the cures he had effected on his journeys were told everywhere. He could look at a man who was crippled and make him walk. He would not give his attention to all sufferers, however, and he reserved the right to treat those whom he favored.

There was a Comtesse de Cagliostro - a young woman of charm and beauty who was said to be "not of this world." No one knew where she came from any more than they knew her husband's origins. She was "an angel in human form who had been sent to soften the days of the Man of Marvels." Cagliostro was a faithful husband who never gave one amorous glance in any other woman's direction. All he was interested in was his own doctrine.

In spite of the wild life he had led, there was about the Cardinal a touch of innocence; he was a lecher but a romantic one; superst.i.tious in the extreme, he was very much attracted by the occult. Moreover he delighted in splendor; he admired fine clothes and above all magnificent jewelry; and Cagliostro was a magician who by his great wisdom could bring sparkling jewels from his crucible. Such an achievement could not fail to impress the Cardinal and in a very short time he had invited Cagliostro to Saverne, where the two became great friends.

The Cardinal wore an enormous jewel the size of an egg, which he declared he had seen Cagliostro pluck from the crucible. How the Cardinal was duped, whether the Cardinal was duped, remains a secret, but it was a fact that Cagliostro lived in great splendor with his Comtesse in the palace of Saverne and that the Cardinal could scarcely bear him out of his sight.

And then in the private apartments of the Cardinal's palace these two men began to talk of me. I had become an obsession with the Cardinal. I had stubbornly refused to receive him at Court; I had remembered my mother's warnings about him; I had tried to prevent his being Grand Almoner; he knew that I disliked him, and he wanted my favor with the desperation of a man who has only had to take what he desires all his life and suddenly finds something denied him.

There was something even more sinister which had crept into the Cardinal's mind. He wanted to be my lover. The thought of this took possession of his mind. He began to think of little else. Did he talk of me to Cagliostro? Did he ask what chances he had of success with me? If he had talked with me instead of the magician, I could have told him that never ... never never should I have looked at him with favor even if I had been the kind of woman who forgets her marriage vows.

Why did Cagliostro lend himself to this mad scheme? Did he know what was going on? Could it be true that he had gifts like Mesmer's and could make people act as he wished at certain times? And did he wish me to be caught up in this gigantic scandal because his masters of some of the secret lodges of the world were eager to see the end of the Monarchy in France?

At the time it seemed that this was merely the story of a gullible man, a scheming woman and a man of mystery. I was involved - the central figure in the plot, the character who never makes an actual appearance during the whole of the play, but without whom there would be no play.

Jeanne de la Motte-Valois speedily became the Cardinal's mistress; that was an inevitable sequel. She also became Cagliostro's friend. Did she suspect he was a charlatan? Did he know that she was a scheming woman? Whichever way one turns in this incredible story, there is mystery.