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 suppose 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.