Виктория Холт - Flaunting, Extravagant Queen

The Contis, the Condés, the Soubises and the Rohans, the Freemasons, all the friends of the aunts, and the Queen’s sisters-in-law, all those who congregated in the Palais Royal to talk of liberty, were determined on one thing: whatever the sentence passed on those concerned in the Necklace affair, the Queen should not escape unscathed.

And after long arguments the verdict for which all waited was given. The minor actors in the drama were quickly dealt with. Oliva was acquitted as a dupe, a prostitute who was accustomed to do what was asked of her for payment; this she had done in this instance and merely followed her trade. She was guiltless, and freed. Rétaux was banished from France. Cagliostro was quickly admitted to have no hand in the affair whatsoever. His cool and almost indifferent answers to their questions, together with the pressure of the Freemasons, made it necessary for him to be quickly acquitted.

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.

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.

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.