How to Ruin a Queen: Marie Antoinette and the Diamond Necklace Affair (27 page)

The care the crown took to increase the chances of Rohan’s conviction emerges from the drafting of the
plainte
(charge) by the
procureur-général
Guillaume-François-Louis Joly de Fleury. The
procureur-général
represented the king’s interest before the
parlement
– in this matter, the king’s interest was greater than in most. Tired, old and sickly, Joly de Fleury had a reputation as a drudge – Beugnot called him ‘the most objectionable mediocrity ever seen . . . it is hard to understand how such a man could attain one of the most important
offices of state’ – who lived in the shadow of two brilliant brothers, one of whom served as
contrôleur-général
; the other, Omer Joly de Fleury, was an influential
parlementaire
and hungry for ministerial office.

A memo written by a member of Joly de Fleury’s staff on 3 September stated that ‘what must be alleged in the
plainte
is not the forgery of the document, but the supposition about the writing and the signature on the document and that which was done as a result regarding . . . the
sale of the necklace’. The author must have realised that Rohan was indeed the victim of a swindle, otherwise the counterfeiting of the queen’s hand would surely have been the newel around which the
plainte
was constructed. Having suspected that Rohan had been deceived, Joly de Fleury could no longer centre his case on the forgery, since Rohan would doubtless encourage the court to see Jeanne as guilty and himself as her dupe – and therefore acquit him. To forestall this, Joly de Fleury made a discernible attempt to mitigate Jeanne’s involvement: a sentence in an early draft which stated ‘it appears that a woman named la Mothe de Valois is one of the principal
accomplices in the crime’ appeared in the final version as ‘it appears that a woman named la Mothe de Valois is implicated in the affair as having tricked the cardinal, according to the declaration he made’.

A shift of focus was needed to convict the cardinal. Joly de Fleury laid emphasis on the cardinal’s insolence – the presumption that the queen was the kind of person who would commission a man she had not spoken to in years to assuage, without her husband’s knowledge, her slakeless appetite for luxury. In this lay the crime of
lèse-majesté
– impugning the dignity of the king or queen. The notion of
lèse-majesté
incorporated any defilement of
the king’s majesty and authority: it was treasonous because the king embodied the nation; and sacrilegious because the king ruled by divine right.

The court appointed two
rapporteurs
(investigating magistrates) to oversee the collection of the
information
(evidence). They would not, for the time being, interview those in the Bastille, but question witnesses whose names had emerged during the police investigation or who had come forward. At the end of this stage, they would recommend which suspects should be detained further for interrogation. Jean-Baptiste-Maximilien Titon de Villotran and Dupuis de Marcé were chosen for the task. Titon was a libertine and man of overbearing character (he had once ordered the arrest of a lawyer for criticising him in a published defence of a client). He was regularly chosen as
rapporteur
in major cases and had great success at winning over his fellow magistrates. As important, from the crown’s perspective, was his membership of the
parti ministériel
, and he had benefited from the king’s largesse. An ex-soldier and milquetoast nonentity, Dupuis bent before his more forceful colleague. From the outset there was a concerted effort to conclude the case to the crown’s satisfaction. There was a continual three-way correspondence between Titon, Joly de Fleury and d’Aligre, the
parlement
’s
premier président
, who had been on a royal retainer of 80,000 livres for a number of years and was, in Georgel’s caustic assessment, ‘known for his opulence, his greed and a special talent for acquiring money at the most advantageous rate . . . his principles were flexible and his
morals even looser’.

Now that she was under parliamentary investigation, Jeanne was required to appoint a lawyer. Her first choice was her old friend Jacques Beugnot. But Beugnot was petrified that he would soon himself be arrested for perverting the course of justice by helping Jeanne burn her papers. He did not dare to leave Bar for days after Jeanne was arrested. When he returned to Paris, he was advised by friends to flee, and each morning woke up and braced himself for the knock at the door. He wandered frequently past the Bastille, imagining himself locked within its towers, so the horror would be softened when the time came. His trunk lay packed in his room ‘like a friend placed
as a sentinel’.

After the issue of the letters patent, Beugnot was summoned by de Crosne. He approached the lieutenant-general’s office, shivering with trepidation, convinced he would be bundled into a carriage
and driven to the dread citadel. Instead he found the chief of police in affable form:

Monsieur, it is for Madame de La Motte that I speak . . . Madame de La Motte, whom I’ve just left, has chosen you as her counsel. Here is your entrance pass for the Bastille. I ask that you present yourself when it opens, from nine to ten o’clock. This poor woman has not seen a friendly face for two months [more like a month, but Beugnot’s memoirs are frequently imprecise with datings] and I promised her that tomorrow without fail you would be there in the morning.

Beugnot refused outright to take the case. Its difficulty, he protested, far exceeded his experience. No matter, said de Crosne; Cagliostro’s lawyer Thilorier was equally callow – here was an opportunity to forge a reputation. But Beugnot, convinced that one misstep would ruin his career, would not be swayed. Instead, Jeanne appointed Mâitre Doillot, an experienced lawyer, if not an especially acute one (Vergennes called him an
‘imbecile’), who had been hauled out of semi-retirement because others were chary of touching the case.

Barely heard amid the rumpus over Rohan’s disgrace was the reedy yet persistent wail of the Boehmers. They had neither their diamonds nor payment for them. Bassenge had told an acquaintance the day after the cardinal’s arrest that he believed Rohan had acted honourably at all times. But good intentions would not disperse their creditors. They complained to officials in the king’s household, who fobbed them off with nebulous promises of compensation. When they had heard nothing further, they wrote to the unfeeling Breteuil: ‘We beg you, Your Excellency, to place again before the eyes of Their Majesties our worries and fears, undoubtedly well-founded fears about events that could make our misfortune irrevocable.’

The minister was as unresponsive as a wooden leg, so they turned to Vergennes. He suggested they bring a civil case in London against the jewellers who had bought the diamonds from Nicolas. Impossible, said Boehmer, who could be steely when necessary.
‘Neither myself nor my associate have any documentation regarding this sale with Monsieur and Madame de la Motte. We cannot, for that reason,
bring a case.’ But the king was never going to pay for a necklace that he hadn’t wanted, his wife hadn’t wanted and which no longer even existed.
On 3 November, he wrote a formal letter to the Boehmers telling them the necklace had been bought fraudulently and the case was being dealt with through legal channels – nothing they did not know already. The implication was clear: if you want your money, you will have to petition the
parlement
.

The difficulties facing Rohan’s legal team were formidable to the point of hopelessness. Though public sympathy leant towards the cardinal, the full influence of the king and queen was being exerted against him (the sympathies that really mattered belonged to fifty or so judges who were as susceptible as anyone to royal attention). Rohan’s case rested on little more than yelps of innocence. Great tracts of the story remained
terra incognita
. Crucial witnesses had disappeared. Who had written the signature on the bill of sale? What had happened to the necklace? Where was Nicolas de La Motte? And before whom had Rohan prostrated himself in the Bosquet de Venus?

While Target took charge of the legal strategy, the Abbé Georgel, Rohan’s vicar-general, coordinated the gathering of intelligence that covertly paralleled the
parlement
’s, as well as managing the diocese of Strasbourg. This was an act of great magnanimity, since, after Rohan had fallen under Cagliostro’s spell, Georgel had been excluded from his inner circle. He had grown so disillusioned with the cardinal’s ‘tone of
imperious harshness’ that he contemplated retirement (the only reason that he, too, had not been arrested was because his disfavour was widely known).

Georgel took up Rohan’s business with
renewed vigour. He visited the cardinal twice each day and slept for only three or four hours a night. He obtained copies of the depositions given by Boehmer, Bassenge and Sainte-James, which were supposedly for ministerial eyes only. In order to paint Jeanne as a hardened intriguer, he tried to discredit her claims of royal descent, grubbing about for stories from acquaintances who mocked her airs and graces, and discovering she had never received permission to call herself
‘de Valois’. Castries and Calonne provided, on the quiet, information about her contained in the royal archives. The most useful source was Frémin, the clerk of
the
parlement
, who transcribed all the interrogations conducted by Titon and Dupuis then
passed on copies to Georgel (this may explain why, months later, he was replaced as stenographer – though the dilatory pace of his handwriting might also have had something to do with it).

Most pressing was the need to cement the Boehmers’ goodwill. There was fear in Rohan’s camp that if a settlement were not reached with them, their testimony would prove harmful to the cardinal’s prospects. Rohan agreed that the necklace should be amortised, but finding the money amid ledgers reddened with debt was difficult. The jewellers refused to accept the annual revenue from the abbey of Saint Vaast, as the income would stop accruing to the Rohan family on his death. Generously, however, the king agreed to reserve the money for the Boehmers, even if Rohan died before the full amount had been repaid. Economies made up the shortfall: all but twelve of the cardinal’s horses were sold off and arrangements were eventually reached with all creditors.

Not long after
parlement
accepted the case, Georgel was approached by an
abbé
called Joincaire who revealed that a crucial witness was lying low but prepared to talk – Père Nicolas Loth, Jeanne’s confessor and factotum.
Loth was secretary to the head of the Minim friary that backed onto Jeanne’s house on the rue Neuve-Saint-Gilles. He styled himself grandly – and utterly unjustifiably, as was the habit of many of Jeanne’s acquaintances – as
procureur-général
of the Provinces, though the only procuring he excelled in was of prostitutes for Nicolas. Loth was eager to leave holy orders and had once been picked up by the police at a ball for dressing in mufti. Jealous of Jeanne’s closeness to Villette – his ear cleaved to the doors the pair locked behind them – he bustled about on Jeanne’s behalf with pitiable and ingratiating efficiency. When the La Mottes abandoned Paris, they granted Loth power of attorney over their affairs.

Loth had told Joincaire that his conscience would not let him sleep at night (what actually kept him awake was fear of arrest). One evening, Loth arrived in disguise at Joincaire’s house to meet Georgel and told him much – if not everything – of what he knew: the gifts from the Boehmers for finding a buyer for their necklace; the hillocks of diamonds, supposedly given by Marie Antoinette; the frantic preparations for departure in early August.

For the first time, Georgel discovered the identities of two people whose evidence would, if obtained, prove vital. Loth recalled Jeanne basting with compliments a young girl known as d’Oliva for her performance as the queen; and he revealed Villette as a co-conspirator of the La Mottes. Loth brought with him examples of Villette’s correspondence and Georgel immediately noticed the similarities to the handwriting in letters that Rohan had received from Marie Antoinette.

Georgel suspected that Loth was holding something back, and asked Target to question him. Target warned that only complete cooperation would save the friar from the Bastille; Loth’s reticence sprung open and the full story fluttered out. Jeanne had dictated to Villette the letters she sent to Rohan in Marie Antoinette’s name; the money requested from Rohan by the queen streamed through the La Mottes’ fingers; Nicolas had sold the diamonds from the necklace in London; both he and Villette had fled abroad. The only reason he had acquiesced to this criminality, Loth pleaded, was his bewitchment by Jeanne.

Rohan was especially heartened by one revelation in particular: Jeanne had burned all her correspondence. He no longer needed to fear that his unclerical intentions towards the queen would be unearthed. Target knew that Loth’s testimony needed to be heard by the
rapporteurs
, but they had complete discretion over whom to interview. Joly de Fleury, aware that any evidence implicating Jeanne would necessarily exonerate Rohan, attempted to block the deposing of Loth, only acquiescing after the personal intervention of Miromesnil. The keeper of the seals was not the only minister to provide material to support Rohan’s operations. Vergennes circulated Nicolas’s description to French embassies around Europe:

He looks between twenty-eight and thirty years old; he is about 5’5”; he has well-proportioned legs, a spindly body, and slightly low-slung shoulders. He has a long face, an aquiline nose and a little pock mark on the tip of his nose. He is pale like a leper; his eyebrows and eyes are nearly black. The hair up to the beard is brown and his lower lip is a little thick. Taken in all, he does not cut
an unattractive figure.