How to Ruin a Queen: Marie Antoinette and the Diamond Necklace Affair (8 page)

The lustre of the Court dulled through the eighteenth century. During the regency of Louis XV, Versailles had been abandoned, and
even though the new king returned in 1722, the palace never gleamed as it had under the Sun King. Both Louis XV and Louis XVI were socially awkward and tongue-tied; neither had the personality nor the bearing to sustain a perpetual display of regal glory. The culture instituted by Louis XIV demanded that the king sacrifice his private life to live publicly as an incarnation of royalty. But Louis XV preferred to spend time with a handful of cronies or in the embraces of a low-bred mistress or procured dancing-girl; and Louis XVI was too slovenly to master the ceremonials. At his
coucher
– the ceremonial retiring to bed – he would grin like a gargoyle as he tried joshingly to avoid being divested of his shirt. Louis XIV’s successors renovated the
petits appartements
and
petits cabinets
to which they increasingly escaped from the dumbshow of court ritual; these were painted in pastels in contrast to the blare of gold and mirrors in the staterooms. To conservative courtiers, the tendency of the royal family to cultivate their privacy threatened the integrity of the absolutist state.
‘This inner disorganization of the Court’, wrote the Prince de Montbarey, ‘created an easiness in relations that soon led to familiarity and, confusing everything, destroyed the respect and veneration which Louis XIV . . . thought necessary to his own person.’

As monarchical belief in the formalities weakened, the national importance of Versailles dwindled. It ‘had become’, said the duc de Lévis, ‘nothing more than a little provincial town, to which one only went with reluctance and from which one fled
as soon as possible’. The road to Paris grew clotted with courtiers trundling to perform their duties at the palace before escaping home. One could be a ‘man of the Court’ – living in town, nipping down to Versailles to hunt with the king or dine with the queen – without being a courtier.

Versailles was in a constant state of excitement yet fundamentally static, like a weathervane on a squally day. The business of government was transacted; ambassadors came to negotiate treaties; everyone exhaled rumours as they breathed. Yet the symptoms of boredom could be identified everywhere – the days spent hunting; the fortunes lost in hand upon hand of lansquenet; the listless, exiguous balls. Many campaigned for entry into exclusive coteries, such as that of Marie Antoinette’s favourite, Madame de Polignac, only to find the
conversation bland and lukewarm. The baronne d’Oberkirch remarked that these gatherings were ‘actually like a mousse that vanishes and leaves nothing after, but the taste of which is very pleasant. Having tasted it once, the rest appears to fade
and is tasteless.’

Nonetheless, Versailles remained the most lucrative spigot of patronage in the country. The palace itself was permeable and anyone could drift around without being troubled, as long as they were smartly dressed – but the physical proximity only intensified the sense of estrangement that a newcomer might feel. Versailles had its own jargon – the smallest solecism would identify the speaker as an interloper. ‘
Sac
’ was pronounced ‘
sa
’, and ‘
tabac
’, ‘
taba
’. One asked for ‘wine from Champagne’, not ‘champagne’. One went to ‘Paris’ and not ‘the capital’, in one’s coach (‘
voiture
’) not one’s
horse and carriage (‘
equipage
’). The oldest families, whose genealogy had been unsullied by common blood since 1400, received the Honours of the Court, which entitled them to be presented to the king, to ride with him to hounds and to be invited to feasts and galas. For the majority, the only way to petition the king – apart from the very few who possessed an entrée to the king’s private suite – was to accost him politely as he wandered through the palace.

Otherwise the importunate jogged governmental ministers – who saw the king frequently and, with his signature, were allowed to spend unlimited amounts – to intercede on their behalf. This entailed firm calves and much patience. ‘A courtier aged eighty is a reborn Simon Stylites,’ wrote Louis-Sébastien Mercier, ‘in that he has spent a good forty-five of them on his feet in the antechamber of the king, of princes
and of ministers.’ Even after gaining admittance, one was likely to be received by a minister with a tightened smile and inconsequential pleasantries, who did not look up from his scribbling as he grunted non-committally. Everyone at Versailles was waiting – for a promotion, for an assignation, for an increased stipend or a favour for a relative. The La Mottes joined the queue.

Jeanne probably had a brief affair with the king’s rakish brother, the comte d’Artois. The language of her memoir – she caught the comte’s eye
‘in a particular manner’; he ‘honoured her with a distinction
she had not sought’ – seems to confirm suspicions. But the fling was too fleeting for Jeanne to extract any useful introductions
– or even sufficient booty to supply her for the foreseeable future. By the early summer of 1782, again running short of money, Jeanne wrote to Rohan and asked to meet with him. The delay of nearly a year between her introduction to the cardinal and her return to him for help indicates that even Jeanne – who could be as obtuse as anyone – had realised that the cardinal’s promises were vacuous. At least, perhaps, she could present herself as worthy of the alms that he was entrusted to distribute. Jeanne ordered Beugnot to lend her his horse and trap – ‘there are only two ways in this country of demanding charity’, she told him, ‘at the doors of the church
and in a carriage’.

The Hôtel de Rohan-Strasbourg stands on rue Vieille du Temple in the Marais, on the eastern side of a quadrangle of Rohan residences. The complex was a statement of the Rohan’s princely independence. One entered the main palace, the Hôtel Soubise, through a narrow archway in the stout, concave exterior wall that seemed to clasp visitors inwards. The gate widened onto a large cobbled courtyard – the biggest in Paris – surrounded by a horseshoe colonnade which led up to the neoclassical facade mounted with allegorical representatives of Might, Wisdom, Knowledge, Renown, Watchfulness, Glory and Magnificence. Within this enclave, the Rohan ruled supreme. The Hôtel de Rohan-Strasbourg, lent to the bishops of Strasbourg by their Soubise cousins, was narrower and more austere, though it had stables large enough to house a string of fifty-two horses. Its interior was plushly furnished: the bedsheets were of crimson damask; tapestries from the Gobelins factory and paintings by Boucher hung on the walls. The Cabinet des Singes, where piquet was played and tea sipped, had been painted with ludic freshness by Christophe Huet. The decoration combined two of the eighteenth century’s obsessions: the Orient and humanoid monkeys. Frolicsome Chinamen bounced on stilts and seesaws in pastoral contentment and smartly dressed simians walked tightropes blindfolded, performed tricks with dogs and twanged musical instruments. A small oratory was concealed behind a panel, giving a clear sense of the relative importance that the Rohan cardinals placed on private prayer.

Any anxiety Jeanne may have felt in approaching Rohan was well concealed. His secretary Georgel recalled that Jeanne did not possess
‘striking beauty’ – a consideration that held sway with the cardinal – ‘but she found herself adorned with all the graces of youth: her face was lively and attractive; she spoke with ease; an air of good faith in her stories placed persuasion on her lips’. This time, Rohan was moved by Jeanne’s account of her childhood ordeals and irked by the cursory attention which Louis XVI had given a Valois. For the first time in her campaign to insinuate herself at Court, Jeanne received some practical counsel. Obtain an interview with the queen, Rohan advised, though he frankly admitted that he could not fix one himself because she so detested him. He also suggested approaching the
contrôleur-général
(the finance minister), and promised to draw up a memorandum in her cause.

The cardinal kept his word, and rapped on doors on Jeanne’s behalf. But the French treasury had far greater worries than whether Jeanne had the money to quilt the walls of her apartment. There were four
contrôleurs-général
between 1781 and 1783: Jacques Necker, Jean-François Joly de Fleury (a decrepit, unpleasant man who, wits remarked, was neither delightful nor flourishing), Henri d’Ormesson and Charles Alexandre de Calonne.
*
The rapid turnover testifies to the unmanageable nature of the task each was presented with. The rickety state of the exchequer compelled officials to arrange the mirrors so the state finances, flabby with accrued debt and tax receipts mortgaged in advance, appeared more attractive to lenders. The American War of Independence, in which France had supported the rebels, had drastically unbalanced the country’s spending; nearly a third of all borrowing during this period had been spent on the navy. Necker deployed a combination of money raised through annuities, the pruning of venal offices, administrative reform and increased oversight of departmental spending to keep the state solvent. In February 1781 he published the
Compte Rendu du Roi
, which purported to show a budgetary surplus of 10 million livres, but was immediately attacked for prestidigitation (when Joly took office he discovered that the
state was actually 50 million livres in the red). Necker, Joly and d’Ormesson were all forced out because of the hostility to their attempts to centralise spending and revenue collection. Jeanne extracted nothing from successive ministers bar the money to redeem some pawned possessions – but she became soon a frequent guest at Rohan’s table.

Jeanne appealed to Rohan by reconciling contrary impulses: the cardinal, who regarded himself as enlightened, felt the imperative to embrace ecumenically men and women of intelligence and wit; but, like the rest of his family, he was a stickler for the claims of heredity. Jeanne’s verve and pluckiness – her will to establish herself – seemed animated by her Valois pulse. She was imperially confident, shared Rohan’s reverence for genealogy, yet was déclassée enough to rouse his magnanimity. Jeanne was more than a mere charity case.

And then there is sex. The exact parameters of the affair between Rohan and Jeanne will never be known, but it would be surprising if one did not occur. The cardinal was a confirmed womaniser; Jeanne had shown herself willing to fall into the beds of potential benefactors. Much of the positive evidence for their liaison, however, is of doubtful value. Jeanne told her friend the comte Dolomieu that she and Rohan were lovers, but Jeanne’s modus operandi relied on her claiming more intimate relations with persons of influence than actually existed. Rétaux de Villette, who will shortly enter this story, alleged in his memoir of the affair that, in the very first meeting, the cardinal ‘laid his hands on her, his eyes gleaming with lust; and Madame de la Motte, gazing at him tenderly, made him know that he could
dare all’. Villette, though, had an intermittent acquaintance with the truth. The most reliable testimony comes from the man unseated by Rohan – Jacques Beugnot.
*

With Rohan on her case, Jeanne no longer required Beugnot. ‘One cannot deal with a cardinal as
one does with a lawyer,’ she
told him, deprecating all his exertions on her behalf. But she could not resist showing him the letters she exchanged with the cardinal in which, remembered Beugnot, ‘an ardent ambition became mixed up with tender affection . . . they were all fire; the clash, or rather the movement of the two
passions was frightening’.

Beugnot does not say how long the conflagration lasted. Most likely it rapidly burnt itself out. During the trial it emerged that the baron de Planta, Rohan’s aide-de-camp, had spent eleven months trying to seduce Jeanne – he would surely not have risked his master’s displeasure had the cardinal himself
still taken an interest. Rohan, unlike the comte d’Artois, did not discard Jeanne once his sexual attraction had waned; he took pleasure in her company and provided financial support, though to what extent would later become a matter of fierce public controversy.
*

Whatever charity Rohan provided could not fund a sustainable mode of living. For the next six months, the La Mottes lived in a room on the rue de la Verrerie, prioritising the purchase of a cabriolet over settling their bills or even buying food. They left in October 1782, owing over 1,500 livres in unpaid rent, after Jeanne had hurled
their landlord’s wife
down the stairs. Nicolas and Jeanne then took a six-year lease on the top floor, coach house and stables of 10 rue Neuve-Saint-Gilles in the Marais, and in May 1783, once they were able to afford the furnishings, finally moved in. The apartment was literally down the road from the Hôtel de Rohan-Strasbourg.

During the seventeenth century the Marais had housed the ancient noble dynasties and ennobled magistrates and bureaucrats. By the end of the eighteenth century, many had migrated westwards to the new
faubourgs
and the district acquired a reputation as a redoubt of pious reaction, full of crotchety old-timers who referred to the
philosophes
as
‘people for burning’ and in high summer remained indoors to play cards. (This helps explain Rohan’s prolonged friendship with Jeanne – she may have been the most entertaining company around.) Abandoned mansions were dissected into tenements and workshops, as a sludge of petits bourgeois seeped up through the
quartier
from the riverbank.

The La Mottes’ financial situation had in no way ameliorated – the need to maintain a foothold in both the capital and at Court consumed every penny. They regularly travelled to the palace: Nicolas for his regimental duties and Jeanne to wait and grovel, wait and grovel. But to be treated seriously one needed servants, even if one’s wardrobe was spartan and there was no bread for the table.
Jeanne regularly pawned her best clothes. At the end of each week, she and her maid would wash by hand her two muslin skirts and two linen dresses. Nicolas, a threadbare dandy, remained in bed for days on end because he had nothing suitable to wear. The cook ordered food on credit – when it ran out, everyone went hungry. They borrowed silver tableware and pretended it was their own. When their goods were threatened with seizure, they stashed their furniture with neighbours and placed mirrors and curtains in pawn. The bailiffs arrived to naked rooms and blank faces, but the belongings still needed to be redeemed. On one occasion Jeanne wrote to her adopted sister, the baronne de Crussol, that ‘the greater part of my things are at the Mont de Piété [the pawnbrokers] . . . if by Thursday I do not find six hundred livres, I shall be reduced to
sleeping on straw’.