The Queen`s Confession (42 page)

He would not give his attention to all sufferers, however, and he reserved the right to treat those whom he favoured.

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.” Cag liostro 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 roman tic one;

superstitious in the extreme, he was very much attracted by the occult. Moreover he delighted in splendour;

be admired fine clothes, and above all magnificent jewellery;

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 Saveme, 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 fro tn 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 splendour with his Comtesse in the palace of Saveme 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 favour 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 calked with me instead of the magician I could have told him that never . never never should I have looked at him with favour 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 rime 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.

Jeanne would soon have discovered the Cardinal’s obsession with me.

Then the Comtesse saw a way of improving her status with the Cardinal;

it may have been then that it all began.

She had become friendly with a comrade of her husband’s, Retaux de Ville’tte, a handsome man of about thirty, with blue eyes and a fresh complexion although his hair was already beginning to turn grey. He was an adept at writing verses, imitating well-known actors and actresses, and he could write in various styles, even delicately as a woman. This young man became the lover of the Comtesse—perhaps she was genuinely fond of him, or perhaps because the plot was already beginning to form in her mind and she wished to bind him to her.

Jeanne hinted to the Cardinal that I had shown some favour to her.

This did not seem impossible for my friendships were the source of a great deal of gossip and it was known that it was women with charming looks such as the Princesse de Lamballe and Gabrielle de Polignac who attracted me. Jeanne was extremely attractive; she was also a member of the House of Valois; it was not therefore an impossibility that I should have noticed her and favoured her. So far the story progressed reasonably enough.

Jeanne must have been overwhelmed with joy by her success, for the Cardinal showed clearly that he believed her and confided in her his great desire to be received by me.

It might be, she told him, that she could put in a word for him with the Queen. But Jeanne knew that vague promises would not satisfy him;

this was where Retaux de Villette could be useful; he could write in a light feminine hand, and if he signed his tetters with my name, why should not the Cardinal believe that they had been written by me? They were addressed to my dear friend Madame la Comtesse de la Motte-Valois and in them were many expressions of friendship.

How could he have believed that I had written such letters to this woman? Yet it seemed that he did. It has been suggested that Cagliostro was in the plot with the de la Mottes to delude the Cardinal, and that the sorcerer mesmerised him into accepting the letters as written by me. I should have said this was ridiculous but

for the fact that they had that absurd signature “Marie Antoinette de France.” 3i4 Surely if he had his wits about him the Cardinal must have realised they were false by that alone.

I have seen some of these letters which were said to have been written by me. I shudder to look at them; and even now, with most of the facts in mind, I am still mystified.

Jeanne had led the Cardinal to believe that if he could write a justification of his misdeeds over the past years I would be willing to consider it and perhaps forgive him.

Delightedly he immediately prepared a long apologia on which he spent days, rewriting and correcting, and when it was finished the Comtesse took it promising that she would deliver it to me at the earliest possible moment.

A few days later Retaux de Villette wrote a letter on gilt-edged paper with a little fleur-delis in the corner.

“I am delighted that I need no longer regard you as blameworthy. It is not yet possible to grant you the audience for which you ask, but I will let you know as soon as it is possible. In the meantime please be discreet.”

This letter, signed “Marie Antoinette de France,” produced the desired effect on the Cardinal. He was overcome with emotion; he was ready to lavish handsome gifts on the woman who could help him to such progress in his relationship with me. The fact that he did not question the veracity of this shows that he must have been the biggest fool in France. Yet he was not in truth that. Cagliostro had looked into the future for him and advised him to carry on with the project nearest his heart. How often have I asked myself what the magician’s re1e was in the mystery I Jeanne knew that she could keep the Cardinal believing I was writing to him, but whenever I was at a gathering in which he was present I refused to look his way. For a while this situation might be explained but it could not go on.

But Jeanne was never at a loss, and she devised a grandiose scheme with her husband—the self-styled Comte de la Motte-Valois—and her lover Retaux de Villette. They were short of money, but Jeanne saw a means of becoming very rich. The Cardinal was a man of tremendous resources;

he might suffer temporary embarrassments, but his assets were great. He would be the milch cow who should be milked with the gentlest, cleverest hands. They must plan carefully, though.

The Cardinal must be brought face to face with the Queen; the Queen must show her favour towards him. I can imagine those two men, whose wits were so much duller than here, demanding: “How?” And her cool reply:

“We must find someone to play the part of the Queen.”

How they must have gaped at her; but she was the brains behind the plot. Had it not worked out so far as she had told them it would? They should leave it to her. Now, what they needed was a young woman who looked sufficiently like me to be passed off as me. Everyone knew what I looked like. There were portraits of me in the galleries. They must find someone who had my colouring. They could teach her the rest.

She was a forceful woman; and both men were her slaves. It was the so-called Comte de la Motte who found Marie Nicole Lequay, later known as the Baroness d’Oliva. The girl was young, about six years younger than I; her hair was similar in colour to mine; she had blue eyes and an ample bosom. In fact she was known among her friends as the “Little Queen’; so her resemblance to myself had often ;

been noticed. She was a milliner, but followed another j occupation—though more amateur than professional—besides , that of making hats, and at this time had a protector, Jean;

Baptiste Toussaint. She was apparently a gentle creature, an orphan who had been placed with a guardian whose means of earning a living was to take in children to board and from whom she had run away after being badly treated. She had had many lovers—not necessarily lovers who paid her; she was an easy-going gentle girl who was generous with her favours.

The Comte de la Motte met her in the Palais Royale, where gay young people sauntered or sat in order to make each other’s acquaintance. He was immediately struck by her likeness to me and brought her to the house in Rue NeuveSaint-Gilles which was where the de la Mottes lived when in Paris.

Jeanne immediately saw the possibilities, and it was she who changed

the girl’s name to Baroness d’Oliva—a near 316 anagram of Valois. Soon she was telling the girl that the Queen would be grateful to her for ever if she would do one little thing for her.

The poor simple girl was so’ overwhelmed that she was easily persuaded. Jeanne must have summed her up as too stupid and innocent to do much more than make an appearance and perhaps, with careful coaching, say one sentence; but that would be enough, as long as Jeanne was present to conduct the operation and step in quickly if things should go wrong.

Jeanne de la Motte must be the most audacious woman in me world. Who else would have conceived such a plan? Others might have been as villainous, but who would have been so wildly adventurous? Perhaps it was because she was certain of her power to succeed that she did it.

She had everything ready for the girl. Her hair was carefully powdered and dressed high though not elaborately. She had copied that simple dress of mine in which Vigee Le Brim had painted me the long white gaulle which had been called a chemise, and which had caused such a stir when the picture had been exhibited in the salon a short while before. This was made in muslin. Over the dress was put a mantle of fine white wool, and on her head a very wide-brimmed hat to shade her face. With more than a slight resemblance to me, the girl might well, in the dusk, be mistaken for me.

Rosalie, Jeanne’s maid, a girl of about eighteen, black-eyed and saucy, who found living in the household of the Comtesse de la Motte an exciting adventure, helped her to dress, and during this process Jeanne taught her her words, which were: “You may hope that the past will be forgotten.” The poor girl had no idea what this meant. She had to concentrate on suppressing the accent of the Paris streets, on acquiring a faint foreign accent, on making a graceful gesture with her hands.

I can imagine the poor child, dominated by these people particularly Jeanne excited at playing the re1e of a Queen whom she had often been told she resembled, and at the same time being paid for it. Jeanne had hinted that not only would she be recompensed by herself and the 317

Comte, but that the Queen herself would no doubt wish to show her gratitude. Why should she ask what it was all about? She would not have been given an explanation, and if she had, she would not have been able to grasp it. No! Her part was to do as she was told, and she doubtless only hoped that she could play it to satisfaction. In the pocket of her muslin gown was a letter which she must take out and give to the man whom she would meet; she must also hand him a rose and not forget her words.

It was a dark night no moon, no stars ideal for the scene. Everything was quiet in the park the only sound that would be heard would be that of the water playing in the fountains. The Comtesse and her husband led the young girl in her muslin dress across the terrace and through the pines and firs, the elms, willows and cedars to the Grove of Venus.

A man arrived dressed in something which the girl would readily accept was the livery of one of the gentle men of my household.

“So you have come,” said the Comte; the man bowed low. This part was played by Retaux de Villene.

Oliva was told where to stand and wait while the Comte and Comtesse and Retaux disappeared among the trees. Poor girl! She must have found it rather eerie standing there alone in the grove at night. I wonder what her thoughts were at that moment.

But a man had appeared tall, slim, in a long cloak and a wide-brimmed hat turned down to hide his face. It was the Cardinal de Rohan.

Oliva held out the rose. She must have been astonished by the fervour with which he accepted it. I imagine him, kneeling kissing the hem of her muslin gown.

Then he lifted his eyes and she said what she had been told: “You may hope that the past is forgotten.”

He rose, approached, and a torrent of words burst from him. He was in ecstasy. He wanted to prove his devotion and so on. Poor little Oliva.

What could she understand of this? She was unaccustomed to such fluency. How relieved she must have been to find the Comtesse at her

side, taking 318 her arm, pulling her into the shadows!

“Come quickly, Madame. Here comes Madame and the Comtesse d’Artois.”

The Cardinal bowed low and hurried away. The Comtesse, still gripping Oliva, was full of triumph. Oliva had forgotten to hand over the letter, but the plan had succeeded even beyond her hopes.