The Story of the Diamond Necklace by Henry Vizetelly

1784.

In the preceding chapters we have measured the period between the year 1756, when Jeanne de Saint-Remi, now Countess de la Motte of her own creation, was born, and the close of the year 1783, when she had reached the age of twenty-seven years. We have witnessed the destitution of her early days, the dependence of her youth on the kind bounty of a noble benefactress, and the career of adventure and precarious means suddenly plunged into to avoid a life of religious seclusion. We have seen her making her escape from flagrant shame by an improvident marriage; have seen the opening of her conjugal life darkened by a new term of penury and privation, mitigated only by a system of constant appeals for charity. We have also seen that a long and patient probation in the same course had proved barren and abortive in the end, her condition being then precisely the same as it was in the beginning. We can readily conceive that her name and her pretensions had at length come to be regarded as little else than a by-word and a nuisance, and that the time was at hand when the former would have no other influence beyond provoking indignation and contempt.

The family resources proved so far insufficient, that early in the year 1784 household goods and wearing apparel were alike in pawn at the Mont de Piété, which is hardly to be wondered at, as the winter was one of unprecedented severity. Heavy and constant falls of snow rendered any kind of traffic through the streets of Paris impracticable. The Seine, too, was frozen over, so that the transport of provisions and firewood to the capital was entirely stopped.[61] The times were of the hardest: the winter extended far into the year, and in the month of April the countess solicited and obtained permission to alienate her own and her brother's pension-the sister, we presume, was obstinate, and would not dispose of hers, hence her being sent adrift to shift for herself, and becoming an inmate of the Abbey of Jarcy-to a goldsmith and money-lender, named Grenier, for the sum of nine thousand livres.[62] This amount, however, was insufficient to liquidate the whole of their debts, and at midsummer the countess was forced to borrow three hundred livres from Father Loth to pay her quarter's rent.[63] The two pensions utterly gone, beggary and open vagrancy loom in the distance, for the cardinal's gifts, however handsome they may have been at this period, go but a small way now that ever-increasing debt is supplemented by habitual extravagance. In a few months more the wretched adventurers will be forced to quit their "spacious _appartement_" in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Gilles, and go forth into the streets and highways, and in the name of Valois again implore charity of the passing stranger. What remedy-what desperate remedy could be devised to prevent this?

The countess's interview with the Countess de Provence, after the fainting scene, had made some little noise, and reports were spread to the effect that Madame Elisabeth, the king's sister, had since received her on several occasions, and had promised to support her claim for the recovery of the Valois estates, and to recommend her case again to the queen. We have no means of judging whether these reports were true, but as Madame Campan admits Madame Elisabeth to have been the countess's "protectress," there was in all probability some real foundation for them. Shortly afterwards, however, other reports, which were undoubted fabrications, got into circulation. The purport of these was, that Madame de la Motte had been honoured by the notice of Marie-Antoinette, that she was received privately at the Petit Trianon, and was rising rapidly in the royal favour. To give an air of probability to this assertion, the countess, who had contrived to scrape acquaintance with the gatekeeper of the Trianon, managed to be seen occasionally stealing out from thence, as though returning from one of these pretended interviews with royalty.

No sooner did it get bruited abroad that the Countess de la Motte had credit at court than she was applied to by that busy and motley group of suitors-some of them in search of places and appointments, others in quest of patronage for new inventions, or on the look-out for opportunities to submit new schemes of taxation and finance, and others again seeking redress of real or fancied grievances-who gather together in the vicinage of royalty. The daring woman saw her chance, and entering boldly on a career of imposture, began to traffic on a credit that had no foundation, and to sell an influence which she could not exercise. This new vocation bid fair to prove a much readier source of emolument than her state petitions for relief. People came to her of their own accord, waited in _her_ antechamber for an interview, conjured and supplicated _her_ to lend them her protection, and in the meantime to permit them to show their gratitude by anticipation, and in a substantial form.