It is impossible to doubt that the resolution which was adopted was the only one consistent with either propriety or common sense. However plausible may be the arguments which in this or that case may be adduced for concealment, the common instinct of mankind, which rarely errs in such matters, always conceives a suspicion that it is dictated by secret and discreditable motives; and that he who screens manifest guilt from exposure and punishment makes himself an accomplice in the wrong-doing, if he was not so before. But, though Louis judged rightly for his own and his queen's character in bringing those who were guilty of forgery and robbery to a public trial, the result inflicted an irremediable wound on one great institution, furnishing an additional proof how incurably rotten the whole system of the Government must have been, when corruption without shame or disguise was allowed to sway the highest judicial tribunal in the country.
The Parliament of Paris, constantly endeavoring throughout its whole history to encroach upon the royal prerogative, had always founded its pretensions on its purity and disinterestedness. Since its re-establishment at the beginning of the present reign, it had advanced its claim to the possession of those virtues more loudly than ever; yet now, in the very first case which came before it in which a noble of the highest rank was concerned, it was made apparent not only that it was wholly destitute of every quality which ought to belong to a judicial bench, of a regard for truth and justice, and even of a knowledge of the law; but that no one gave it credit for them, and that every one regarded the decision to be given as one which would depend, not on the merits of the case, but on the interest which the culprits might be able to make with the judges.[8]
The trial took place in May of the following year. We need not enter into its details; the denials, the admissions, the mutual recriminations of the persons accused. In the fate of the La Mothes and Mademoiselle Oliva no one professed to be concerned; but the friends of the cardinal were numerous, rich, and powerful; and for months had been and still were indefatigable in his cause. Some days before the trial, the attorney- general had become aware that nearly the whole of the Parliament had been gained by them; he even furnished the queen with a list of the names of those judges who had promised their verdict beforehand, and of the means by which they had been won over. And on the decisive morning the cardinal and his friends made a theatrical display which was evidently intended to overawe those members of the Parliament who were yet unconvinced, and to enlist the sympathies of the public in general. He himself appeared at the bar in a long violet cloak, the mourning robe of cardinals; and all the passages leading to the hall of justice were lined by his partisans, also in deep mourning; and they were not solely his own relations, the nobles of the different branches of his family, the Soubises, the Rohans, the Guimenees; but though, as princes of the blood, the Condes were nearly allied to the king and queen, they also were not ashamed to swell the company assembled, and to solicit the judges as they passed into the court to disregard alike justice and their own oaths, and to acquit the cardinal, whatever the evidence might be which had been, or was to be, produced against him. They were only asking what they had already assured themselves of obtaining. The queen's signature was indeed declared to be a forgery, and the La Mothes, Mademoiselle Oliva, and a man named Retaux de Villette, who had been the actual writer of the forged letters, were convicted and sentenced to the punishment which the counsel for the crown had demanded. But the cardinal was acquitted, as well as a notorious juggler and impostor of the day, called Cagliostro, who had apparently been so entirely unconnected with the transaction that it is not easy to see how he became included in the prosecution; and permission was given to the cardinal to make his acquittal public in any manner and to any extent which he might desire.[9]
The subsequent history of the La Mothes was singular and characteristic. The countess, who had been sentenced to be flogged, branded, and imprisoned for life, after a time contrived, it is believed by the aid of some of the Rohan family, to escape from prison. She fled to London, where for some time she and her husband lived on the proceeds of the necklace, which they had broken up and sold piecemeal to jewelers in London and other cities; but they were soon reduced to great distress. After the Revolution had broken out in Paris, they tried to make money by publishing libels on the queen, in which they are believed to have obtained the aid of some who in former times had been under great personal obligations to Marie Antoinette. But the scheme failed: they were overwhelmed with debt; writs were issued against them, and in trying to escape from the sheriff's officers, the countess fell from a window at the top of a house, and received injuries which proved fatal.
A most accomplished writer of the present day, who has devoted much care and ability to the examination of the case, has pronounced an opinion that the cardinal was innocent of dishonesty,[10] and limits his offense to that of insulting the queen by the mere suspicion that she could place her confidence in such an unworthy agent as Madame La Mothe, or that he himself could be allowed to recover her favor by such means as he had employed. But his absolute ignorance of the countess's schemes is not entirely consistent with the admitted fact that, when he was arrested, his first act was to send orders to his secretary to burn all the letters which he had received from her on the subject; and unquestionably neither Louis nor Marie Antoinette doubted his full complicity in the conspiracy. Louis at once deprived him of his office of grand almoner, and banished him from the court, declaring that "he knew too well the usages of the court to have believed that Madame La Mothe had really been admitted to the queen's presence and intrusted with such a commission.[11]" And Marie Antoinette gave open expression to her indignation at the acquittal "of an intriguer who had sought to ruin her, or to procure money for himself, by abusing her name and forging her signature," adding, with undeniable truth, that still more to be pitied than herself was a "nation which had for its supreme tribunal a body of men who consulted nothing but their passions; and of whom some were full of corruption, and others were inspired with a boldness which always vented itself in opposition to those who were clothed with lawful authority.[12]"
But her magnanimity and her sincere affection for the whole people were never more manifest than now even in her first moments of indignation. Even while writing to Madame de Polignac that she is "bathed in tears of grief and despair," and that she can "hope for nothing good when perverseness is so busy in seeking means to chill her very soul," she yet adds that "she shall triumph over her enemies by doing more good than ever, and that it will be easier for them to afflict her than to drive her to avenging herself on them.[13]" And she uses the same language to her sister Christine, even while expressing still more strongly her indignation at being "sacrificed to a perjured priest and a shameless intriguer." She demands her sister's "pity, as one who had never deserved such injurious treatment;[14] but who had only recollected that she was the daughter of Maria Teresa-to fulfill her mother's exhortations, always to show herself French to the very bottom of her heart;" but she concludes by repeating the declaration that "nothing shall tempt her to any conduct unworthy of herself, and that the only revenge that she will take shall he to redouble her acts of kindness."