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 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 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 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.
And after that they had the foolish Cardinal in their web. He really believed that the Comtesse had arranged that meeting with me. How could he have been so foolish? Did he really think that I would come out into the park at night to meet a man? But then he had heard those scurrilous lampoons which had assigned to me a hundred lovers, and like so many people in France he believed them. Perhaps that was why he had this impossible dream of becoming one of them.
A friend of Jeaime’s, a young lawyer, happened to have called at the house at Rue NeuveSaint-Gilles and was there when the carriage arrived bringing the adventurers back from the Grove of Venus; he wrote an account of what he saw, which I have since seen: