And at proper times sundry notes from the Queen are bestowed upon the enraptured noodle. These are written in imitation of the Queen’s handwriting, by that Villette de Rétaux who personated the Queen’s valet, and who was an expert at counterfeiting.
A last and sublime summit of impudent pretension is reached by a secret interview which the Queen, says the countess, desires to grant to her beloved servant the cardinal. This suggestion was rendered practicable by one of those mere coincidences which are found though rarely in history, and which are too improbable to put into a novel – the casual discovery of a young woman of loose character who looked much like the Queen. Whether her name was d’Essigny or Gay d’Oliva, is uncertain; she is usually called by the latter. She was hired and taught; and with immense precautions, this ostrich of a cardinal was one night introduced into the gardens of the Trianon, and shown a little nook among the thickets where a stately female in the similitude of the Queen received him with soft spoken words of kindly greeting, allowed him to kneel and kiss a fair and shapely hand, and showed no particular timidity of any kind. Yet the interview had scarcely more than begun before steps were heard. “Some one is coming,” exclaimed the lady, “it is Monsieur and Madame d’Artois – We must part. There” – she gave him a red rose – “You know what that means! Farewell!” And away they went – Mademoiselle d’Oliva to report to her employers, and the cardinal, in a seventh heaven of ineffable tomfoolery, to his hotel.
But the interview, and the lovely little notes that came sometimes, “fixed” the necklace business! And if further encouragement had been needed, Cagliostro gave it. For the cardinal now consulted him about the future of the affair, having indeed kept him fully informed about it for a long time, as he did of all matters of interest. So the quack set up his tabernacles of mummery in a parlor of the cardinal’s hotel, and conducted an Egyptian Invocation there all night long in solitude and pomp; and in the morning he decreed (in substance) “go ahead.” And the cardinal did so. Boehmer and Bassange were only too happy to bargain with the great and wealthy church and state dignitary. A memorandum of terms and time of payment was drawn up, and was submitted to the Queen. That is, swindling Jeanne carried it off, and brought it back, with an entry made by Villette de Rétaux in the margin, thus: “Bon, bon – Approuvé, Marie Antoinette de France.” That is, “Good, good – I approve. Marie Antoinette de France.” The payment was to be by instalments, at six months, and quarterly afterwards; the Queen to furnish the money to the cardinal, while he remained ostensibly holden to the jewellers, she thus keeping out of sight.
So the jewels were handed over to the cardinal de Rohan; he took them one evening in great state to the lodgings of the countess, where with all imaginable formality there came a knock at the door, and when it was open a tall valet entered who said solemnly “On the part of the Queen!” De Rohan knew it was the Queen’s confidential valet, for he saw with his own eyes that it was the same man who had escorted the countess from the side gate at the Trianon! And so it was; to wit, Villette de Rétaux, who, calmly receiving the fifteen hundred thousand franc treasure, marched but as solemnly as he had come in.
As that counterfeiting rascal goes out of the door, the diamond necklace itself disappears from our knowledge. The swindle was consummated, but there is no whisper of the disposition of the spoils. Villette, and Jeanne’s husband Lamotte, went to London and Amsterdam, and had some money there; but seemingly no more than the previous pillages upon the cardinal might have supplied; nor did the countess’ subsequent expenditures show that she had any of the proceeds.
But that is not the last of the rest of the parties to the affair, by any means. Between this scene and the time when the anxious Boehmer, having a little bill to meet, beset Madame Campan about his letter and the money the Queen was to pay him, there intervened six months. During that time countess Jeanne was smoothing as well as she could, with endless lies and contrivances, the troubles of the perplexed cardinal, who “couldn’t seem to see” that he was much better off in spite of his loyal performance of his part of the bargain.
But this application by Boehmer, and the enormous swindle which it was instantly evident had been perpetrated on somebody or other, of course waked up a commotion at once. The baron de Breteuil, a deadly enemy of de Rohan, got hold of it all, and in his overpowering eagerness to ruin his foe, quickly rendered the matter so public that it was out of the question to hush it up. It seems probable that Jeanne de Lamotte expected that the business would be kept quiet for the sake of the Queen, and that thus any very severe or public punishments would be avoided and perhaps no inquiries made. It is clear that this would have been the best plan, but de Breteuil’s officiousness prevented it, and there was nothing for it but legal measures. De Rohan was arrested and put in the Bastile, having barely been able to send a message in German to his hotel to a trusty secretary, who instantly destroyed all the papers relating to the affair. Jeanne was also imprisoned, and Miss Gay d’Oliva and Villette de Rétaux, being caught at Brussels and Amsterdam, were in like manner secured. As for Cagliostro, he was also imprisoned, some accounts saying that he ostentatiously gave himself up for trial.
This was a public trial before the Parliament of Paris, with much form.
The result was that the cardinal, appearing to be only fool, not knave, was acquitted. Gay d’Oliva appeared to have known nothing except that she was to play a part, and she had been told that the Queen wanted her to do so, so she was let go. Villette was banished for life. Lamotte, the countess’ husband, had escaped to England, and was condemned to the galleys in his absence, which didn’t hurt him much. Cagliostro was acquitted. But Jeanne was sentenced to be whipped, branded on the shoulder with the letter V for Voleuse (thief), and banished.
This sentence was executed in full, but with great difficulty; for the woman turned perfectly furious on the public scaffold, flew at the hangman like a tiger, bit pieces out of his hands, shrieked, cursed, rolled on the floor, kicked, squirmed and jumped, until they held her by brute force, tore down her dress, and the red hot iron going aside as she struggled, plunged full into her snowy white breast, planting there indelibly the horrible black V, while she yelled like a fiend under the torment of the smoking brand. She fled away to England, lived there some time in dissolute courses, and is said to have died in consequence of falling out of a window when drunk, or as another account states, of being flung out by the companions of her orgy, whom she had stung to fury by her frightful scolding. Before her death she put forth one or two memoirs, – false, scandalous things.
The unfortunate Queen never entirely escaped some shadow of disrepute from the necklace business. For to the very last, both on the trial and afterwards, Jeanne de Lamotte impudently stuck to it that at least the Queen had known about the trick played on the Cardinal at the Trianon, and had in fact been hidden close by and saw and laughed heartily at the whole interview. So sore and morbid was the condition of the public mind in France in those days, when symptoms of the coming Revolution were breaking out on every side, that this odious story found many and willing believers.
CHAPTER XLII
THE COUNT DE ST. GERMAIN, SAGE, PROPHET, AND MAGICIAN
Superior to Cagliostro, even in accomplishments, and second to him in notoriety only, was that human nondescript, the so-called Count de St. Germain, whom Fredrick the Great called, “a man no one has ever been able to make out.”
The Marquis de Crequy declares that St. Germain was an Alsatian Jew, Simon Wolff by name, and born at Strasburg about the close of the seventeenth or the beginning of the eighteenth century; others insist that he was a Spanish Jesuit named Aymar; and others again intimate that his true title was the Marquis de Betmar, and that he was a native of Portugal. The most plausible theory, however, makes him the natural son of an Italian princess, and fixes his birth at San Germano, in Savoy, about the year 1710; his ostensible father being one Rotondo, a tax-collector of that district.
This supposition is borne out by the fact that he spoke all his many languages with an Italian accent. It was about the year 1750 that he first began to be heard of in Europe as the Count St. Germain, and put forth the astounding pretensions that soon gave him celebrity over the whole continent. The celebrated Marquis de Belleisle made his acquaintance about that time in Germany, and brought him to Paris, where he was introduced to Madame de Pompadour, whose favor he very quickly gained. The influence of that famous beauty was just then paramount with Louis XV, and the Count was soon one of the most eminent men at court. He was remarkably handsome – as an old portrait at Friersdorf, in Saxony, in the rooms he once occupied, sufficiently indicated; and his musical accomplishments, added to the ineffable charm of his manners and conversation, and the miracles he performed, rendered him an irresistible attraction, especially to the ladies, who appear to have almost idolized him. Endowed with an enchanting voice, he could also play every instrument then in vogue, but especially excelled upon the violin, which he could handle in such a manner as to give it the effect of a small orchestra. Cotemporary writers declare that, in his more ordinary performances, a connoisseur could distinctly hear the separate tones of a full quartet when the count was extemporizing on his favorite Cremona. His little work, entitled “La Musique Raisonnée,” published in England, for private circulation only, bears testimony to his musical genius, and to the wondrous eccentricity, as well as beauty, of his conceptions. But it was in alectromancy, or divination by signs and circles; hydromancy, or divination by water; cleidomancy, or divination by the key, and dactylomancy, or divination by the fingers, that the count chiefly excelled, although he, at the same time, professed alchemy, astrology, and prophecy in the higher branches.
The fortunes of the Count St. Germain rose so rapidly in France, that in 1760 he was sent by Louis XV, to the Court of England, to assist in negotiations for a peace. M. de Choiseul, then Prime Minister of France, however, greatly feared and detested the Count; and secretly wrote to Pitt, begging the latter to have that personage arrested, as he was certainly a Russian spy. But St. Germain, through his attendant sprites, of course, received timely warning, and escaped to the Continent. In England, he was the inseparable friend of Prince Lobkowitz – a circumstance that gave some color to his alleged connection with the Russians. His sojourn there was equally distinguished by his devotion to the ladies, and his unwavering success at the gaming-table, where he won fabulous sums, which were afterward dispensed with imperial munificence. It was there, too, that he put forward his claims to the highest rank in Masonry; and, of course, added, thereby, immensely to the éclat of his position. He spoke English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Russian, Polish, the Scandinavian, and many of the Oriental tongues, with equal fluency; and pretended to have traveled over the whole earth, and even to have visited the most distant starry orbs frequently, in the course of a lifetime which, with continual transmigrations, he declared to have lasted for thousands of years. His birth, he said, had been in Chaldea, in the dawn of time; and that he was the sole inheritor of the lost sciences and mysteries of his own and the Egyptian race. He spoke of his personal intimacy with all the twelve Apostles – and even the august presence of the Savior; and one of his pretensions would have been most singularly amusing, had it not bordered upon profanity. This was no less an assertion than that he had upon several occasions remonstrated with the Apostle Peter upon the irritability of his temperament! In regard to later periods of history, he spoke with the careless ease of an every-day looker on; and told anecdotes that the researches of scholars afterwards fully verified. His predictions were, indeed, most startling; and the cotemporaneous evidence is very strong and explicit, that he did foretell the time, place, and manner of the death of Louis XV, several years before it occurred. His gift of memory was perfectly amazing. Having once read a journal of the day, he could repeat its contents accurately, from beginning to end; and to this endowment he united the faculty of writing with both hands, in characters like copperplate. Thus, he could indite a love-letter with his right while he composed a verse with his left hand, and, apparently, with the utmost facility – a splendid acquisition for the Treasury Department or a literary newspaper! He would, however, have been ineligible for any faithful Post Office, since he read the contents of sealed letters at a glance; and, by his clairvoyant powers, detected crime, or, in fact, the movements of men and the phenomena of nature, at any distance. Like all the great Magi, and Brothers of the Rosy Cross, of whom he claimed to be a shining light, he most excelled in medicine; and along with remedies for “every ill that flesh is heir to,” boasted his “Aqua Benedetta” as the genuine elixir of life, capable of restoring youth to age, beauty and strength to decay, and brilliant intellect to the exhausted brain; and, if properly applied, protracting human existence through countless centuries. As a proof of its virtues, he pointed to his own youthful appearance, and the testimony of old men who had seen him sixty or seventy years earlier, and who declared that time had made no impression on him. Strangely enough, the Margrave of Anspach, of whom I shall presently speak, purchased what purported to be the recipe of the “Aqua Benedetta,” from John Dyke, the English Consul at Leghorn, towards the close of the last century; and copies of it are still preserved with religious care and the utmost secrecy by certain noble families in Berlin and Vienna, where the preparation has been used (as they believe) with perfect success against a host of diseases.
Still another peculiarity of the Count would be highly advantageous to any of us, particularly at this period of high prices and culinary scarcity. He never ate nor drank; or, at least, he was never seen to do so! It is said that boarding house régime in these days is rapidly accustoming a considerable class of our fellow-citizens to a similar condition, but I can scarcely believe it.
Again, the Count would fall into cataleptic swoons, which continued often for hours, and even days; and, during these periods, he declared that he visited, in spirit, the most remote regions of the earth, and even the farthest stars, and would relate, with astonishing power, the scenes he there had witnessed!
He, of course, laid claim to the transmutation of baser metals into gold, and stated that, in 1755, while on a visit to India, to consult the erudition of the Hindoo Brahmins, he solved, by their assistance, the problem of the artificial crystallization of pure carbon – or, in other words, the production of diamonds! One thing is certain, viz.: that upon a visit to the French ambassador to the Hague, in 1780, he, in the presence of that functionary, induced him to believe and testify that he broke to pieces, with a hammer, a superb diamond, of his own manufacture, the exact counterpart of another, of similar origin, which he had just sold for 5,500 louis d’or.
His career and transformations on the Continent were multiform. In 1762, he was mixed up with the dynastic conspiracies and changes at St. Petersburg; and his importance there was indicated ten years later, by the reception given to him at Vienna by the Russian Count Orloff, who accosted him joyously as “caro padre” (dear father,) and gave him twenty thousand golden Venetian sequins.
From Petersburg he went to Berlin, where he at once attracted the attention of Frederick the Great, who questioned Voltaire about him; the latter replying, as it is said, that he was a man who knew all things, and would live to the end of the world – a fair statement, in brief, of the position assumed by more than one of our ward politicians!
In 1774, he took up his abode at Schwabach, in Germany, under the name of Count Tzarogy, which is a transposition of Ragotzy, a well-known noble name. The Margrave of Anspach met him at the house of his favorite Clairon, the actress, and became so fond of him, that he insisted upon his company to Italy. On his return, he went to Dresden, Leipzig, and Hamburg, and finally to Eckernfiorde, in Schleswig, where he took up his residence with the Landgrave Karl of Hesse; and at length, in 1783, tired, as he said, of life, and disdaining any longer immortality, he gave up the ghost.
It was during St. Germain’s residence in Schleswig that he was visited by the renowned Cagliostro, who openly acknowledged him as master, and learned many of his most precious secrets from him – among others, the faculty of discriminating the character by the handwriting, and of fascinating birds, animals, and reptiles.
To trace the wanderings of St. Germain is a difficult task, as he had innumerable aliases, and often totally disappeared for months together. In Venice, he was known as the Count de Bellamare; at Pisa, as the Chevalier de Schoening; at Milan, as the Chevalier Welldone; at Genoa, as the Count Soltikow, etc.
In all these journeys, his own personal tastes were quiet and simple, and he manifested more attachment for a pocket-copy of Guarini’s “Pastor Fido” – his only library – than for any other object in his possession.
On the whole, the Count de St. Germain was a man of magnificent attainments, but the use he made of his talents proved him to be also a most magnificent humbug.
CHAPTER XLIII
RIZA BEY, THE PERSIAN ENVOY TO LOUIS XIV
The most gorgeous, and with one sole exception the most glorious reign that France has known, so far as military success is concerned, was that of Louis XIV, the Grand Monarque. His was the age of lavish expenditure, of magnificent structures, grand festivals, superb dress and equipage, aristocratic arrogance, brilliant campaigns, and great victories. It was, moreover, particularly distinguished for the number and high character of the various special embassies sent to the court of France by foreign powers. Among these, Spain, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and Venice rivaled each other in extravagant display and pomp. The singular and really tangible imposture I am about to describe, practiced at such a period and on such a man as Louis of France, was indeed a bold and dashing affair.
“L’Etat c’est moi” – “I am the State,” was Louis’ celebrated and very significant motto; for in his own hands he had really concentrated all the powers of the realm, and woe to him who trifled with a majesty so real and so imperial!
However, notwithstanding all this imposing strength, this mighty domineering will, and this keen intelligence, a man was found bold enough to brave them all in the arena of pure humbug. It was toward the close of the year 1667, when Louis, in the plenitude of military success, returned from his campaign in Flanders, where his invincible troops had proven too much for the broad breeched but gallant Dutchmen. In the short space of three months he had added whole provinces, including some forty or fifty cities and towns, to his dominions; and his fame was ringing throughout Christendom. It had even penetrated to the farthest East; and the King of Siam sent a costly embassy from his remote kingdom, to offer his congratulations and fraternal greeting to the most eminent potentate of Europe.
Louis had already removed the pageantries of his royal household to his magnificent new palace of Versailles, on which the wealth of conquered kingdoms had been lavished, and there, in the Great Hall of Mirrors, received the homage of his own nobles and the ambassadors of foreign powers. The utmost splendor of which human life was susceptible seemed so common and familiar in those days, that the train was dazzling indeed that could excite any very particular attention. What would have seemed stupendous elsewhere was only in conformity with all the rest of the scene at Versailles. But, at length, there came something that made even the pampered courtiers of the new Babylon stare – a Persian embassy. Yes, a genuine, actual, living envoy from that wonderful Empire in the East, which in her time had ruled the whole Oriental world, and still retained almost fabulous wealth and splendor.
It was announced formally, one morning, to Louis, that His Most Serene Excellency, Riza Bey, with an interminable tail of titles, hangers-on and equipages, had reached the port of Marseilles, having journeyed by way of Trebizond and Constantinople, to lay before the great “King of the Franks” brotherly congratulations and gorgeous presents from his own illustrious master, the Shah of Persia. This was something entirely to the taste of the vain French ruler, whom unlimited good fortune had inflated beyond all reasonable proportions. He firmly believed that he was by far the greatest man who had ever lived; and had an embassy from the moon or the planet Jupiter been announced to him, would have deemed it not only natural enough, but absolutely due to his preëminence above all other human beings. Nevertheless, he was, secretly, immensely pleased with the Persian demonstration, and gave orders that no expense should be spared in giving the strangers a reception worthy of himself and France.
It would be needless for me to detail the events of the progress of Riza Bey from Marseilles to Paris, by way of Avignon and Lyons. It was certainly in keeping with the pretensions of the Ambassador. From town to town the progress was a continued ovation. Triumphal arches, bonfires, chimes of bells, and hurrahing crowds in their best bibs and tuckers, military parades and civic ceremonies, everywhere awaited the children of the farthest East, who were stared at, shouted at – and by some wretched cynics sneered and laughed at – to their hearts’ content. All modern glory very largely consists in being nearly stunned with every species of noise, choked with dust, and dragged about through the streets, until you are well nigh dead. Witness the Japanese Embassy and their visit to this country, where, in some cases, the poor creatures, after hours of unmitigated boring with all sorts of mummery, actually had their pigtails pulled by Young America in the rear, and – as at the windows of Willard’s Hotel in Washington – were stirred up with long canes, like the Polar Bear or the Learned Seal.
Still Riza Bey and his dozen or two of dusky companions did not, by any means, cut so splendid a figure as had been expected. They had with them some camels, antelopes, bulbuls, and monkeys – like any travelling caravan, and were dressed in the most outrageous and outlandish attire. They jabbered, too, a gibberish utterly incomprehensible to the crowd, and did everything that had never been seen or done before. All this, however, delighted the populace. Had they been similarly transmogrified, or played such queer pranks themselves, it would only have been food for mockery; but the foreign air and fame of the thing made it all wonderful, and, as the chief rogue in the plot had foreseen, blinded the popular eye and made his “embassy” a complete success.
At length, after some four weeks of slow progress, the “Persians” arrived at Paris, where they were received, as had been expected, with tremendous éclat. They entered by Barriére du Trône, so styled because it was there that Louis Quatorze himself had been received upon a temporary throne, set up, with splendid decorations and triumphal arches, in the open air, when he returned from his Flanders campaign. Riza Bey was upon this occasion a little more splendid than he had been on his way from the sea-coast, and really loomed up in startling style in his tall, black, rimless hat of wool, shaped precisely like an elongated flower-pot, and his silk robes dangling to his heels and covered with huge painted figures and bright metal decorations of every shape and size unknown, to European man-millinery. A circlet or collar, apparently of gold, set with precious stones (California diamonds!) surrounded his neck, and monstrous glittering rings covered all the fingers, and even the thumbs of both his hands. His train, consisting of sword, cup, and pipe bearers, doctors, chief cooks, and bottle-washers, cork extractors and chiropodists (literally so, for it seems that sharing the common lot of humanity, great men have corns even in Persia,) were similarly arrayed as to fashion, but less stupendously in jewelry.
Well, after the throng had scampered, crowded, and shouted themselves hoarse, and had straggled to their homes, sufficiently tired and pocket-picked, the Ambassador and his suite were lodged in sumptuous apartments in the old royal residence of the Tuileries, under the care and charge of King Louis’ own assistant Major-Domo and a guard of courtiers and regiments of Royal Swiss. Banqueting and music filled up the first evening; and upon the ensuing day His Majesty, who thus did his visitors especial honor, sent the Duc de Richelieu, the most polished courtier and diplomatist in France, to announce that he would graciously receive them on the third evening at Versailles.
Meanwhile the most extensive preparations were made for the grand audience thus accorded; and when the appointed occasion had arrived, the entire Gallery of Mirrors with all the adjacent spaces and corridors, were crowded with the beauty, the chivalry, the wit, taste, and intellect of France at that dazzling period. The gallery, which is three hundred and eighty feet in length by fifty in height, derives its name from the priceless mirrors which adorn its walls, reaching from floor to ceiling, opposite the long row of equally tall and richly mullioned windows that look into the great court and gardens. These windows, hung with the costliest silk curtains and adorned with superb historical statuary, give to the hall a light and aërial appearance indescribably enchanting; while the mirrors reflect in ten thousand variations the hall itself and its moving pageantry, rendering both apparently interminable. Huge marble vases filled with odorous exotics lined the stairways, and twelve thousand wax lights in gilded brackets, and chandeliers of the richest workmanship, shone upon three thousand titled heads.
Louis the Great himself never appeared to finer advantage. His truly royal countenance was lighted up with pride and satisfaction as the Envoy of the haughty Oriental king approached the splendid throne on which he sat, and as he descended a step to meet him and stood there in his magnificent robes of state, the Persian envoy bent the knee, and with uncovered head presented the credentials of his mission. Of the crowd that immediately surrounded the throne, it is something to say that the Grand Colbert, the famous Minister, and the Admiral Duquesne were by no means the most eminent, nor the lovely Duchess of Orleans and her companion, the bewitching Mademoiselle de Kerouaille, who afterward changed the policy of Charles II, of England, by no means the most beautiful personages in the galaxy.
A grand ball and supper concluded this night of splendor, and Riza Bey was fairly launched at the French court; every member of which, to please the King, tried to outvie his compeers in the assiduity of his attentions, and the value of the books, pictures, gems, equipages, arms, &c., which they heaped upon the illustrious Persian. The latter gentleman very quietly smoked his pipe and lounged on his divan before company, and diligently packed up the goods when he and his “jolly companions” were left alone. The presents of the Shah had not yet arrived, but were daily expected via Marseilles, and from time to time the olive-colored suite was diminished by the departure of one of the number with his chest on a special mission (so stated) to England, Austria, Portugal, Spain, and other European powers.
In the meantime, the Bey was feted in all directions, with every species of entertainment, and it was whispered that the fair ones of that dissolute court were, from the first, eager in the bestowal of their smiles. The King favored his Persian pet with numerous personal interviews, at which, in broken French, the Envoy unfolded the most imposing schemes of Oriental conquest and commerce that his master was cordially willing to share with his great brother of France. At one of these chatty tête-á-têtes, the munificent Riza Bey, upon whom the King had already conferred his own portrait set in diamonds, and other gifts worth several millions of francs, placed in the Royal hand several superb fragments of opal and turquoise said to have been found in a district of country bordering on the Caspian sea, which teemed with limitless treasures of the same kind, and which the Shah of Persia proposed to divide with France for the honor of her alliance. The king was enchanted; for these mere specimens, as they were deemed, must, if genuine, be worth in themselves a mint of money; and a province full of such – why, the thought was charming!
Thus the great King-fish was fairly hooked, and Riza Bey could take his time. The golden tide that flowed in to him did not slacken, and his own expenses were all provided for at the Tuileries. The only thing remaining to be done was a grand foray on the tradesmen of Paris, and this was splendidly executed. The most exquisite wares of all descriptions were gathered in, without mention of payment; and one by one the Persian phalanx distributed itself through Europe until only two or three were left with the Ambassador.