“‘Did you hear of my nephew being at court, to-day?’
“‘Indeed I did not hear the cardinal’s name pronounced during the whole day, although I did not leave until the latest hour of admission.’
“‘Mon Dieu!’ exclaimed the princess, in a tone of the deepest emotion, ‘then he has gone thither en secret avec cette intrigante!”
“‘These were her very words, and, just as she had pronounced them, the rattle of carriage-wheels was heard in the court-yard of the Hôtel Cardinal, and presently a great noise and bustle were heard upon the staircase, with loud laughter in a female voice, which seemed to give a sort of nervous spasm to the poor Princesse de Guéménée, for she opened and shut the huge fan which she carried, with a loud, impatient jerk, each time that the echo of that excited laughter reached the little salon where we were seated. At length, the door opened, and the cardinal entered, leading by the hand, or rather, as was the fashion of the time, by the tips of the fingers, a lady whom he introduced to the princess as the Comtesse de Valois de la Motte. The name excited my curiosity, for I had heard her story but a short time before from the lips of my mother, and had been much moved by her misfortunes. I looked at the lady with the greatest interest, and with a predetermination to discover traces of her royal descent in her person and demeanour. I was moreover wounded by the coldness of the manner of the princess towards her. I thought her conduct uncivil and inhospitable in the extreme. She never rose from her chair on the introduction taking place, but had preserved the same idol-like rigidity of posture, neither did she even condescend to return a smile in acknowledgment of all the sweet things with which the Comtesse de la Motte ceased not to overwhelm her from the first moment of her entrance—assuring her that she had been longing for this meeting for some time past—that there was no one in the world whose acquaintance she had so much desired to make as that of the Princesse de Guéménée—in short, all the common-place flatteries with which little people are in the habit of soothing and allaying the adverse tempers of the great.
“‘It is a singular fact (and I do assure you the notion has not been forced upon my imagination by subsequent events), but I was struck with the extreme vulgarity of the tone of her address to the princess, even in the few moments which preceded our summons to the supper-table; and I had already a certain misgiving about the character of the lady from this circumstance alone. But I reserved my definitive judgment of her until we were ushered into the supper-room, for the petit salon was lighted with lamps of alabaster, and the light, thus beautifully softened to the eye, was rendered too dim to enable one to distinguish the play of the features, the changes of expression, all the little tokens of character which are exhibited in the countenance when under the influence of any one predominant passion. I waited then, with patience, until we were comfortably seated at supper. By good fortune, my place was opposite to the comtesse, and I was thus enabled to contemplate her to my heart’s content. It was fortunate, too, that she scarcely deigned to notice my presence, so absorbed was she in her endeavours to win a smile from the princess. I was thus rendered a mere spectator of a scene, which time and the subsequent events that took place have rendered worthy of being registered among my own most interesting souvenirs.
“‘As to the cardinal, when once he had apologized to me for his late return to the hôtel, and excused himself upon the plea of having been detained at Versailles upon business connected with the affairs of Madame la Comtesse, he scarcely seemed to remember that I was in existence, so entirely engrossed was he with the efforts he was compelled to make, in order to excite the princess to conversation on the one hand, and to restrain the volubility of the Comtesse de la Motte on the other. The contrast between the two female guests of the cardinal was, indeed, striking, and one was led to wonder at seeing them together at the same table.
“‘You have already heard the description of Madame de Guéménée: now, Madame de la Motte was, in all points of outward appearance and manner, exactly the reverse of that mighty dame. She was a small, lively person, full of fire, and talking with a strong accent and active gesticulation. She was, without doubt, what, in the world, is called a pretty woman, for she had a fine complexion, with sparkling black eyes, and a superb range of ivory teeth, which she took every pains to display, by an incessant twist of her lips, which I remember to this day, as having produced the most unpleasant effect possible upon my nerves. She had a remarkable profusion of really fine chestnut hair, which was but half-powdered, and clustered in most bewitching ringlets round her face. Her age might have been about seven or eight-and-twenty—the very age most to be dreaded in woman; the mind, possessing all the experience of maturity—the person yet retaining all the bloom and charm of youth. Her attire was well chosen to set off her complexion, but it shocked my taste to witness the profusion of ornament and jewels with which she was adorned, even while speaking of herself as a pauvre solliciteuse, to whom a miserly government would only accord a beggarly pension of eight hundred livres. Her diamonds, indeed, rivalled both in beauty and profusion those of the Princesse de Guéménée herself, and her dress consisted of a robe of orange-coloured brocatelle, shot with black, and flowered with gold. Her hands and arms were hidden by long gloves of Spanish kid, and I could readily imagine that there was coquetry in this precaution, as the hardships in which her early years had been spent, must, of necessity, have left their traces there.
“‘I remember being struck with the reflection which forced itself upon me at the time, and being lost in admiration as I gazed upon the Comtesse de la Motte, at the extreme ease and facility with which she had acquired the jargon and petty graces of high society. Her manners certainly gave the lie direct to the old prejudice, that it requires many years of apprenticeship to become an adept in the fashionable art. Neither did she betray at first, by any one triviality or vulgarity of expression or pronunciation, that she had not all her life been accustomed to the society in which she then found herself. The only peculiarity which might have excited suspicion in very particular persons, was the hurry and agitation in which she seemed to exist—a perpetual restlessness—an over-desire to excite interest and to produce effect. Mind you, I am speaking of the first hour or so, while yet she was uncertain as to the opinion which the princess might have formed of her. But after this restraint had a little worn off, and she had grown a little less guarded in her conversation, I began to perceive many incongruities in her behaviour. The effect was most extraordinary—she appeared, at one and the same moment, two distinct characters; her very voice altered, sometimes before she had concluded her sentence.
“‘I must do the Princesse de Guéménée the justice to declare that, throughout the whole evening, her conduct was perfect. She listened in silence, but without any evidence of ill-humour or contempt, to all the agaceries and lively sallies with which the comtesse sought so earnestly to divert her. She even condescended, now and then, to applaud, but without favour, and from a distance, as she would have done from her box at the Opera to the successful efforts of the actress whose talent might for a moment have succeeded in charming her into this demonstration of approval. But it was when, at the solicitation of the cardinal, excited with the wine, of which she had partaken unsparingly, and elevated by the hope of winning the good graces of the company, Madame de la Motte launched forth into the eternal history of her “infortunes,” which had been her great moyen de succès with the numberless dupes she had made, that to me all delusion ceased at once. The imposture was easy to discover beneath the envelope of affected high breeding with which she had at first concealed her determination of charming the princess, and the aventurière stood revealed without disguise.
“‘I know that you will suspect my judgment of being influenced by the conclusion of her story; but I do assure you that even then I could not help wondering that his Eminence should have admitted to his intimacy a person like Madame de la Motte. It has since become matter of surprise to all the world, that the cardinal, credulous and simple as it had pleased Heaven to make him, could ever have been so beguiled as to give the slightest degree of credit to her representations; but as for me, after having passed that single evening in her company, I almost feel inclined to believe in witchcraft. There must have been some evil power at work, when the Cardinal de Rohan was delivered up to the possession (no other word can express this infatuation) of the Comtesse de Valois de la Motte!’