When she judged that the moment for action had arrived, Madame de Prie communicated with Dubois, who, armed with the reports she had sent him, went to the Regent, laid them before him, and told him very plainly that he could no longer support Le Blanc without being immediately compromised.
Philippe d’Orléans, after a perusal of the documents, was obliged to acknowledge that the Minister was right, and authorized him to take what steps he considered advisable in the matter. Dubois lost no time in setting the Law in motion; the commission met at the house of the Maréchal de Villars, who had been appointed president; and on 24 May La Jonchère was arrested as he was returning from Versailles, in virtue of a lettre de cachet signed by the Cardinal, and conducted to the Bastille, while the seals were placed on his hôtel in the Rue Saint-Honoré, and all his registers and papers seized by the police. At the Bastille, La Jonchère was subjected to two long interrogatories by Ravot d’Ombreval, a relative of Dubois, who acted as attorney-general to the commission. He appeared very agitated, contradicted himself several times, and ended by admitting that he had acted dishonestly, and that he was not the only one guilty, though he obstinately refused to give the names of his accomplices.
A few days later, two of La Jonchère’s principal clerks were also arrested, and on 18 June the treasurer was conducted to his house to be present at the raising of the seals and the sorting of his papers. This operation lasted from eleven o’clock in the morning until nine in the evening, when he was escorted back to the Bastille, guarded by forty archers and followed by two carts filled with his registers and papers. The examination of these, which was carried out under the supervision of the Lieutenant of Police, d’Argenson, revealed immense defalcations, and, moreover, left no room for doubt as to the culpability of Le Blanc. It also showed that La Jonchère had received a great number of the discredited notes of Law’s Bank, for which he had presumably given in exchange gold to the amount of their face value.
On 1 July, Le Blanc received orders from the King to send him his resignation of the office of Secretary of State for War, and to retire immediately to the Château of Doué, belonging to his son-in-law, the Marquis de Traisnel. A few days later, he was replaced by the Marquis de Breteuil,[263] a devoted adherent of Monsieur le Duc and Madame de Prie. On the 16th, the commission, which was now established at the Arsenal, summoned the two Belle-Isles to appear before it, together with the Marquis de Conches and the Comte de Mayières, two lieutenant-generals attached to Le Blanc, and several other persons. The Belle-Isles adopted a haughty tone, and protested their innocence with such indignation that the commission were visibly impressed. However, the discovery of a note concealed behind the grate in La Jonchère’s bedroom, in the Rue Saint-Honoré, in which the elder brother acknowledged the receipt of 1,800,000 livres from the treasurer, put a different complexion upon the matter.
The utmost consternation now reigned among the Orléans faction, and it seemed as though Madame de Prie had succeeded in reducing the enemies of herself and her lover to complete impotence, when the death of Dubois, which occurred on 10 August, 1723, intervened to save them, or, at any rate, to procure them a respite of some months.
With the disappearance from the political scene of the ambitious cardinal, whose will had so long dominated his own, Philippe d’Orléans resumed his liberty of action. On the very day on which Dubois died, he demanded and obtained from the King the post of Prime Minister, cleverly forestalling Monsieur le Duc, who, on the advice of his mistress, had decided to ask for it himself; and thus united in his own person the titles of heir-presumptive to the Crown and Prime Minister.
The question as to which of the two parties the prince would incline greatly agitated the public mind, and it was the opinion of most that he would favour that of his wife and son. It is very probable that he would have done so, had Monsieur le Duc been so maladroit as to display any mortification at his having stolen a march upon him, in which case the work of so many months might have been undone in a few hours. But Madame de Prie was far too astute to permit her lover to commit a blunder of this kind; and, prompted by her, the Duc de Bourbon hastened to repair to the Palais-Royal, to present his compliments to the new Prime Minister and to assure him of his devotion to his person.
Thanks to this prudent conduct, although they were not allowed to follow up their victory, they retained possession of the greater part of the field. Le Blanc remained in exile, and his successor, Breteuil, who, as we have mentioned, was devoted to their cause, was confirmed in his office: La Jonchère remained under lock and key; while the Belle-Isles and their creatures, though they remained at liberty, were kept under observation. Finally—and this, we may be sure, was not the least satisfaction to Madame de Prie—her mother found herself neglected and reduced to poverty.
Such was the position of affairs when, on 2 December, 1723, the Duc d’Orléans was suddenly attacked by apoplexy at Versailles, and expired almost immediately, in the arms of his latest inamorata, Madame de Phalaris. Of all the princes, Monsieur le Duc happened to be the only one on the spot, and he did not fail to profit by his good fortune. Following the procedure adopted by the deceased prince on the day of Dubois’s death, he hastened to the King, informed him of the loss which he had just sustained, and, almost in the same breath, demanded the vacant post of Prime Minister. His youthful Majesty, “without being moved by the news,” conferred it upon him; the prince, in accordance with custom, forthwith took the oath and received the patent; and when, a few hours later, the Duc de Chartres, who had received the news of his father’s death at the Opera in Paris, or, according to another account, in the boudoir of an Opera-girl whose society he affected, came galloping madly into Versailles, he found, to his profound disgust, the place to which he himself aspired already filled. Monsieur le Duc was the master of the realm, and Madame de Prie mistress of all that was his.