Peter, at Versailles, Marly, and St. Cyr, as in Paris itself, visited everything which piqued his curiosity and enabled him to satisfy his passion for information. “This passion,” says Saint-Simon, “made him adopt all possible means for getting away from the importunate crowd which constantly surrounded him, and he frequently escaped the vigilance of the noblemen whom the king had attached to his person to accompany him wherever he went. The first carriage he found at hand—any hackney carriage was quite good enough for him—he got into it with no matter what member of his suite, and drove wherever he wanted to go. The king paid the first visit to his royal guest, who went down to receive him as he got out of his carriage, and then accompanied the young monarch, keeping on his left until they reached the apartment, when the two princes sat down side by side and quite on an equality. The Tsar, however, insisted on giving the place of honour to the king. The same ceremonial was followed in the visit which Peter afterwards returned. On this occasion the Tsar, after taking the young king beneath the arms, raised him to his own height, kissed him several times, flattered him and caressed him in the most tender and affectionate way. Those present were much surprised at the way the young prince received these attentions, without being in the least disconcerted and without showing any emotion.
“The Regent, having taken the Tsar to his grand box, and Peter, in the middle of the piece, having asked for some beer, the Duke of Orleans, standing up, presented to him a glass on a saucer. The Russian prince received it with a graceful gesture, drinking the contents and putting back the glass on the saucer, which the Duke of Orleans, always standing, held in his hand, afterwards offering the Tsar a napkin in the same manner.”
Louis XV. lived for a time at Versailles, and it was there that his Parc-aux-Cerfs—with the young girls dressed in virginal blue, whom, with strange inappropriateness and shocking irreverence, he had dedicated to Our Lady—was established. But he formed an aversion for the place after the attack made upon him by Damiens, who struck at him and slightly wounded him with a penknife in the marble court just as he was getting into his carriage.
The royal suburb which Louis XIV. had created, which the Paris-loving Regent disdained, and which Louis XV. feared as associated with an attempt on his life, was destined to become[{345}] the favourite residence of the homely, kindhearted Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, his charming wife; and Versailles has since been as closely associated with revolutions and with the disasters of France as formerly with the splendour and luxury of the monarchy at its supreme point of development. Versailles was the scene of the strange intrigues known collectively as “the affair of the necklace,” and it was at Versailles that the king and queen were openly threatened by the revolutionary mob.
THE GALLERY OF BATTLES, VERSAILLES.
(From a Photograph by X., Paris.)
The affair of the diamond necklace was turned to the disadvantage and grave injury of the queen by all her enemies, though it is certain that Marie Antoinette had nothing whatever to do with the matter. A certain Countess de Lamotte-Valois was the prime mover in the affair, and she acted throughout with an ingenuity which surprised the good faith of many. Born in a comparatively humble position, she became the wife of a dissipated and ruined count; when, determined to turn her newly acquired position to account, she went to Paris, where she succeeded in getting presented to Marie Antoinette and also to Cardinal de Rohan, the king’s grand almoner. She persuaded the cardinal, that to secure the eternal gratitude of the queen it was only necessary to obtain for her a necklace worth a million and a half francs which was in the possession of the court jewellers. De Rohan, moreover, was assured that the queen entertained for him the most tender affection, and, in order to carry conviction to the cardinal’s mind, a Mlle. d’Olivia, who much resembled Marie Antoinette, was induced to personate her at a midnight interview with His Eminence in the gardens of Versailles. Armed with the real signature of Cardinal de Rohan and a forged signature of the queen, the countess got possession of the necklace (February 2, 1786), which she forthwith carried to London and there sold it in fragments. Meanwhile, she pretended that she had delivered the necklace to Marie Antoinette, and she succeeded in concealing her robbery for several months by producing fictitious notes in handwriting imitated from that of Marie Antoinette. At last a direct application was made by the jewellers to the queen herself, which resulted in a public trial before the Parliament of Paris. The affair caused the greatest excitement throughout France. There was no evidence which really told against the queen, and all that could be urged against the cardinal was that his folly and fatuity had enabled the Countess de Lamotte to make him an easy dupe. De Rohan, then, was acquitted, while the countess was sentenced to be whipped, branded on the shoulder, and imprisoned for life. After two years confinement at the Salpêtrière, she escaped in June, 1787, and fled to London, where she published scandalous libels against the queen. In spite of her innocence, Marie Antoinette was suspected by the common people of having played the part attributed to her by the infamous Lamotte, and even when, five years later, she was being carried to the guillotine, sarcasms in reference to the affair of the necklace were hurled at the unfortunate woman by the mob.
That a queen should, in her wanton extravagance, have ordered a necklace worth some[{346}] £60,000, and afterwards have neglected to pay for it, and thrown the odium of the transaction upon other persons, seemed natural enough to the embittered populace, driven wild by oppression and hunger, and the feeling caused by the Countess de Lamotte’s shameful calumnies against Marie Antoinette (the Revolution having meanwhile begun) had doubtless much to do with the menacing attitude of the crowd, who soon afterwards threatened both king and queen in their palace at Versailles.