For the Queen the dreary month was ending—there was no trouble upon her horizon. She had written again to Sweden; she asked for, and obtained, the reversion of the See of Albi for a friend of the King of Sweden’s. There was no other news.
History does not show perhaps one situation more wonderfully unlike the common half-happenings, complexities and reactions of real life, nor one more wonderfully fulfilling the violent and exact, simple, and pre-arranged ironies of drama, than the contrast of that night: the Queen in the palace, ignorant of any ill save the old and dwindling tales against her, listless after a summer month of idleness and of restraint—and coming right up at her, down the Paris road, the woman who was to destroy her altogether.
The La Motte and her maid got in to Versailles very late. They took rooms at the Belle Image. Next day La Motte and Rétaux, the soldier, came, bringing the poor girl d’Oliva with them; and after a short walk in the town, during which she was left in the hotel with that “great Lady,” before whom she trembled, they told the d’Oliva that they had seen the Queen and that all was well. They waited till the morrow. On the evening of that morrow, the 24th of July, Madame de La Motte warned the d’Oliva that the time was come. She dressed her all in white, magnificently; she gave her a letter and a rose, and said: “To-night we go into the Park together, and there you will see for a moment a great Lord. Give him this letter and that rose, and say these words: ‘You know my meaning!’ You will have no more to do.” It was about eleven, a dark night and no moon, when the two women went together into the vast gardens of the palace.
As you stand in the centre of the great façade of Versailles and look westward down a mile of formal lawn and water, there lie to your left in the palace what were the Queen’s rooms, and to your left in the gardens a large grove called “the Queen’s Grove,” in which are the trees that can be seen nearest to her windows or to be reached most quickly from what were her private doors.
Near and within this grove, by an appointment which the La Motte had sworn him to observe, paced and repaced the Cardinal. The La Motte had told him he would see the Queen.
In an enormous cloak of dark mysterious blue that covered his purple to the heels, in a broad soft hat that flapped down and hid his face, this fool of magnitude paced the gardens of Versailles and waited for the delicious hour. Behind him as he paced followed respectfully a man of his—one Planta, a sort of insignificant noble. The hour came. The_La Motte found the Cardinal. She led him along a path among the high trees—and there for a moment, near a hornbeam hedge that grew there, he saw dimly a woman in white, showing tall and vague in the darkness. This figure held forward to him in some confusion a rose, and said very low, “You know my meaning!” Rohan seized the hem of the white dress and kissed it passionately, but before another word could pass a man came forward at speed and whispered as in an agony: “Madame! D’Artois is near—Madame!” The La Motte said “Quick!...” The thing in white slipped back into the shadow of a bush, the Cardinal was hurried away—but his life had reached its summit! He had heard dear words from the lips of the Queen!...
Marie Antoinette was asleep perhaps, or perhaps chatting, muffled, with Polignac’s wife, or perhaps, more likely, by her children’s nursery beds, watching their repose and questioning their nurse in the wing of the great palace hard by. A hundred yards away, in the darkness of the grove outside, that scene had passed which set the train of her destiny alight; and the explosion caused by it ruined all that creviced society of Versailles and cast it down, casting down with it the Queen.
There existed at that time necklace. Fantastic stories have been told of its value; of those sovereigns to whom it was offered, and who, with a sigh, had been compelled to refuse it. It may very likely have been offered to Marie Antoinette (with her old passion for jewels) some years before, in ’79, after the birth of her first child. It may be that the King would have given her the expensive thing—£64,000 was the price of it—it may be he had never seen it. At any rate, all the world knew that the unrivalled necklace existed, and had for some years existed as the property of two Court jewellers who worked in partnership, Boehmer and Bassange, and that they could not find a purchaser. The reader should remember this necklace, for though it will not be before him till six months after this July of ’84, yet, but for the scene in the “Queen’s Grove,” Rohan would never have handled it, and had Rohan never handled it, there would not have arisen that enormous scandal that came so opportune to new rumours and new angers, and in the end dragged down the Queen.
With August came Prince Henry of Prussia and all the bother of him. The Emperor was pressing the Dutch more and more. France was half inclined to prevent that pressure, in spite of the Austrian Alliance. France was determined, at any rate, to prevent Austria, allied or not, from strengthening herself upon the North and East. England, to keep the Scheldt shut, was more than half inclined to prevent that pressure, in spite of Holland’s attitude during the American War. Prussia stood by to gain—and part of Prussia’s chance was the opportunity of feeling and influencing Louis XVI.’s Cabinet.