CHAPTER X
THE NOTABLES
August 15, 1785, to August 8, 1788
FOR the Queen the decision to send the Cardinal to trial was a final action. The thing was done—and, for that matter, nearly done with.
When she could find time in an interval of her occupations to write to her brother Joseph—it was not till a fortnight later—the whole letter, though it dealt in detail with the affair as one deserving a full explanation, was written upon a tone of relief. It was tuned all of it to one key-phrase: “I am delighted to think that we shall never hear of this filthy business again.”
Hardly was that decisive act accomplished than there suddenly appeared upon twenty points of the horizon, not only in frontal advance but upon either flank and in either rear of the perilous position she occupied, as many separate forces unconnected or but vaguely in touch with one another; some directly antagonistic to others, but all having it in common that the Queen was their objective, and that the trial of the Cardinal had been their signal for mobilisation and the march.
It is in the character of unwisdom to analyse and to proceed upon the results of analysis: in the character of wisdom to integrate the whole. The analysis of the situation just before the Cardinal’s arrest showed clearly one great factor of opposition—the Rohan clan. They were everywhere in France contemporary and in France historical; they filled Marie Antoinette’s generation and a hundred years. The sisters, cousins, brothers-in-law were ubiquitous. Paris was conspicuous with their palaces, the Court with their functions, the provinces with their loyal dependants or necessary adherents. They were the nucleus of the strongest group that remained to the wealthy nobility. The Guémenées, the Soubises, even the Condés, were one with all the Rohans. A Rohan put to open trial would have in that day the effect which a chief of our modern financial gang put to open trial might have to-day. Imagine one of our judges forced to try a Rothschild!
The Queen saw clearly—it is always easy to see one simple thing clearly—that one Rohan force opposed to her; she determined to brave it; but latent, unconscious of themselves until her own action called them into being, how many other forces were there not!
There was no member of the higher nobility but to a greater or less degree felt vaguely a right to immunity from such publicity—and this man was of the highest of the nobility, a type. There was no member of the clergy but could formulate a clear historical and legal right to the exemption of a cleric from the judgment of a lay tribunal—and this man was of the highest of the clergy.
Had he been Archbishop of Toulouse or Sens, or any wholly Gallic see even, his case would have been simpler; he was Bishop of Strasburg and his metropolitan was of Mainz: the Archbishop of Mainz was a conceivable opponent.
He was a prince of the Church: Rome had a right to speak—and almost did.