This was the height of folly. For sixty years there had been war between the Court and the Parliament. In the truce which had taken place on the accession of Louis XVI, the members had resumed their deliberations more imbued than ever with the spirit of resistance; embittered by a long exile they regarded their recall as a victory. Thus to give the Parliament the power of determining the guilt or innocence of the Cardinal, which was in reality that of the Queen herself, was to take an acknowledged enemy for a judge.
When the news of the Cardinal’s arrest reached the Parliament, one of the most popular members—he afterwards perished on the guillotine like most of them—cried out, rubbing his hands, “Grand and joyful business! A Cardinal in a swindle! The Queen implicated in a forgery! Filth on the crook and on the sceptre! What a triumph for ideas of liberty! How important for the Parliament!”
In such circumstances it is not surprising that the trial of the Cardinal and his co-accusés should become, as Mirabeau wrote, “the most serious affair in the kingdom.”
The great family of Rohan left no stone unturned to save the honour of their name. To assist them—but inspired by quite other motives—they had all the enemies of the Queen and the Ministry, as well as the people who considered the Cardinal the victim of despotism. Women in particular were all for la Belle Eminence. It was the fashion to wear ribbons half red and half yellow, the former representing the Cardinal, the latter the straw on which he was supposed to lie in the Bastille. Cardinal sur la paille was the name of the ribbon, which was worn even in the palace of Versailles itself.
To save the honour of the throne the Government was obliged to descend into the arena and fight the forces arrayed against it. The attention of the civilized world was thus riveted on the trial, which lasted nine months. No detail was kept secret, accounts were published daily in which the slightest incident was recorded. France and Europe were inundated with libels and calumnies in which the reputations of all concerned were torn to shreds.
Throw enough mud and some of it is sure to stick. It took more than half a century to cleanse the honour of Marie Antoinette of all suspicion of connivance in the theft of the necklace.
The mistrust that mystery and magic always inspire made Cagliostro with his fantastic personality an easy target for calumny. After having been riddled with abuse till he was unrecognizable, prejudice, the foster-child of calumny, proceeded to lynch him, so to speak. For over one hundred years his character has dangled on the gibbet of infamy, upon which the sbirri of tradition have inscribed a curse on any one who shall attempt to cut him down.
His fate has been his fame. He is remembered in history, not so much for anything he did, as for what was done to him. The Diamond Necklace Affair, in which the old régime and the new met in their duel to the death, was Cagliostro’s damnation. In judging him to-day, it is absolutely essential to bear in mind the unparalleled lack of scruple with which the Government and its enemies contested this trial.
II
Implicated in her swindle by the Countess de Lamotte, to whose accusations his close intimacy with the Cardinal gave weight, Cagliostro was arrested at seven in the morning by Inspector Brugnière, accompanied by Commissary Chesnon and eight policemen.