Jeanne’s hearing was somewhat stormier. She sat on the sellette (the prisoner’s bench, or rather stool) day after day for months, directly facing each witness. If they attacked her defences in one place, she would plug the gap in the wink of an eye with some impromptu remark that introduced three or four random new points; above all, she made fine use of that perennial woman’s weapon, hysteria. This Rohan, who had called her to account, how much money did he have? She hurled it in his face that he had been her lover. To Baron Planta, who had brought separate charges against her, she replied that he was only saying what he did because he had attempted violence on her, and got the worst of it. Father Loth she accused of living a riotous life, especially for a monk, and of procuring women for La Motte. She gave lurid details of Nicole d’Oliva’s moral life. She screamed at Cagliostro that he called her his “lamb” and was always billing and cooing, raising his eyes to the heavens, pronouncing great sayings, calling on God to witness, and pouring out his Italian and so-called Arabic jargon. There was no stopping her. The moment she opened her mouth a filthy and obscene atmosphere poured out and clouded the entire hearing.
Jeanne’s methods of defence always bring to mind that fearful scene when a pack of dogs have driven a cat into a corner. Realising that it cannot run up the wall, it suddenly turns on its attackers, seems to become twice the size it was before, hisses and makes the terrifying sound of a time bomb about to explode. If we were to erect a statue symbolising courage, it would have to depict a cat in this situation.
Carlyle, however, questions Jeanne’s courage. “Had Dame de Lamotte a certain greatness of character; at least, a strength of transcendent daring, amounting to the bastard-heroic? Great, indubitably great, is her dramaturgic and histrionic talent; but as for the rest, one must answer, with reluctance, No. Mrs Facing-both-ways is a ‘spark of vehement life’, but the farthest in the world from a brave woman … Her grand quality is to be reckoned negative: the ‘untameableness’ as of a fly; the ‘wax-cloth dress’ from which so much ran down like water.”
The housefly image is apt. But is the housefly not brave? We are not saying that Jeanne’s hysterical courage has any moral worth — but that she showed courage, indeed great courage, we would not venture to question. Carlyle himself says of her elsewhere: “O worthy … to have been Pope Joan thyself, in the old days;” and surely it took a devilish amount of courage for anyone to become a female Pope?
Louis XVI offered Rohan the choice of being tried either by himself, under royal jurisdiction, or by the Parlement. In a letter, co-signed by members of his family, which made clear how much they identified with him, Rohan chose to go before the Parlement. The letter was finely calculated, and indeed somewhat defiant:
Sire,
I had hoped, given the opportunity of a proper hearing, to be able to provide sufficient evidence to persuade Your Highness that I have been the victim of an intrigue. In that situation I could wish for no other jury than your own sense of justice and goodness. But since your refusal of a direct meeting between us deprives me of that hope, I accept with the most respectful gratitude Your Highness’ permission to establish my innocence through legal process.
This in fact meant: ‘If you accept the fact that I am innocent, I should be willing to submit myself to your sentence; but if not, the Parlement must decide between us.’
Rohan well understood the nature of his choice. The Parlement was the King’s greatest enemy. By giving way to Marie-Antoinette’s womanish anger and insisting, in contrast to Rohan’s openness, on having him arrested in an atmosphere of great scandal, Louis had committed his first major blunder. And now he made another, a hundred times greater and this time quite irreparable — he allowed those hostile to him to adjudicate the matter, so that, if they chose, they could pass judgement both on it and on the King.
Our Nordic friend Count Haga would certainly not have done that. Referring to the necklace trial, the Swedish King wrote to his confidant, Count C F Scheffer, as follows:
“I should have advised him, had I been asked, not to give such great éclat to this affair, which does not really concern the Queen, but which, if it does come to trial, might require a lot of uncomfortable explaining. We monarchs, though just as likely to be tripped up as the rest of humanity, have the advantage that we are not held to account for mistakes involving small amounts of money, and are generally trusted. But once we attempt to excuse ourselves, then we appear to acknowledge the possibility of blame on that side, something that would never occur to the common people of their own accord.” He felt that the necklace affair would damage the universal respect for the institution of the monarchy, and he was right.
Apart from the incompetence he showed, should we really blame the King for allowing the matter to pass into other hands and submitting it to the Parlement? It is possible to assume that he did this under the Queen’s influence. It is very interesting what Napoleon said in connection with this to a confidant on St Helena, where he had plenty of time to reflect.
“The Queen was innocent, and in order to give maximum publicity to her innocence, she wanted the Parlement to pass judgement on the case. The result was that everyone considered her guilty, and that undermined trust in the Royal Court.”
As is well known, the Paris Parlement of the day was neither a legislative body nor a house of representatives but the highest court of law. It was the Parlement not just of Paris but also of several other large provincial cities. Its members were paid for their services, like all judicial officers in the kingdom. Thus they had for many centuries been drawn from the wealthy upper bourgeoisie. One of the most important developments in French society was that the power of the King became entrenched at a very early date, and in consequence the bourgeoisie did not evolve into an urban patriciate ambitious for self-government, as in Italy, Germany and Flanders. Instead, they served the King, and in that service made their way as lawyers and state officials.
The most high-ranking section of the upper bourgeoisie consisted of those who held the administration of justice in their hands. A great many of them had attained nobility, the collective term for them being the noblesse de robe—the robe here signifying the judge’s gown.
Some were extremely rich, with palaces in the cities and mansions in the countryside, and lived like the true nobility, who were distinguished from them by the term noblesse d’épée—nobility of the sword. Some even came to rival the blue-blood aristocrats in the matter of debt. Their incomes were generally very considerable. M d’Aligre, the leader of the Paris Parlement who presided over the necklace trial, was worth 700,000 livres a year. But while there were those who displayed all the vices of privilege, the greater part were extremely respectable, almost puritanically solemn and plain-living people, exhibiting the true bourgeois mentality: sobriety, integrity and unquestionable probity.
By the eighteenth century all the institutions of the monarchy were to some extent dated or obsolete, and everywhere riddled with corruption, the justice system not excluded. Those who wanted reforms naturally played that up. They complained that judges were often too young, inexperienced, ill-educated, and susceptible to undue influence. Legal costs were intolerably high, secretaries had to be paid vast sums to expedite the astonishingly slow procedures, as did the huissiers, to deliver sentences already pronounced. The criminal justice arrangements were outmoded, cruel and inhumane. France, like Italy, was coming under the influence of the teachings of Beccaria, who urged radical changes to the system. He also demanded reform of the prisons. In 1782 the horrific For l’Évêque prison, whose inmates had to stand in water during years of high rainfall, was closed and the Hôtel de la Force built, where every prisoner had his own bed, and — to contemporary eyes — the whole place appeared astonishingly clean and comfortable.