The woman De Lamotte’s father was a peasant at Auteuil, though he called himself Valois.  Madame de Boulainvilliers once saw from her terrace two pretty little peasant girls, each labouring under a heavy bundle of sticks.  The priest of the village, who was walking with her, told her that the children possessed some curious papers, and that he had no doubt they were descendants of a Valois, an illegitimate son of one of the princes of that name.

The family of Valois had long ceased to appear in the world.  Hereditary vices had gradually plunged them into the deepest misery.  I have heard that the last Valois then known occupied the estate called Gros Bois; that as he seldom came to Court, Louis xiii. asked him what he was about that he remained so constantly in the country; and that this M. de Valois merely answered, “Sire, I only do there what I ought.”  It was shortly afterwards discovered that he was coining.

Neither the Queen herself nor any one near her ever had the slightest connection with the woman De Lamotte; and during her prosecution she could point out but one of the Queen’s servants, named Desclos, a valet of the Queen’s bedchamber, to whom she pre tended she had delivered Boehmer’s necklace.  This Desclos was a very honest man; upon being confronted with the woman De Lamotte, it was proved that she had never seen him but once, which was at the house of the wife of a surgeon-accoucheur at Versailles, the only person she visited at Court; and that she had not given him the necklace.  Madame de Lamotte married a private in Monsieur’s body-guard; she lodged at Versailles at the Belle Image, a very inferior furnished house; and it is inconceivable how so obscure a person could succeed in making herself believed to be a friend of the Queen, who, though so extremely affable, seldom granted audiences, and only to titled persons.

The trial of the Cardinal is too generally known to require me to repeat its details here.  The point most embarrassing to him was the interview he had in February, 1785, with M. de Saint-James, to whom he confided the particulars of the Queen’s pretended commission, and showed the contract approved and signed Marie Antoinette de France.  The memorandum found in a drawer of the Cardinal’s bureau, in which he had himself written what Baehmer told him after having seen me at my country house, was likewise an unfortunate document for his Eminence.

I offered to the King to go and declare that Baehmer had told me that the Cardinal assured him he had received from the Queen’s own hand the thirty thousand francs given on account upon the bargain being concluded, and that his Eminence had seen her Majesty take that sum in bills from the porcelain secretaire in her boudoir.  The King declined my offer, and said to me, “Were you alone when Boehmer told you this?” I answered that I was alone with him in my garden.  “Well,” resumed he, “the man would deny the fact; he is now sure of being paid his sixteen hundred thousand francs, which the Cardinal’s family will find it necessary to make good to him; we can no longer rely upon his sincerity; it would look as if you were sent by the Queen, and that would not be proper.”