Jeanne ended by devising a means of keeping one of the female porters
away from her door. She dressed as a man, opened four doors in
succession, walked through a group of the nuns, or 'Sisters,' wandered
into many other courts, and at last joined herself to a crowd of
sight-seeing Parisians and left the prison in their company. She
crossed the Seine, and now walking, now hiring coaches, and using
various disguises, she reached Luxembourg. Here a Mrs. MacMahon met
her, bringing a note from M. de la Motte. This was on July 27. Mrs.
MacMahon and Jeanne started next day for Ostend, and arrived at Dover
after a passage of forty-two hours. Jeanne then repaired with Mr.
MacMahon to that lady's house in the Haymarket.
This tale is neither coherent nor credible. On the other hand, the
tradition of an English family avers that a Devonshire gentleman was
asked by an important personage in France to succour an unnamed lady
who was being smuggled over in a sailing boat to our south-west coast.
Another gentleman, not unknown to history, actually entertained this
French angel unawares, not even knowing her name, and Jeanne, when she
departed for London, left a miniature of herself which is still in
the possession of the English family. Which tale is true and who was
the unknown friend that suborned the versatile soldier, and sent in
not only gilt-edged paper and a suit of male attire, but money for
Jeanne's journey? Only the Liberals in France had an interest in
Jeanne's escape; she might exude more useful venom against the Queen
in books or pamphlets, and she did, while giving the world to
understand that the Queen had favoured her flight. The escape is the
real mystery of the affair of the Necklace; the rest we now
understand.
The death of Jeanne was strange. The sequel to her memoirs, in
English, avers that in 1791 a bailiff came to arrest her for a debt of
30_l._ She gave him a bottle of wine, slipped from the room, and
locked him in. But he managed to get out, and discovered the wretched
woman in a chamber in 'the two-pair back.' She threw up the window,
leaped out, struck against a tree, broke one knee, shattered one
thigh, knocked one eye out, yet was recovering, when, on August 21,
1791, she partook too freely of mulberries (to which she was very
partial), and died on Tuesday, August 23. This is confirmed by two
newspaper paragraphs, which I cite in full.
First, the _London Chronicle_ writes (from Saturday, August 27, to
Tuesday, August 30, 1791):
'The unfortunate Countess de la Motte, who died on Tuesday last in
consequence of a hurt from jumping out of a window, was the wife of
Count de la Motte, who killed young Grey, the jeweller, in a duel a
few days ago at Brussels.' (This duel is recorded in the _London
Chronicle_, August 20-23.)
Next, the _Public Advertiser_ remarks (Friday, August 26, 1791):
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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