She was then urged to give up the names of the four parliamentarians, but she protested that she had not yet been able to prevail on Cabert to confide them to her, that she was compelled to use the utmost circumspection in her attempts at discovering the facts already disclosed, but flattered herself she should yet succeed in gaining a full and unreserved disclosure. M. de Maupeou encouraged her, by every possible argument, to neglect no means of arriving at so important a discovery.
The examination over, and the 100,000 francs she had demanded given to her, she retired, but followed at a distance by a number of spies, who were commissioned to watch her slightest movement.
Cabert, the Swiss, was arrested in a furnished lodging he occupied in rue Saint Roch, and sent without delay to Versailles, where, as before, M. d'Aiguillon with his two colleagues waited in my study to receive and question the prisoner. Cabert was a young and handsome man, whose countenance bore evident marks of a dissolute and profligate life. He confessed, without any difficulty, that his only means of gaining a livelihood were derived from the generosity of a female friend, but when he was pressed upon the subject of the conspiracy, he no longer replied with the same candour, but merely answered in short and impatient negatives the many questions put to him, accompanied with fervent protestations of innocence; adding, that implacable enemies had fabricated the whole story, only that they might have an opportunity of wreaking their vengeance, by implicating him in it.
"Accuse not your enemies," cried I, for the first time mingling in the conversation, "but rather blame your benefactress; it is madame Lorimer who has denounced you, and far from intending to harm you by so doing, she purposes dividing with you the 100,000livres which are to reward her disclosures."I easily found, by the frowning looks directed towards me by the three gentlemen present, that I had been guilty of great imprudence in saying so much; but Cabert, wringing his hands, uttered, with the most despairing accent,"I am lost! and most horribly has the unfortunate woman avenged herself.""What would you insinuate?"
"That I am the victim of an enraged woman," replied he.
He afterwards explained, that he had been the lover of madame Lorimer, but had become wearied of her, and left her in consequence;that she had violently resented this conduct; and, after having in vain sought to move him by prayers and supplications, had tried the most horrible threats and menaces. "I ought not indeed,"continued he, "to have despised these threats, for well I knew the fiendlike malice of the wretched creature, and dearly do Ipay for my imprudence, by falling into the pit she has dug for me."In vain we endeavoured to induce him to hold a different language.
He persisted with determined obstinacy in his first statement;continually protesting his own innocence, and loading the author of his woes with bitter imprecations. It was deemed impossible to allow this man to go at large; accordingly M. de la Vrilliere issued a <lettre de cachet>, which sent him that night to seek a lodging in the Bastille. It was afterwards deemed advisable to put him to the torture, but the agonies of the rack wrung from him no deviation from, or contradiction of, what he had previously alleged.
The affair had now become mysterious and inexplicable. However, a speedy termination was most imperatively called for; if it were permitted to become generally known, it could not fail of reaching the ears of the king, whose health was daily declining;and M. de Quesnay had assured us, that in his present languid state, the shock produced by news so alarming, might cause his instantaneous death.
Whilst we remained in uncertainty as to our mode of proceeding in the business, Cabert, the Swiss, three days after his admission into the Bastille, expired in the most violent convulsions. His body was opened, but no trace of poison could be discovered: our suspicions were however awakened, and what followed confirmed them.
Madame Lorimer was arrested. She protested that she had been actuated by no feelings of enmity against her unfortunate lover, whom she had certainly reproached for having expended the money she furnished him with in the society of other females, and to the anger which arose between herself and Cabert on the occasion could she alone ascribe his infamous calumnies respecting her;that, for her own part, she had never ceased to love him, and, as far as she knew, that feeling was reciprocal; and, in betraying the conspiracy, her principal desire, next to the anxious hope of preserving the king, was to make the fortune of Cabert. She was confined in the Bastille, but she did not long remain within its walls; for at the end of a fortnight she died of an inflammatory disease. Her death was marked by no convulsions, but the traces of poison were evident.
These two violent deaths occurring so immediately one after another (as not the slightest doubt existed that Cabert had likewise died of poison) threw the ministers into a sad state of perplexity. But to whom could they impute the double crime unless to some accomplice, who dreaded what the unhappy prisoners might be tempted to reveal. Yet the conduct of the Jesuitical priests stated by madame Lorimer to be the principal ring-leaders in the plot, although exposed to the most rigorous scrutiny, offered not the slightest grounds for suspicion. Neither did their letters (which were all intercepted at the various post-houses)give any indication of a treasonable correspondence.