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 BELASCO THEATRE 
 
 BROADWAY AND FORTY-SEC OND STREET 1 
 
 UNDER THE SOLE MANAGEMENT or DAVID BELASCO 
 
 Evenings at 8 precisely Matinees Saturdays at 2 
 
 DAVID BELASCO 
 
 PRESENTS 
 
 Leslie Carter 
 
 IX HIS NEW PLAT 
 
 DU BARRY" 
 
 "Not the great historical events, but the personal incidents that call 
 up single, sharp pictures of some human being in its pang or strug- 
 gle, reach us more nearly." OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 
 CAST 
 
 Louis XV., King of France . . , . . C.A.STEVENSON 
 COMTE JEAN DU BARRY, eventually brother-in-law of 
 
 " La du Barry " CAMPBELL GOLLAN 
 
 COMTE GUILLAUME, his brother .... BERESFORD WEBB 
 Dec DE BRISSAC, Capt. of King's Guard, HENRY WEAVER, SR. 
 CossE-BnissAC, his son (of the King's Guard), known 
 
 as " Cosse " HAMILTON REVEILE 
 
 THE PAPAL NUNCIO H. R. ROBERTS 
 
 Due DE RICHELIEU, Marshal ^ ( 
 
 of France I Under I GEO. BAR.NUM 
 
 MAUPEOU, Lord Chancellor j Louis XV. | C. P. FLOCKTON 
 TERRAY, Minister of Finance } \ H. G. CARLTON 
 
 Due D'AiouiLLON LEONARD COOPER 
 
 DENYS, porter at the milliner shop . CLAUDE GILLINGWATER 
 LEBEL, confidential valet to His Majesty, HERBERT MILLWARD 
 M. LABILLE, proprietor of the milliner shop, GILMOHE SCOTT 
 VAUBERNIER, father of Jeanette . . CHARLES CAMPBELL 
 SCARLO, one of " La du Barry's" Nubian servants, J. D. JONES 
 ZAMORE, a plaything of " La du Barry's " . MASTER SAMS 
 
 FLUTE PLAYER . A. JOLY 
 
 1
 
 DU BARRY" CAST CONTINUED 
 
 VALROY .... 
 D'ALTAIRE . . 
 DE COURCEL . . 
 LA GARDE . 
 FONTENELLE 
 BEXARD, one of the 
 
 DOUGLAS J. WOOD 
 . . Louis MYLL 
 . HAROLD HOWARD 
 . . W. T. BUNE 
 THOMAS BOOXE 
 . WARREN DEVEN 
 
 1 Of the ( 
 /King's Guards 
 
 Two Tavern 
 Roysterers 
 
 Hundred Swiss " 
 CITIZEN GRIEVE, of the Committee of Public 
 
 Safety GASTON MERVALE 
 
 MARAC, one of the Sans-Culottes . . . JAMES SARGEANT 
 DENISOT, Judge of the Revolutionary Court, H. G. CARLTON 
 
 TA VERNIER, clerk of the court JOHN INGRAM 
 
 GOMAHD CHARLES HAYNE 
 
 HORTENSE, Manageress for Labille the 
 
 LOLOTTE .... 
 
 
 [ NINA LYN 
 
 MANON 
 
 /""ii-lc. 
 
 FLORENCE ST LEONARD 
 
 JULIE 
 
 at the 
 
 CORAH ADAMS 
 
 LEONIE 
 
 Milliner's" 
 
 . BLANCHE SHERWOOD 
 
 NlCHETTE .... 
 
 JULIETTE 
 
 Shop 
 
 . . . . ANN ARCHER 
 . MAY LYN 
 
 MARQUISE DU QUESNOY, known as "La Gourdan," 
 
 keeper of a gambling house BLANCHE RICE 
 
 SOPHIE ARNAULD, queen of the opera . . Miss ROBERTSON 
 THE GYPSY HAG, a fortune-teller ... C. P. FLOCKTON 
 MLLE. LE GRAND ) Dancers from the ( RUTH DENNIS 
 MLLE. GUIMAHD . \ Grand Opera ( . ELEANOR STL-ART 
 MME. LA DAUPHINE, Marie Antoinette at 
 
 sixteen HELEN HALE 
 
 MARQUISE DE CRENAY 
 DUCHESSE D'AlGUILLON 
 PRINCESSE ALIXE . . 
 DUCHESSE DE CHOISY 
 MARQUISE DE LANGERS 
 
 CoMTESSE DE MARSEN 
 
 Ladies 
 
 of 
 
 Louis' 
 Court 
 
 . HELEN ROBERTSON 
 , . . . Miss LYN 
 . Miss LEONARD 
 , . LOUISE MOREWIN 
 . . MAY MONTFORD 
 GRACE VAN BENTHUYSEN 
 
 SOPHIE, a maid IRMA PERRY 
 
 ROSALIE, of the Conciergerie . . . : . HELEN ROBERTSON 
 
 CERISETTE JULIE LINDSEY 
 
 AND 
 JEANETTE VAUBERNIER, afterwards 
 
 "La du Barry" . . . . MRS. LESLIE CARTER 
 
 2
 
 "DU BARRY" CAST CONTINUED 
 
 Guests of the Fete, Dancers from the Opera, King's 
 Guardsmen, Monks, Clowns, Pages, Milliners, Sentries, 
 Lackeys, Footmen, King's Secret Police, Sans-Culottes, a 
 Mock King, a Mock Herald, a Drunken Patriot, a Cocoa 
 Vender, Federals, National Guards, Tricoteuses. 
 
 SYNOPSIS OF SCENES. 
 
 Act I. The Milliner's Shop in the Rue St. Honore, Paris. 
 JEANETTE TRIMS HATS. 
 
 Act II. (One month later.) Jeanette's Apartments, adjoin- 
 ing the Gambling Rooms of the Marquise de 
 Quesnoy (" La Gourdan "). 
 "THE GAME CALLED DESTINY." 
 
 Act III. (A year later.) Du Barry holds a Petit-Lever in 
 the Palace of Versailles at noon. 
 "THE DOLL OF THE WORLD." 
 
 Act IV. Scene 1. In the Royal Gardens. Before the 
 
 dawn of the following morning. 
 
 "FOLLY, QUEEN OF FRANCE." 
 
 Scene 2. Within the Tent. 
 
 "THE HEART OF THE WOMAN." 
 Act V. (A lapse of years.) During the Revolution. 
 
 Scene 1. The Retreat in the Woods of Louve- 
 
 ciennes. 
 
 "FATE CREEPS IN AT THE DOOR." 
 
 Scene 2. (Five days later.) In Paris again. 
 "A REED SHAKEN IN THE WIND." 
 
 Scene 3. In Front of the Milliner's Shop on the 
 same day. 
 
 " Once more we pass this way again, 
 Once morel T is where at first we met." 
 
 Time : Period of Louis XV and after the reign of his 
 Successor. 
 
 Place : Paris, Versailles, and Louveciennes. 
 
 . Mr. Belasco wishes to state that, as the traditional parting 
 of Madame du Barry and the King of France is impossible 
 for dramatic use, he has departed entirely from historical 
 accuracy in this instance. He also begs to acknowledge his 
 indebtedness to M. Arsene Houssaye for his sequence of 
 scenes. (" Nouvelle a la main, sur la Comtesse du Barry.") 
 3
 
 "D U BARRY" CAST CONTINUED 
 
 Between Acts I, II, and III there will be intervals of 12 
 minutes ; between Acts IV and V an interval of 15 minutes. 
 
 The entire production under the personal supervision of 
 Mr. Belasco. 
 
 Stage Manager H. S. MLLLWARD 
 
 Scenery by Mr. Ernest Gros. 
 Incidental Music by Mr. William Furst. 
 
 Stage decorations and accessories after designs by Mr. 
 Wilfred Buckland. 
 
 General Manager for Mr. Belasco . . MR. B. F. ROEDER
 
 BEFORE THE CURTAIN 
 
 ~DRIEF words, when actions wait, are well; 
 
 The prompters hand is on his bell ; 
 The coming heroes, lovers, kings, 
 Are idly lounging at the wings ; 
 Behind the curtains mystic fold 
 The glowing future lies unrolled. 
 
 One moment more : if here we raise 
 The oft-sung hymn of local praise, 
 Before the curtain facts must sway ; 
 Here wails the moral of your play. 
 Glassed in the poet's thought, you view 
 What money can, yet can not do ; 
 The faith that soars, the deeds that shine, 
 Above the gold that builds the shrine. 
 
 BRET HARTE 
 
 Copyright by 
 
 HOUGHTON, MlFPLIN & Co.
 
 TO-NIGHT 
 
 H E author of to-night's 
 play finds himself in the 
 position of one who has 
 journeyed far and along a 
 difficult way, but is home 
 at last. 
 
 To his home and Mrs. 
 Carter's he welcomes you, 
 wishing it to prove, so far as comfort and appoint- 
 ment can make it, an annex of your own. 
 
 A dedication is an outline of purpose, just as a 
 christening is an act of faith. A word, therefore, 
 as to the plans of this house. The Belasco Theatre 
 will be devoted to such plays as prove suitable to 
 the art and temperament of Mrs. Leslie Carter, 
 who, by her tireless devotion to her' work, her 
 capacity for reaching the heart, and her flashes of 
 insight into human nature as it is, has achieved 
 a unique place upon the English-speaking stage 
 of to-day. Here she will appear during a part 
 of every season. Her plays will not be confined 
 to those of any one author. It is the present
 
 10 TO-NIGHT 
 
 purpose to have Mrs. Carter seen in Shakesperean 
 and classic roles, of which she has been making a 
 close study. 
 
 Mrs. Carter will share this season with her 
 sister artist, Miss Blanche Bates, who will follow 
 the " Du Barry " in a new play now in course of 
 preparation. Miss Bates has proved herself 
 worthy of a stronger drama than any in which 
 she has yet appeared, and her forthcoming role is 
 one which will offer her the opportunity of her 
 career. 
 
 Later, Mr. David Warfield, who has been called 
 the " comedian of pathos," will appear from time 
 to time. 
 
 Next season Mrs. Carter will open here in her 
 new and unnamed play, which will appeal partic- 
 ularly to her genius for sustained tragedy of 
 intense, quiet suspense and depth of feeling. 
 Eventually it is probable that a stock company 
 may gather in under the roof-tree. 
 
 A word as to the decorations in the interior of 
 the theatre. On your chair you will see the 
 Napoleonic bee ; this Mr. Belasco has chosen for 
 the house emblem because it means " work, work, 
 work ! " The Napoleonic era has also been ad- 
 hered to in other decorations, chiefly because 
 this period was the luxurious cradle of romantic 
 literature. 
 
 The genius of drama was born among the 
 ancient Greeks, and the best there is in our 
 theatres can trace its source to them. They 
 were the first to find outward expression for in- 
 ward grace. To them beauty was a thing more
 
 INTERIOR 
 
 Bigehw, (falli! and Cotton, jtrchittcti
 
 TO-NIGHT 13 
 
 of spirit than human, and they created an art for 
 the world that was severely classic in its exquisite 
 balance of form and feeling. Not until Napoleon 
 stirred the bitterness of men's souls by the violence 
 of war, did the warmth of luxury such as Greek 
 philosophers had evaded in their expression of 
 feeling appear in art. 
 
 To-day the imperial wreath that crowns the 
 proscenium arch is a symbol of the drama. The 
 ornamental decorations of the Belasco Theatre 
 have been taken directly from those made for 
 Napoleon by the famous architects of the First 
 Empire, Charles Percier and P. F. L. Fontaine. 
 The Flying Pegasus and the Napoleonic eagles 
 were originally made by these same architects, 
 who built and decorated Napoleon's throne room. 
 The applique design in the box draperies is an 
 exact copy of that used in the palace of the King 
 of Spain. 
 
 The general coloring is autumnal, the rich reds 
 and sombre browns, with a lingering green among 
 them all, blending the seasons in a restful scheme 
 of color. There is a reception room on every 
 floor, including that of the second balcony. A 
 Marie Antoinette boudoir, to be reached from the 
 orchestra, is an exact duplicate of a room of that 
 period. A smoking-room has been added for the 
 comfort of guests. Behind the scenes the old- 
 fashioned " green room " has been revived. As 
 to further details of the realm behind the curtain, 
 with its many new devices, that must of necessity 
 remain the hidden world of illusionment, and 
 more the land of camaraderie in art. The
 
 14 TO-NIGHT 
 
 mythical place where inspiration is born and 
 romance identified ; where all that the heart dares 
 feel the lips dare say, and what darings, w hat 
 sayings are possible in the sway of artistic 
 camaraderie ! 
 
 No labor of art is too long or too great, no 
 creative faculty is spared imagination and tra- 
 dition are drained to the dregs, for they who 
 build under the laws of the artist-world measure 
 as high as the stars. There is no greed there, 
 only a life to live, a soul to explore, a clasp of 
 the hand now and then, a work to do by labor 
 of love, and the whole standard of success a 
 word of sincere approval. 
 
 To-night the foot-lights are not a dividing line, 
 but a uniting tie, for there will be present many 
 old friends, some personally unknown to Mr. 
 Belasco and Mrs. Carter, who have formed their 
 " public " in days past, and to whom author and 
 player have always labored to be faithful. 
 
 When the lights are dimmed and the theatre is 
 empty, there will remain two people who will 
 consecrate these walls with a deep reverence for 
 what they represent to them. 
 
 It will not be a gratitude for material prospects, 
 just a deep sigh of relief that one more mile-stone 
 has been passed since they began their work in art 
 together.

 
 THE STORY OF DU BARRY
 
 STORY of DL 
 
 MRS. LESLIE CARTER.
 
 THE 
 
 STORY of DU BARRY 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES L. FORD 
 
 With Six Full-Page Illustrations in Photogravure and 
 Fifty-Five Half- Tone Engravings 
 
 NEW YORK 
 FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS
 
 Copyright, 1902, 
 BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
 
 Published in September, 1902
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. HISTORY SETS THE STAGE 1 
 
 II. A LOWLY BEGINNING 19 
 
 III. ENTERING UPON HER CAREER .... 40 
 
 IV. A NEW SUN ON THE HORIZON OF VER- 
 
 SAILLES 72 
 
 V. PRESENTED AT COURT 94 
 
 VI. THE PETIT LEVEE Ill 
 
 VII. A PRIME MINISTER'S DOWNFALL . . . 138 
 
 VIII. THE WAGES OF SIN .157 
 
 IX. MARIE ANTOINETTE'S REIGN 182 
 
 X. IN RETIREMENT 217 
 
 XI. THE STORM BREAKS 240 
 
 XII. DREYFUS-LIKE JUSTICE ..... 258
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PHOTOGRAVURES 
 
 Mrs. Leslie Carter Frontispiece 
 
 The Beginning of a Great Love . Facing page 36 
 
 A New Fancy " " 92 
 
 The Favorite of Royalty .... " "144 
 
 " Swear on the Cross !".... " " 274 
 
 David Belasco " "280 
 
 HALF-TONE ENGRAVINGS 
 
 " Fascinating Idlers and Handsome Noble- 
 men" Page 7 
 
 Reproduction of the Original Sign of the 
 
 Milliner's Shop "11 
 
 With her Shopmates at Labille's .... "15 
 
 Milliner's Doll "21 
 
 Something New in Bonnets "23 
 
 Jeanette and Cosse-Brissac "31 
 
 Hurdy-gurdy Player "35 
 
 The Belle of Labille's Shop "41
 
 viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Copy of Affiche actually used in the Shop 
 
 of Labille Page 47 
 
 A Noble Scoundrel " 49 
 
 Grands Seignem*s " 57 
 
 The Corset of the Period " 6l 
 
 An Ominous Visit ' 65 
 
 The Soothsayer's Prophecy " 73 
 
 Orange Woman " 77 
 
 In Comedy Vein " 81 
 
 Her First Meeting with the King ... "89 
 
 Objects seen in the Milliner's Shop ... " 91 
 
 Wooed by a Royal Lover " 97 
 
 Sedan Chair " 105 
 
 Jean Du Barry and Jeanette "107 
 
 The Flute-player "115 
 
 Punch Bowl "119 
 
 A Courtesy to Royalty ........ "123 
 
 The Father of Cosse-Brissac "131 
 
 Slippers "133 
 
 The Petit Levee "139 
 
 Screen and Toilet Table "145 
 
 A Queen of the Left Hand "147 
 
 Ecclesiastical Homage "153 
 
 Jeanette and the Cardinal "159 
 
 Zamore " l6l 
 
 The Diversions of Royalty " 167
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix 
 
 Louis XV Table Page 173 
 
 Alone with the King "175 
 
 A Loyal Officer "183 
 
 The Du Barry Coffee Cup "187 
 
 A Lover's Peril "191 
 
 With the Scent of the Violets .... "199 
 
 Veritable Night Table actually used by Du 
 
 Barry at Versailles "203 
 
 Fortiter in Modo "207 
 
 The Search for the King's Rival .... "213 
 
 Bodyguard of Louis XV "218 
 
 At the Height of her Power "219 
 
 A Kingly Revel "227 
 
 A Corner of Du Barry's Bedchamber in the 
 
 Palace at Versailles "233 
 
 The Clowns' Gambol "235 
 
 A Woman's Intercession " 243 
 
 Spinnet of the Period "247 
 
 With Breaking Heart . "251 
 
 A Jealous King "259 
 
 A Corner of the Property Room .... " 265 
 
 In the Garden of Louveciennes .... " 267 
 
 Condemned to Die . " 275 
 
 On the Way to Execution "283
 
 THE STORY 
 OF DU BARRY 
 
 CHAPTER ONE 
 
 HISTORY SETS THE STAGE 
 
 NEVER go on the stage 
 as Du Barry without see- 
 ing that awful guillotine 
 knife shining before me 
 in every scene that I 
 play," said Mrs. Leslie 
 Carter one night just 
 after the curtain had fallen on the last 
 act of Belasco's drama ; and we who view 
 the play from before the footlights, seeing 
 every scene from the enlightened stand- 
 point of latter-day knowledge, are perhaps 
 inclined to wonder whether any vision of
 
 2 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 the guillotine ever troubled the dreams of 
 Louis XV, Jeanette Du Barry and the rest 
 of the dissolute court that went dancing 
 and singing down the road that at last be- 
 came the " deluge " that Pompadour had 
 foreseen as the aftermath of it all. 
 
 It seems inevitable, as we look back at it 
 now, this period of blood and vengeance 
 that was the outcome of so many decades 
 of luxury in high places and bitter poverty 
 in the homes of the lowly ; yet we of the 
 present day can no more read the future 
 than could the nobles of a century and a 
 half ago who danced and drank and wore 
 fine clothes and cared little for the welfare 
 of France so long as they basked in the 
 favor of their king. 
 
 They had had many warnings before the 
 storm broke in its awful fury. In 1757, 
 Damiens, the shabby man with the pen- 
 knife who was tortured to death for his 
 futile attempt on the life of the king, had 
 written from his prison cell these ominous 
 words : 
 
 " Sire, I am sorry that I was so unfor- 
 tunate as to gain access to you ; but if you
 
 HISTORY SETS THE STAGE 3 
 
 do not take your people's part, before many 
 years you and the dauphin and many others 
 will perish." 
 
 Earlier than that the philosophers had 
 sounded the note of protest and warning, 
 generally by means of pamphlets and books 
 hurled into France from some rock of exile 
 to which they had been banished. Vol- 
 taire had foreseen what destiny had in 
 store for his mal-governed country as clearly 
 as had Madame de Pompadour, whose re- 
 mark " after us the deluge " became the 
 by-word of her royal lover's court. 
 
 Sardou has said that when History makes 
 a drama, the work is well done, and he 
 speaks with a modesty that well becomes 
 one of the first of modern French drama- 
 tists. He might have added that History 
 seldom does more than furnish the raw 
 dramatic material which the playwright 
 must knead into dramatic form, even as 
 the sculptor kneads the rough clay into 
 the statue which he imbues with his own 
 genius. 
 
 In the case of Madame Du Barry, the 
 last of that long line of " queens of the left
 
 4 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 hand " whose influence was so potent in 
 French statecraft during the eighteenth 
 century, History has certainly set the stage 
 for her in gorgeous fashion, and made ready 
 for her first entrance by years of Bourbon 
 rule which brought about the social and 
 political conditions under which she played 
 her picturesque and interesting part. 
 
 The age in which she lived was worse 
 than the present one, in that a certain 
 number of men and women, forming the so- 
 called " privileged classes," had free license 
 to do a great many things that their coun- 
 terparts of to-day would like to do, were it 
 not for the force of public opinion. It was 
 an age of wanton luxury and indulgence 
 for the few, and one of great suffering 
 and misfortune for the many. Happily 
 enough for the purposes of the drama, the 
 world was beginning to tire of these con- 
 ditions, and was preparing for a great up- 
 heaval at about the time that Madame Du 
 Barry set her foot upon the threshold of 
 her destiny. 
 
 The fires of liberty were ready for kind- 
 ling across the ocean, where George Wash-
 
 HISTORY SETS THE STAGE 5 
 
 ington of Virginia had already won his 
 spurs in the French and Indian war ; and 
 statesmen like John Hancock and Samuel 
 Adams in Massachusetts were beginning 
 to realize that there could be no loyalty 
 and contentment in the colonies so long as 
 George III continued to regard his Ameri- 
 can subjects as people made only to be 
 taxed for his benefit. But this king who, 
 like his royal brother in France, believed 
 that he ruled by divine right, paid no more 
 heed to the remonstrances of those states- 
 men of the colonies whose words should 
 have had weight, than Braddock, the Gen- 
 eral Redvers-Buller of his day and genera- 
 tion, did to the warnings of his young staff 
 officer, Washington, who had had his ex- 
 perience in Indian fighting and was familiar 
 with the red men's tricks. 
 
 Braddock's conceit and ignorance led 
 him to underestimate the strength of his 
 enemy, while he placed an absurdly high 
 value on his own prowess and the advan- 
 tage to be derived from fighting the red 
 men " according to the rules of war," so 
 it happens that the story of his defeat and
 
 6 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 death sounds very much like a chapter - 
 almost any chapter from the history of 
 the Boer war. His disposition seems to 
 have been not unlike that of King George, 
 who certainly did not lose his American 
 colonies because of his gracious and tactful 
 methods of dealing with them. 
 
 And while the people of these colonies 
 were preparing for the struggle from which 
 they were to emerge a powerful young 
 nation, one whose future possibilities even 
 the wisest among us cannot yet predict, 
 the French people, who had been ground 
 down by years of Bourbon misrule, were 
 being driven by the inexorable force of cir- 
 cumstances into a revolution of a totally 
 different kind, and one that was second 
 only to our own in its effect on the genera- 
 tions that were to come after it. 
 
 There is nothing in our civilization of to- 
 day which more closely resembles what is 
 poetically termed the " ancien regime " in 
 France, than the stockyards in Chicago, 
 with their owners as the Bourbon king, and 
 the sheep, cattle, and pigs as the people. 
 This, however, is not quite a fair compar-
 
 HISTORY SETS THE STAGE 9 
 
 ison, as the cattle are supplied with food, 
 drink, and shelter, and are killed instantly, 
 and not permitted to drag themselves off to 
 remote parts of the field and there die of 
 hunger, disease, or their wounds. They 
 are of no use, however, except to be killed, 
 and in this respect they bear a distinct 
 resemblance to the subjects of Louis, 
 known in the early years of his reign as 
 "the well-beloved," and of his predeces- 
 sor, "the grand monarch," by whom the 
 common herd were looked upon as good 
 for nothing except to pay taxes and stop 
 bullets. 
 
 Once in a while there are signs of revolt 
 and dissatisfaction in the Chicago stock- 
 yard, and in like manner, even before the 
 Du Barry's accession to power, there had 
 been signs of dissatisfaction among the 
 human cattle of her august lover. But 
 these little rebellions, put down and 
 often by hired mercenaries as quickly 
 as they were begun, were nothing more 
 than the mere angry tossing of a few pairs 
 of horns, or a squeal of defiance from some 
 far-seeing pig, drawing back from the
 
 10 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 shambles in a vain effort to escape his 
 predestined fate. 
 
 For the human cattle who made up the 
 bulk of the population of France, far less 
 consideration was shown than for their 
 hoofed and horned counterparts in Chicago, 
 for it was the fortune of the first-named to 
 be ruled absolutely by a selfish, pleasure- 
 loving monarch who believed that he gov- 
 erned by divine right, and that those who 
 lived under his dominion could have no 
 higher duty to perform than that of servile 
 obedience to his will. He it was who could 
 consign men with whom, perhaps, he had 
 supped and walked and talked the day be- 
 fore, to a living death in the Bastille, merely 
 to satisfy his own anger or the jealous whim 
 of a mistress. He it was who stood watch- 
 ing the funeral procession of his dead love, 
 Madame de Pompadour, as it started from 
 the courtyard in Versailles for Paris, and 
 remarked, as he drummed with idle fingers 
 on the window-pane, " Madame la Marquise 
 will have a wet day for her ride." He it was 
 who, in the early years of his reign, gained 
 the surname of "well-beloved," and who,
 
 HISTORY SETS THE STAGE 
 
 11 
 
 at the end, was hustled into the ground with 
 less ceremony and respect than would have 
 been shown to one of his own valets. 
 
 Yet such was the divinity that 
 did hedge this king, this splen- 
 did type of the Bourbon 
 who could neither learn, 
 nor forgive, nor for- 
 get, that the greatest 
 ladies in his court 
 vied with one an- 
 other for the 
 honor of filling 
 the position 
 left vacant 
 by the death 
 of Madame de 
 Pompadour. 
 
 But Louis 
 XV would have none of them. " I will 
 never choose another mistress from the 
 ranks of the nobility," he said. " It 's too 
 much trouble to get rid of them when they 
 pall upon me." 
 
 Lord Chesterfield once said of him : " By 
 an unusual combination, Louis XV was both 
 
 Reproduction of tJie original sign of the 
 milliner's slwp.
 
 12 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 hated and despised," and to the day of his 
 death he never realized the awful and bloody 
 depth of the abyss that lay directly beneath 
 his feet and those of the wigged and per- 
 fumed courtiers who helped him in his life- 
 long race after pleasure, with ennui following 
 close upon his heels. To the very end he 
 lived only for himself, regarding the remon- 
 strances of his cabinet and the opposition of 
 his parliament as merely the outward and 
 visible signs of a revolutionary spirit which 
 must be crushed at all hazards. He went 
 to his death still firmly believing that he 
 had ruled by divine right, and little dream- 
 ing that the Almighty, on whom he had 
 sought to throw the responsibility for so 
 much evil, was even then forging a thunder- 
 bolt that was destined to involve Europe in 
 a storm of unexampled violence, one that 
 would in the end clear the political skies 
 and leave the atmosphere freer and purer 
 than ever before. 
 
 Within three months after the formal 
 presentation of Madame Du Barry at the 
 court of her king and lover, Napoleon 
 Bonaparte was born in the Island of Cor-
 
 HISTORY SETS THE STAGE 13 
 
 sica. He took the field at a surprisingly 
 early age, but that was because he was 
 sorely needed, and the world had waited for 
 him till its patience had long since been 
 exhausted. 
 
 Such, in brief, were the conditions under 
 which History prepared the French stage 
 for Jeanette Du Barry's life-drama ; but 
 although she furnished a gorgeous setting, 
 and associated her with various men and 
 women of great historic and dramatic 
 value, the work of building a play was left, 
 as it always is in such cases, to be done 
 by the dramatist. 
 
 For example, in Julius Cassar, the greatest 
 of all historical dramas, History has sup- 
 plied the raw material in the shape of the 
 life of Caesar, his murder, the events that 
 led up to it, and its immediate results. 
 From this splendid material Shakespeare 
 constructed a drama which has done more 
 than all else that has been written about 
 Julius Csesar to impress upon the world 
 the tragic story of his fall. In doing this, 
 he did not content himself with arranging a 
 number of scenes from the life of the great
 
 14 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 Roman emperor in order that his drama 
 might be historically accurate in trivial as 
 well as in important details. Had he done 
 this, no matter if he had clothed his work 
 in language as beautiful and convincing as 
 that which still lives in his deathless drama, 
 his work would not have survived a dozen 
 representations, in fact, it would not have 
 been a play at all. 
 
 But Shakespeare was a genius and not 
 a mere cataloguer of events, and when it 
 came to dealing with such a tremendous 
 theme as that of the Roman conspiracy 
 and the tragedy which it brought about, 
 he set his imagination to work, and the 
 touch of his genius transformed the dull 
 clay of history into a living, breathing story 
 that has touched the hearts of generations 
 of playgoers and will continue to charm 
 and interest and instruct so long as the 
 English language shall be spoken. He 
 invented the quarrel between Brutus and 
 Cassius. He invented the great speech of 
 Brutus to the Roman people. He invented 
 that masterpiece of subtle, convincing ora- 
 tory in which the brilliant Marc Antony
 
 w 
 
 * 
 <: 
 
 -si
 
 HISTORY SETS THE STAGE 17 
 
 stirs the very stones of Rome to rise and 
 mutiny. In short, the world is indebted to 
 the illuminating genius of the playwright, 
 and not to a mere recorder of history, for 
 nearly every one of the great scenes and 
 speeches which have kept alive in the 
 hearts of generation after generation of 
 humanity the impressive story of Caesar's 
 fall. 
 
 It is a far cry from Shakespeare to Ros- 
 tand, in time and in other respects as well, 
 but apart from the interest that attaches 
 itself to every chapter and paragraph of the 
 Napoleonic story, what dramatic value do 
 we find in the life of that " dove that found 
 birth within an eagle's nest," the Due de 
 Reichstadt ? None whatever, excepting 
 that which the dramatist has invented. 
 Even the character which Madame Bern- 
 hardt portrayed with so much art is one in 
 which Metternich, could he return to earth, 
 would probably fail to recognize the unfor- 
 tunate young prince whose unhappy destiny 
 he helped to shape. But Rostand is per- 
 fectly justified in what he has done. 
 
 Given the son of the world's conqueror,
 
 18 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 baptized at Notre Dame amid the acclama- 
 tions of all Paris, anointed in the cradle 
 with the oil by the virtue of which he was 
 to rule by divine right, and accustomed 
 from his very earliest childhood to the cere- 
 monial deference due him not only as a 
 king, but also as the only son of one who 
 was almost a demigod in the eyes of his 
 people, it was only fair to assume that the 
 fires of ambition burned fiercely within 
 his breast, although, as a matter of fact, 
 they did not. And it is on this perfectly 
 justifiable assumption that the play of 
 " L' Aiglon " is constructed. The real Na- 
 poleon's son, whom we find in the pages 
 of veracious, unimaginative history, could 
 not have been made to serve as the central 
 figure of a drama, because he did not possess 
 the requisite attributes.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 A LOWLY BEGINNING 
 
 HE life of Madame Du 
 Barry, while not afford- 
 ing in itself as much in 
 the way of raw dramatic 
 material as does that of 
 Julius Csesar, has never- 
 theless been fashioned 
 into a stage story of deep human interest, 
 set in brilliant surroundings, and far better 
 suited to the tastes of modern audiences 
 than that of the poor little king of Rome. 
 It is, moreover, a story which, while follow- 
 ing the true course of history more closely 
 than almost any successful historical play of 
 modern times, is nevertheless sufficiently 
 charged with the dramatist's imagination 
 to seem in the eyes of twentieth century
 
 20 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 audiences an intensely interesting picture 
 of what might very well have happened at 
 the court of the French king. 
 
 Historians differ widely as to the real 
 character of this last of the Favorites, a cir- 
 cumstance not to be wondered at when we 
 study the conditions under which she lived, 
 and take into account the extreme of adu- 
 lation on the one hand and execration on the 
 other that were the natural results of the 
 king's fondness for her. These historians 
 differ also as to her parentage, the date of 
 her birth, the exact extent of her power, 
 and in scores of other respects. 
 
 It is certain, however, that she was 
 born in Vaucouleurs, the same little 
 French village in which Joan of Arc first 
 saw the light nearly three hundred and 
 fifty years before. Indeed, Anne Becu, 
 the mother of Du Barry, always claimed a 
 blood-relationship with the Maid of Or- 
 leans, a boast which it would probably have 
 been difficult for her to substantiate. Cer- 
 tain it is that in the middle of the eighteenth 
 century the Becu family was not one of 
 great distinction, most of its members being
 
 A LOWLY BEGINNING 
 
 engaged in domestic service, while the 
 certificate of Madame Du Barry's birth, 
 taken from the parish records in the town 
 of Vaucouleurs, describes her as " Jeanette, 
 natural daughter of Anne Becu, sometimes 
 called Quantigny, born on the 
 19th of August, in the year one 
 thousand seven hundred and 
 forty-three, and baptized the 
 same day." 
 
 Who little Jeanette's fath- 
 er was will never be known. 
 Tradition and history assert 
 variously that he was a tax- 
 collector, a sailor, and an 
 unfrocked monk named Gomard 
 de Vaubernier. From these possi- 
 ble parents, Mr. Belasco selected the last 
 named as being more interesting than either 
 of the others, and he actually introduces 
 him for a moment in the first act of the 
 drama in the guise of a shoe-cleaner, fitted 
 out with his elaborate contrivance for clean- 
 ing shoes and imparting to them the dead 
 lustreless finish that was in vogue in Louis 
 XV's time. 
 
 Milliner's 
 Doll.
 
 22 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 In her own memoirs, 1 Madame Du Barry 
 gives her birth as the 28th of August, 1746, 
 and passes over the maternal claim to kin- 
 ship with the inspired maid as if she put 
 no faith in it. She speaks of her father as 
 a man without fortune who had accepted a 
 mean situation as clerk at the Barrieres, and 
 who had married her mother from love. 
 The reason for this will be shown in an- 
 other chapter. 
 
 But, whether married or no, Jeanette's 
 mother found herself, a few years after the 
 birth of her daughter, absolutely without 
 resources, and set out for Paris with the 
 intention of trying her luck there. Through 
 the kindness of a financier named Duinon- 
 ceau, Jeanette was sent to the Convent of 
 
 1 The four volumes purporting to be the memoirs of the 
 Countess Du Barry have been drawn on guardedly for some 
 of the material of lesser importance contained in this book. 
 In all probability these memoirs are largely apocryphal, but 
 they have been compiled, if not entirely by Madame Du Barry 
 herself, at least by some one who was thoroughly familiar 
 with the history of her time, as well as with her own career, 
 and who, for reasons of his own, did not wish to place his 
 own name on the title-page. Other examples can be named 
 of books which contain a vast amount of accurate and inter- 
 esting information of a personal and delicate nature, and 
 which are nevertheless apocryphal as to signature.

 
 A LOWLY BEGINNING 25 
 
 Sainte-Aure. This convent was designed 
 as a retreat for young girls whose condition 
 in life was such as to expose them to temp- 
 tation, and here Jeanette remained until she 
 was nearly fifteen. During all these years 
 she lived a life of such extreme rigor that 
 her subsequent relapse from austere virtue 
 is not to be wondered at. It was an ex- 
 istence of terrible severity for children as 
 young as she. Clothed in an ugly dress, 
 deprived of all the little ornaments that 
 children hold dear, forbidden to laugh, 
 jest or play with her little companions, 
 and obliged to devote most of her time to 
 work, nothing but her elasticity of spirit 
 and marvellous birthright of roguish, infec- 
 tious gayety enabled her to remain in the 
 dreary Convent of Sainte-Aure as long as 
 she did. 
 
 Soon after leaving the convent, her 
 mother lost her situation, and the young 
 girl began to earn her living by going from 
 door to door in Paris and the near-by coun- 
 try with a little open box of watch-guards, 
 imitation pearls, brilliants, and snuff-boxes 
 which she offered for sale. Through the
 
 26 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 influence of a certain Madame Lagarde, the 
 girl was removed from the temptations of 
 the street and retained by her as a sort of 
 lady's companion in her Chateau Cour- 
 Neuve. The old lady was charmed with 
 the growing beauty and bright, amusing 
 chatter of her new retainer, and, for a time, 
 all went well. 
 
 It was at Madame Lagarde's that she 
 gained that familiarity with certain of the 
 outward and visible signs of high breeding 
 which stood her in such good stead when 
 in after years she was first admitted to the 
 intimate circle of courtiers that clustered 
 about the French king. Among those 
 who frequented the house were Voltaire, 
 at that time the most powerful, most 
 quoted, most feared, and most sought-after 
 man in the kingdom ; M. Marmontel, the 
 author of the famous " Moral Tales," and 
 M. Grimm, whom she describes as " a cun- 
 ning fox, witty, though a German, very 
 ugly and very thin." Besides these men 
 of literary renown, Madame Lagarde's salon 
 was frequented by such aristocrats as the 
 Due de Richelieu, the Prince de Soubise,
 
 A LOWLY BEGINNING 27 
 
 and the Due de Brissac, whose son was 
 destined to play a part of no mean impor- 
 tance in the story of her later years. Un- 
 fortunately, however, Madame Lagarde 
 had a young son living with her, and it was 
 not long before she discovered and nipped 
 in the bud a love affair between the two 
 young people which had made a most 
 promising beginning. Jeanette, cast once 
 more upon her own resources, entered, 
 under the name of Lancon that of the 
 new husband whom her mother had just 
 taken the millinery establishment of 
 Monsieur Labille in the rue Saint- Honore. 
 
 Here, although safe from the brutal 
 temptations of the street, she was exposed 
 to others that were far more dangerous. 
 
 " Imagine," says that conscientious and 
 entertaining chronicler, M. de Goncour, 
 "stores with glass windows all around, 
 where fascinating idlers and handsome 
 noblemen kept ogling the girls from morn- 
 ing till night ; shutters which were used 
 for correspondence and which allowed the 
 notes, folded up fan-fashion, to be passed 
 through the peg holes ; little trips out of
 
 28 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 doors where the smart milliner's girl, such 
 as Leclerc has sketched her in the series of 
 costumes of D'Esnoult and Repilly, trotted 
 about with a conquering air, her head cov- 
 ered with a big black hat shaped like a 
 calash, allowing her fair curls to slip down 
 her rounded shapely waist, squeezed into a 
 polonaise of printed calico, trimmed with 
 muslin. Imagine, at the end of all this, 
 conversations and proposals and, after the 
 proposals and the responses to the proposals, 
 it was for nearly every one of them, as it was 
 for the little Lan9on girl, some Monsieur 
 Lavauvelarbiere (one of Jeanette's early 
 lovers) or some Monsieur Duval or some- 
 body else." 
 
 This picture we may supplement with 
 one given in Madame Du Barry's own 
 words : 
 
 " I now commenced a new existence, and how 
 different a one from that I had led at Sainte-Aure ! 
 There, all was wearisome and dull ; there, the least 
 motion, a word, a burst of laughter, was kept in 
 check, and sometimes we were severely punished. 
 At Madame Labille's there was a constant watch 
 to keep the house in order and regularity; but
 
 A LOWLY BEGINNING 29 
 
 how different from the unceasing surveillance of 
 the convent ! Here we were almost mistresses of our 
 own actions, provided the allotted portions of our 
 work were properly done. We might talk of any- 
 thing that came into our heads ; we were at liberty 
 to laugh at anything that provoked our mirth, and 
 we might sing as much as we pleased. And we did 
 chatter, laugh and sing to an unlimited extent. Out 
 of the shop on Sunday, we were at perfect liberty 
 and at equal liberty in our chambers, which were 
 situated at the top of the house. Each of us had 
 her room, which was small but very neat. My god- 
 father had mine decorated with a handsome carpet, 
 and gave me a commode, a pier-glass, a small table, 
 four chairs, and an armchair of velvet, magnificently 
 gilt. This was all luxury, and when my fellow- 
 apprentices came to see my apartment, the richness 
 of the furniture excited surprise and universal ad- 
 miration. For at least four and twenty hours the 
 sole theme of conversation at Madame Labille's was 
 the chamber of Mademoiselle Lancon." 
 
 It is not easy for us of the present age to 
 imagine such an establishment as that in 
 which little Jeanette found employment. 
 Patronized by women of the very highest 
 social position, it was at the same time con- 
 stantly frequented by the most notorious of 
 female harpies, while it kept in stock sword-
 
 30 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 knots, shoe-buckles, and other articles of 
 male adornment, the sale of which furthered 
 those free and easy flirtations between the 
 apprentices and the idle men of the town 
 which were carried on across the counters 
 without even the pretence of concealment. 
 Moreover, we must bear in mind the fact 
 that in the France of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury millinery and dressmaking were in- 
 dustries of the highest importance in the 
 economic life of the nation, and the crea- 
 tions of such a shop as that of Labille were 
 viewed by everybody and discussed seriously 
 like works of art. 
 
 At that time French taste governed the 
 entire world in matters of dress and adorn- 
 ment, as for that matter it did a century 
 later during the Second Empire. The 
 new fashions for each season emanated from 
 the court of the king, and were sent abroad 
 by means of a manikin called " the great 
 doll of France," which was dressed in ac- 
 cordance with the very latest styles, and 
 sent to every court of Europe in charge of 
 an envoy and a numerous suite of attaches 
 and lackeys. So much importance did
 
 A LOWLY BEGINNING 33 
 
 foreigners of fashion and distinction attach 
 to the visits of this doll, the forerunner of 
 the modern fashion-plate, which was of 
 course unknown then, that once, during the 
 Seven Years' War, when the British had 
 established such a complete blockade of the 
 French ports that it was impossible for a 
 single ship to break through the cordon, an 
 exception was made in favor of the vessel 
 bearing the great d6ll of France, which was 
 allowed to cross the channel. 
 
 And it is with no small degree of pride 
 that French historians describe the manner 
 in which the flags of the enemy's fleet were 
 dipped in salutation to the ship bearing the 
 doll and its accompanying embassy on its 
 way to teach the English how to dress 
 themselves properly. 
 
 It was toward the close of a reign char- 
 acterized by luxury in personal adornment, 
 wanton licentiousness, and selfish indiffer- 
 ence to the needs of others, a rococo age of 
 elaborate ceremonial, superficial ornament, 
 and over-gilding, and in a shop that might 
 very well have contributed to the outfit of 
 the great doll of France, that Jeanette
 
 34 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 Vaubernier first made her bow. She was 
 then at the very dawn of womanhood, and 
 equipped with gifts of personal beauty and 
 coquetry which made her, from the very 
 first, the object of gallant attentions on the 
 part of the young men of fashion who flut- 
 tered about the rue Saint- Honore, and 
 awakened the immediate interest of the 
 buzzards of both sexes, who were more in 
 evidence then in Paris than ever before or 
 since, and forever on the lookout for some 
 attractive bit of femininity which could be 
 added to the stock and trade of their hideous 
 traffic. 
 
 The peculiar clientele of the Labille shop 
 must be borne in mind if we are to judge 
 this young milliner's girl fairly, and we must 
 also take into consideration her daily sur- 
 roundings and the mode of life of her 
 companions and shopmates. And these 
 young women, had they been taken to 
 task by any of the professional reformers 
 of their day, would undoubtedly have 
 justified their conduct on the ground that 
 they were merely following the example 
 set by the very highest women of the no-
 
 A LOWLY BEGINNING 
 
 35 
 
 bility, and winked at by the princes of 
 the church. 
 
 Nor can we in fairness regard the excuse 
 as a lame one, for at that time the post of 
 Favorite at the king's court was 
 one that was openly coveted, 
 and shamelessly sought by 
 women who bore the 
 proudest names in the 
 kingdom. 
 
 As for the men with 
 whom Jeanette was now 
 brought in contact, they 
 were worthy members of 
 a society of such exalted 
 ideas that it could conceive 
 of no finer or more to be 
 desired post than that of 
 Favorite to a king who had 
 long since grown weary 
 of all womankind and was 
 as difficult to please as a man might well 
 be who had followed pleasure through 
 youth, manhood, and up to the begin- 
 nings of old age and to the very point of 
 satiety. 
 
 Hurdy-gurdy player.
 
 36 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 No man or woman would have been 
 deemed worthy of a place in the corrupt 
 court of this blase monarch who did not 
 stand ready at a moment's notice to sac- 
 rifice to his pleasure a wife, sister or 
 daughter, as his taste might dictate. It 
 was this spirit of loyalty to the person of 
 their sovereign that had much to do with 
 the development of the race of "grands 
 seigneurs" - courtly gentlemen bearing 
 splendid historic names, wearing exquis- 
 itely ruffled clothes, and carrying at their 
 sides slender, jewel-hilted swords which they 
 were always ready to draw in defence of 
 their king, or of what they w r ere pleased 
 to term their honor. These were the men 
 who deemed it an honor to sacrifice a wife 
 or sister to the king's whim, and it is 
 pleasant to learn from the pages of history 
 that His Majesty was always willing to 
 pay handsomely for such proofs of loyalty 
 on the part of husband or brother. 
 
 There were, however, in the ranks of the 
 nobility, men who could be singled out as 
 notable exceptions to the rule of dishonor 
 and licentiousness that prevailed at the
 
 The Beginning of a Great Love.
 
 A LOWLY BEGINNING 37 
 
 court of King Louis, and one of these was 
 that distinguished and gallant gentleman, 
 the Due de Cosse-Brissac, Governor of 
 Paris and Colonel of the Cent Gardes du 
 Roi, whose after life was so curiously bound 
 up with that of the humble little milliner's 
 girl, Jeanette Lancon. 
 
 It was this nobleman whom the king 
 bade to take courage, and not grieve over 
 so small a disaster as a scandal that affected 
 the fair name of one of his female rela- 
 tives. And to this he made answer : 
 
 " Sire, I trust that I have courage to 
 bear resignedly any disaster, though none 
 to support dishonor." 
 
 All historians unite in singling out this 
 nobleman from the others of his day as a 
 man worthy of the highest praise for the 
 lofty purity of his character. 
 
 " His romantic devotion to Jeanette Du 
 Barry," says one of these chroniclers, " is 
 indeed singular. For many years, until 
 he fell a victim to the Revolution, he paid 
 her a sort of passionate worship ; such as, 
 in the old romances of chivalry, gallant 
 knights were supposed to render to the
 
 38 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 ladies to whom they had sworn fealty. 
 Before his death he made a will providing 
 handsomely for her, and recommending her 
 to the care of his nearest of kin as one 
 ' who has been very dear ' to him." 
 
 But it was not every young milliner's 
 girl who had the good fortune to win the 
 chivalrous devotion of such a man as the 
 Due de Cosse-Brissac. They were men 
 of a very different sort who came crowding 
 into Labille's shop, ostensibly to look at 
 sword-knots or the latest design in shoe- 
 buckles, but in reality to flirt with the 
 young girls, to invite them to theatre and 
 supper parties, and to arrange with them 
 for meetings on Sundays and holidays. 
 The esteem in which they held these 
 young apprentices may easily be imagined. 
 And if they could traffic openly in the 
 honor of wife or sister without loss of 
 caste, who can blame these girls for regard- 
 ing their attentions as a distinction to be 
 proud of? 
 
 The modern biped whose mission in life 
 is to follow and insult young women who 
 work for a living is a despicable creature,
 
 A LOWLY BEGINNING 39 
 
 but he is a high-minded gentleman in 
 comparison with some of the " grand sei- 
 gneurs " who used to haunt the milliner's 
 shop of Madame Labille, and we cannot 
 fairly estimate her character without taking 
 theirs into account as well.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 ENTERING UPON HER CAREER 
 
 ADAME LABILLE 
 
 was the real owner of 
 the shop which was con- 
 ducted, for form's sake, 
 in her husband's name. 
 It was situated in the 
 rue St. Honore at the 
 corner of the rue Neuf-des-Petits-Champs, 
 since made world-famous in Thackeray's 
 " Ballad of Bouillabaisse." It is in this 
 shop that the dramatist first reveals his 
 heroine as a light-hearted, roguish girl, 
 ready to flirt with any one who comes 
 along, no matter whether he be soldier or 
 prelate, perfectly willing to borrow for her 
 own use the new hat which has just been 
 made for a princess, and obviously a girl 
 who is on the best of terms with herself
 
 ENTERING UPON HER CAREER 43 
 
 and every one about her. The same quali- 
 ties of character and disposition which 
 made her popular with her shopmates, 
 which won the love of her employer and 
 held it, too, to the very day of her execu- 
 tion, are the qualities which enchained the 
 fancy of Louis XV the first time that 
 he saw her, and enabled her to hold her 
 place as Favorite until the end of his reign. 
 In the play the shop in which Jeanette 
 Vaubernier actually worked is reproduced 
 as nearly as possible, and the back of the 
 scene is so constructed that, reversed, it is 
 used to reveal the exterior in the final act 
 of the drama. In all respects this scene is 
 a perfect study of a milliner's shop of that 
 period. The affiche, or sign, which hangs 
 on the wall, is an exact copy of the one 
 which was actually displayed in Labille's 
 shop. And if we read it w r ith the aid of 
 opera-glasses, we learn precisely what sort 
 of goods were sold there. These very 
 goods are displayed in the mimic scene, 
 and are of great variety, for the milliner 
 of Louis XV's time not only made hats 
 and bonnets, but also kept a large stock of
 
 44 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 silks, muslins, and other dress fabrics, to- 
 gether with buckles, high-heeled slippers, 
 sword-knots, and other articles of wear and 
 adornment. 
 
 The benches scattered about the room 
 for the convenience of the customers are 
 copied from those in use at that time, and 
 the bandboxes are specially designed for 
 hats that were larger and much more elab- 
 orate than those that are worn at the pres- 
 ent day. The sedan chair that stops for a 
 single moment before the door is well 
 worth the attention of the serious student 
 of the Louis XV period. It is an exact 
 copy of the one used by the Polish princess 
 who became the wife of Louis and the 
 Queen of France, and it opens in such a 
 way as to admit the elaborately large head- 
 dresses which were in fashion during her 
 time. 
 
 It was during her apprenticeship in this 
 shop that Madame Du Barry, according to 
 her own confession, had her first love affair. 
 Her sweetheart was a young pastry-cook 
 named Nicolas Mothon, and his lowly sta- 
 tion in life excited the contempt of the
 
 ENTERING UPON HER CAREER 45 
 
 other young women in the shop, whose 
 adorers were either notaries or barrister's 
 clerks, students or soldiers. 
 
 That her attachment for her humble 
 lover was genuine cannot be doubted, for 
 years afterward when, at the close of her 
 remarkable career she had retired to pri- 
 vate life, this woman who had basked in 
 the supreme favor of her king wrote as 
 follows : " When I call to remembrance 
 all those who have adored me, shall I say 
 that it is not poor Nicolas, perhaps, who 
 pleased me least ! I, too, have known 
 what first love is." 
 
 In the drama there is no Nicolas the 
 pastry-cook. Wisely enough, Mr. Belasco 
 has disregarded whatever claims to priority 
 he may have possessed, and plunged at 
 once into the one true, enduring, and credi- 
 table love affair that runs through the life 
 of his heroine. 
 
 Young Cosse-Brissac appears in the very 
 first act, an ideal French lover, ardent, 
 chivalrous and handsome. As a matter of 
 fact, although history does not speak defi- 
 nitely on the subject, the young noble did
 
 46 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 not make known his love for her until 
 some years later ; but, in deference to 
 dramatic exigencies, this affair of the heart 
 is made to date from the very beginning 
 of the drama. He comes to see her in the 
 shop, and she flirts with him across the 
 counter, while pretending to wait on one 
 of the customers. He brings her flowers, 
 too, a bunch of violets, and their fra- 
 grance permeates the whole play. In as- 
 suming that this love affair was a pure and 
 honorable one throughout, Mr. Belasco does 
 not violate historical truth, though he 
 would be perfectly justified in so doing, - 
 but simply avails himself of the fact that 
 history tells us nothing positively to the 
 contrary. 
 
 Moreover, he has made this love affair, 
 with its consequent hates and jealousies, 
 the chief motive of his drama, quite prop- 
 erly giving it precedence over her more 
 mercenary relations with the king. 
 
 After the affair with the pastry-cook 
 came one with a hair-dresser named Lamat, 
 which lasted no longer than that unfortu- 
 nate gentleman's very short purse. This
 
 ENTERING UPON HER CAREER 47 
 
 young man, however, may be said to have 
 left his mark on history by virtue of a cer- 
 tain style of hair-dressing which he designed 
 expressly for his young sweetheart, and 
 which is still known 
 when known at all - 
 by her name. After 
 Lamat had impover- 
 ished himself through 
 the extravagance of 
 his young mistress he 
 fled to England to es- 
 cape his debts while 
 she entered a gam- 
 bling house kept by a 
 certain Madame Du- 
 quesnoy in the rue dc 
 Bourbon. In those 
 days the fashionable 
 Parisian gambling houses were much fre- 
 quented by women, and were generally 
 looked upon as convenient places of rendez- 
 vous for the light-minded and dissolute. 
 
 Madame Duquesnoy's gambling house 
 serves as the setting for the second act of 
 the play, and a very notable scene it is too, 
 
 of njfiche actually used 
 in the shop of Labille.
 
 48 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 done entirely in a peculiar shade of red. 
 It is a shade that cannot be found else- 
 where in this country, for it is made ex- 
 pressly for this scene in France, and the 
 silk brocade which is employed for walls, 
 curtains and furniture is dyed with it. It 
 is the only shade of red that could be used 
 as a background for a woman with such 
 extraordinary red hair as that of Mrs. 
 Carter. 
 
 It w r as while frequenting this gaming 
 house that Jeanette Vaubernier (or Lancon, 
 as she called herself now) first met, in the 
 person of the Count Jean Du Barry, a 
 man who was destined to play a most im- 
 portant part in the shaping of her strange 
 destiny, and whom Horace Walpole, in his 
 memoirs of that period, aptly characterized 
 as " a most consummate blackguard." The 
 count came from the neighborhood of Tou- 
 louse, and always claimed connection with 
 the Barry family who have resided for 
 years in the south of Ireland, as well as 
 with their kinfolk the Barrymores. He 
 had come up to Paris from Toulouse, 
 leaving behind him a wife who in after

 
 ENTERING UPON HER CAREER 51 
 
 years contemptuously refused to accept 
 any benefit whatever from the hands of 
 either her husband or the Favorite. In 
 Paris the count succeeded in obtaining a 
 government contract for supplying provi- 
 sions to the Island of Corsica, and with 
 the money which this yielded him he in- 
 dulged his tastes for gambling and other 
 debaucheries to a degree which soon gained 
 for him the name of Roue. 
 
 As time went on and his acquaintance 
 among men of wealth and fashion increased, 
 the count found other ways of earning 
 money beside his Corsican contract. One 
 source of revenue was the gambling table, 
 where at this time fortune always smiled 
 upon him, and another was the traffic in 
 young and pretty women, in which, like 
 many another nobleman and gr ancle dame 
 of that corrupt age, he took part without 
 any evidence of shame. This man is known 
 to have carried on his infamous trade as far 
 back as the time of Madame de Pompadour, 
 whom he had sought to supplant with a 
 certain Mademoiselle Dorothee, the daugh- 
 ter of a Strasburg water-carrier. That there
 
 52 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 was " money in the business " may be 
 inferred from the fact that the Count Du 
 Barry had the effrontery to ask for him- 
 self the post of Minister to Cologne on the 
 ground that it was he who had introduced 
 her to the king, and that, too, without 
 waiting to learn if she had found favor in 
 the royal eyes. 
 
 Under the protection of this gallant gen- 
 tleman Jeanette was extremely happy for 
 she was allowed to plunge heart and soul 
 into the gayest life that the French capital 
 had to offer. It was in the very midst of 
 all this gayety that something happened 
 which she records at considerable length, 
 and which is presented, in a somewhat al- 
 tered form, in the drama. One day while 
 walking in the street she was followed by 
 a young man of distinguished appearance, 
 richly clad, and with something peculiarly 
 sombre and mysterious in his face which 
 excited her curiosity. This young man 
 dogged her footsteps for two or three days, 
 until at last she turned upon him and asked 
 him what he meant by following her. 
 
 " Mademoiselle," he said in most respect-
 
 ENTERING UPON HER CAREER 53 
 
 ful accents, " promise to grant me the first 
 reasonable favor I shall ask of you when 
 you come to be Queen of France." 
 
 Smilingly she gave the required promise, 
 and then the unknown continued: "You 
 think me mad, I know ; but I pray you 
 have a better opinion of me. Adieu, 
 mademoiselle. There will be nothing 
 more extraordinary after your elevation 
 than your end." 
 
 Returning home she related the inci- 
 dent to Count Jean, who was profoundly 
 impressed. 
 
 "It is strange," he said, " but that proph- 
 ecy fits in with what has already come into 
 my own head. Why should you not be 
 queen, not the real queen, of course, but 
 as Madame de Pompadour was ? " 
 
 From this moment the scheme suggested 
 by the words of the mysterious stranger 
 took complete possession of Count Du 
 Barry's breast, and for weeks he thought 
 of it night and day, and planned a hundred 
 projects for its accomplishment. 
 
 In the drama this incident receives due 
 attention, although for pictorial purposes
 
 54 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 the prophecy is not made by the young 
 man in the street but by a picturesque old 
 witch who comes into the gaming house to 
 tell fortunes. In this act, too, we see the 
 change that has taken place in the character 
 of the young girl whose roguish follies were 
 but yesterday the delight of her companions 
 in the millinery shop, and a constant source 
 of attraction to the young men of fashion 
 who came flocking about there. She is a 
 woman now, and has set her feet, lightly it 
 is true, but none the less surely, in the path 
 that she is to follow to the end, and which 
 leads direct to the palace of Versailles. 
 
 Under the tutelage of the unprincipled 
 Du Barry she has entered upon a life of dis- 
 sipation and excitement which is already 
 beginning to tell on her, and from which 
 she recoils now and then at the thought of 
 Cosse-Brissac. 
 
 Compressed into this scene are two of the 
 crucial events of her mimic life. One, his- 
 torical, her meeting with the king, and the 
 other, invented, her quarrel with her lover 
 which definitely determines her future 
 course of life.
 
 ENTERING UPON HER CAREER 55 
 
 Concerning this gambling house period 
 of her career Madame Du Barry herself 
 says : " My entrance into the world was 
 bad ; the progress of it was like the com- 
 mencement, and I led a dissipated life." 
 
 It is during one of the moments of re- 
 flection that come now and then to such 
 as she no matter how fast the pace or 
 how deep the cup that she goes back in 
 fancy and with infinite yearning to the days 
 when she wandered through country lanes 
 and hedge-rows, selling her little trinkets 
 to whomever would buy. The sky was 
 blue then, the grass green, and the violets, 
 which she loved, and which Cosse gave 
 her, were lifting their shy heads in the 
 quiet places in the woods. 
 
 The stranger's prophecy made a profound 
 impression on Jean Du Barry. And, in- 
 deed, the prospect of supplying an incum- 
 bent for the place that had been vacant since 
 the death of Madame de Pompadour was 
 in itself enough to completely enlist the 
 sympathy and interest of a man of his 
 nature. 
 
 For to be the Favorite of the King of
 
 56 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 France meant not merely a life of indolent 
 pleasure, but power far exceeding that 
 of any queen or minister. The post car- 
 ried with it the appointment of cabinets, 
 the dismissal of statesmen and generals, the 
 disposal of the highest honors within the 
 gift of the sovereign, and unlimited drafts 
 on the public treasury. It is not easy for 
 people of the present day, who have grown 
 up under such institutions as ours, to un- 
 derstand how the French nation could sub- 
 mit year after year to such government 
 as this. 
 
 But if the sufferings of the people were 
 great, so was their vengeance, and the Reign 
 of Terror was simply a natural and inevitable 
 outcome of it all, the mad bloodthirsti- 
 ness of a wild beast which, hunted and tor- 
 mented beyond all endurance, turns upon 
 its pursuers and rends them. The blood of 
 Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette was shed 
 in atonement for the crimes of the two 
 reigns that preceded theirs. 
 
 Since the days of the elegant Pompadour 
 there had been no Favorite in the royal pal- 
 aces, though it would have been hard to
 
 ENTERING UPON HER CAREER 59 
 
 find among all the high-born dames of 
 France a single one with any pretensions 
 whatever to youth and beauty who did not 
 aspire to the post. Many there were, in- 
 deed, whose claims were artfully pressed 
 by near relatives or mercenary intermedi- 
 aries ; but the king, who was by this time 
 nearly threescore years of age, and had run 
 the whole gamut of pleasure and dissipation, 
 would have none of them. By nature 
 morose and " unamusable," as Talleyrand 
 said of the first Napoleon, as years went by 
 he grew more and more difficult to enter- 
 tain. Madame de Pompadour had been a 
 woman of wit, beauty, and talent. A con- 
 summate actress behind as well as before 
 the footlights, she had not only made her 
 way skilfully among the grand ladies of the 
 court, but had also organized the theatre of 
 the Petits Cabinets, in which she was wont 
 to entertain the king, taking the leading 
 part herself and choosing her supporting 
 company from among the ranks of the 
 higher nobility. 
 
 These performances were usually given 
 to an audience of not more than twoscore,
 
 60 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 and so great was the fame that attached 
 itself to them, that ambassadors and cabinet 
 ministers considered it an honor to be in- 
 vited to take even the smallest part in the 
 representation. 
 
 Madame de Pompadour, moreover, was 
 a woman of genuine artistic temperament, 
 and one thoroughly in touch with the spirit 
 of her luxurious, richly decorative age. 
 AVith her own hands she engraved nu- 
 merous portraits of her royal lover and 
 did much to develop the manufacture of 
 Sevres porcelain, which was begun during 
 her reign. 
 
 Jeanette Vaubernier, on the other hand, 
 was merely an unlettered Parisian grisette 
 who had been transplanted from behind 
 the counter of the milliner shop, where 
 she had bloomed like a fragrant, healthy 
 carnation, to the hot-house atmosphere 
 of a gambling house, where, among the 
 painted and wrinkled and world-worn habi- 
 tues, she seemed like an exotic of rare 
 beauty and exquisitely fresh charm. In 
 the ways of court life she had had abso- 
 lutely no experience, and she herself laughed
 
 ENTERING UPON HER CAREER 61 
 
 in unaffected merriment at the mere idea 
 of filling the place of the gifted and beau- 
 tiful Pompadour. 
 
 Nevertheless the day came when Count 
 Du Barry entered her apartment radiant 
 with delight, and informed her 
 that their dinner-table that 
 night was to be graced by no 
 less a person than that widely 
 known and infamous creature 
 of Louis XV called Lebel. 
 
 Now Label's nominal posi- 
 tion at court was merely that 
 of valet de chambre to the king ; 
 but there was no man in the 
 royal service who was more diligently 
 courted by men and women of position 
 than this same Lebel, and for no other 
 reason save that it was generally known 
 that he commanded all the approaches 
 through which a woman might hope to 
 reach the much coveted place of Favorite. 
 
 As it was necessary that the place should 
 be filled by a married woman, it was agreed 
 that Jeanette should be presented to Lebel 
 as the wife of Jean's brother Guillaume, 
 
 The corset of 
 the period.
 
 62 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 who still had his home in the country. So 
 much excited was the count over their 
 good fortune in securing a guest of such 
 distinction that he assumed personal charge 
 of Jeanette's toilette, as well as of the din- 
 ner, and for two hours he divided his time 
 between her dressing-room and the kitchen, 
 to the despair of both cook and hair-dresser. 
 He had his reward, however, for Lebel was 
 conquered by the first smiling glance of his 
 hostess, and to the count's question, " What 
 think you of our new beauty ? " he made 
 answer, as he raised her hand to his lips : 
 " She is worthy of the throne." 
 
 The company sat down to dinner, and 
 the king's valet de chambre was so warm 
 in his praise that the count began to fear 
 that he had fallen in love with Jeanette 
 himself, and would refuse to resign her to 
 any one else. 
 
 Two days after the dinner the king's 
 valet de chambre called again and, finding 
 Jeanette alone, talked to her quite seriously 
 of her personal charms and of the part 
 which a woman like herself might assume 
 under the conditions then exis'ting in France.
 
 ENTERING UPON HER CAREER 63 
 
 " Fearing to compromise myself," relates 
 Madame Du Barry, " I made no reply, but 
 maintained the reserve which my character 
 imposed upon me. I saw that he really 
 thought me the sister-in-law of Count Jean, 
 and I left him in all his error, which was ma- 
 terial to my interests. I am not clever, my 
 friends ; I never could conduct an intrigue. 
 I feared to speak or do wrong ; and, whilst I 
 kept a tranquil appearance, I was internally 
 agitated at the absence of Count Jean. 
 
 " Fortune sent him to me. He was 
 crossing the street when he saw at our door 
 a carriage with the royal livery, which 
 Lebel always used when his affairs did not 
 demand a positive incognito. This equi- 
 page made him suspect a visit from Lebel 
 and he came in opportunely to extricate 
 me from my embarrassment. 
 
 " * Sir,' said Lebel to him, when he en- 
 tered, * here is the lady whose extreme 
 modesty refuses to listen to what I dare not 
 thus explain to her.' 
 
 " ' Is it anything I may hear for her ? ' 
 said the count, with a smiling air. 
 
 " * Yes, I am the ambassador of a mighty
 
 64 
 
 power ; you are the minister plenipoten- 
 tiary of the lady, and with your leave we 
 will go into your private room to discuss 
 the articles of the secret treaty which I 
 have been charged to propose to you. 
 What says madame ? ' 
 
 " ' I consent to anything that can come 
 from such an ambassador,' was my answer, 
 and thereupon Count Jean led him into 
 another room." 
 
 In this private interview the ambassador 
 informed the plenipotentiary that the king 
 had become deeply interested in the de- 
 scription he had given to him of the 
 charms of the ravishing Madame Du Barry, 
 and that he desired an interview with her 
 in order that he might himself be the 
 judge of her beauty. 
 
 The count, naturally enough, was agree- 
 able to this proposal, and Lebel continued, 
 saying that he intended to entertain the 
 king and several of his court, including 
 the famous Due de Richelieu, at supper 
 the following evening. He had promised 
 His Majesty that Madame Du Barry should 
 be one of the party.
 
 a
 
 ENTERING UPON HER CAREER 67 
 
 The count eagerly accepted, in the 
 name of his supposed sister-in-law, the 
 valet's invitation, and no sooner had the car- 
 riage with the royal liveries rolled away 
 than he hastened to the room where the 
 one-time sweetheart of Nicolas the pastry- 
 cook sat waiting to learn the results of the 
 interview, her brain dazzled at the mere 
 thought of becoming the mistress of His 
 Most Christian Majesty, Louis XV. 
 
 " Victory ! " cried the count, delightedly 
 as he entered the chamber. " Victory, my 
 dear Jeanette ! To-morrow you sup with 
 the king ! " 
 
 And on receipt of this information, we 
 learn that dear Jeanette turned pale, lost 
 her strength completely and was compelled 
 to sit, or rather to fall into a convenient 
 chair. When she had recovered a little, 
 Count Jean told her of his interview with 
 Lebel, and advised her as to the course that 
 she should follow should she become the 
 Favorite of the king. 
 
 " To-morrow you will be everything 1 " 
 he cried with energy ; " but we must think 
 about this morrow. Make haste, noble
 
 68 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 countess. Go to all the milliners seek 
 what is elegant, rather than what is rich. 
 Be as lovely, pleasing, and gay as possible ; 
 this is the main point and God will do 
 all the rest." 
 
 Late on the following day, the Du Barrys 
 presented themselves at Versailles, and were 
 eagerly received by Label, who came for- 
 ward, saying : " Ah, madame, I began to 
 fear you might not come. You have been 
 looked for with an impatience - 
 
 " Which can hardly equal mine," inter- 
 rupted Madame Du Barry ; "for you were 
 prepared for your visitor, whilst I am yet 
 to learn who is the friend that so kindly 
 desires to see me." 
 
 " It is better that it should be so," added 
 Lebel. " Do not seek either to guess or 
 discover more than that you will here meet 
 with some cheerful society, friends of mine 
 who will sup at my house, but with whom 
 circumstances prevent my sitting down at 
 table." 
 
 " How ! " she exclaimed with affected 
 surprise. "Not sup with us ? " 
 
 " Even so," replied Lebel, and then added,
 
 ENTERING UPON HER CAREER 69 
 
 with a laugh, "he and I sit down to sup- 
 per together ! What an idea ! No, you 
 will find that just as the guests are about 
 to sit down at table I shall be suddenly 
 called out of the room, and shall only 
 return at the close of the repast." 
 
 Had Jeanette Du Barry been a woman 
 of greater experience in the ways of the 
 polite world, it is not at all unlikely that her 
 history would never have been written, and 
 that her acquaintance with royalty would 
 have begun and ended at the little supper 
 in which Louis XV bore the title of the 
 Baron de Gonesse, and at which no cover 
 was laid for the plebeian host. If there 
 was one moment in her life in which she de- 
 serves praise, and, to do her justice, there 
 were many, it was this one of such great 
 importance to her. Instead of endeavor- 
 ing to charm the man whom she knew to 
 be her king by imitating the airs, graces, 
 and affectations of a society with which he 
 had long been surfeited, instead of simulat- 
 ing the embarrassment to which every 
 woman resorted as a sort of tribute of 
 homage to royalty, she had the good sense
 
 70 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 to remain her own simple, natural self. 
 Not for years had the worn-out monarch 
 met a woman with such hoydenish exuber- 
 ance of spirit, such beauty of face and 
 form, such bright, lively chatter. With him 
 it proved a case of love at first sight. 
 
 On her return to Paris the next day 
 Jeanette received from him a magnificent 
 diamond aigrette, worth at least sixty 
 thousand francs, and the sum of two hun- 
 dred thousand francs in bank-notes. Both 
 she and Count Jean were well-nigh struck 
 dumb with astonishment at the sight of 
 these treasures, which, so the record runs, 
 he divided into two equal parts, putting 
 one into his own pocket, and the other into 
 the escritoire of his soi-disant sister-in-law. 
 And she in her turn bestowed a large dou- 
 ceur upon Henriette, her faithful maid, and 
 before nightfall contrived to squander at 
 least one-quarter of her share on all sorts of 
 beautiful but unnecessary trifles. 
 
 It is recorded also that that evening she 
 and the Count Jean sat late in grave coun- 
 cil. The different ministers and generals 
 passed in review before them, to be retained
 
 ENTERING UPON HER CAREER 71 
 
 or dismissed as they thought best ; new 
 schemes of taxation Heaven knows the 
 people were taxed beyond all endurance 
 then ! were seriously discussed, in short, 
 they began in idea to act as if sovereign 
 power in France had already been bestowed 
 upon the new Favorite. 
 
 "After all," said Jeanette Du Barry, " the 
 world is but an amusing theatre, and I see 
 no reason why a pretty woman should not 
 play a pretty part in it."
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 A NEW SUN ON THE HORIZON OF 
 VERSAILLES 
 
 HE next day Madame 
 Du Barry repaired again 
 to Versailles, where the 
 king was awaiting her 
 with such impatience 
 that he hastened to 
 greet her while she was 
 still at her dressing table completing her 
 toilet. She was installed at once in a 
 splendid apartment, attended by obsequious 
 serving women, and from that moment 
 had a regular establishment of attendants 
 appointed for her special use. 
 
 That night, as the two sat in conver- 
 sation over the supper-table, the king 
 informed his new mistress, with a degree 
 of fervor that left no shadow of doubt in
 
 A NEW SUN ON THE HORIZON 75 
 
 her mind, that she was now no longer an 
 obscure, friendless woman, but a personage 
 very, very dear to the heart of the sovereign 
 of France. To use the exact expression of 
 Lebel, she was "the new sun which had 
 arisen to illumine the horizon of Versailles." 
 
 The Due de Richelieu lost no time in 
 doing homage to her, and brought with 
 him the Due d'Aiguillon, at that time one 
 of the most powerful nobles in France. 
 Moreover, women of fashion solicited places 
 about her person, among them a certain 
 Madame Saint Benoit, who became first 
 lady of the bed-chamber, and remained with 
 her during the whole period of her reign, 
 her former maid, the faithful and beloved 
 Henriette, contenting herself with the 
 second place of honor. 
 
 A few days after the installation of the 
 new Favorite, Lebel died in such a sudden 
 manner that many believed him to have 
 been poisoned. This was probably not the 
 case, but it is certain that he became 
 alarmed at the king's infatuation for his 
 new mistress, and took it upon himself to 
 explain to the monarch that she was not
 
 76 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 worthy of his regard ; that she was not of 
 noble or even of decent birth, and that she 
 had lied in representing herself to be a 
 married woman, whereas she was merely 
 the latest sweetheart of Count Du Barry. 
 So incensed did King Louis become at this 
 frankness on the part of his faithful ser- 
 vitor that he actually threatened him with 
 a pair of tongs and drove him from his 
 presence, bidding him see that the lady 
 was supplied with a husband without de- 
 lay. It is not improbable that the excite- 
 ment of this interview had much to do 
 with Lebel's sudden death, but he lived 
 long enough to transmit his sovereign's last 
 command to Count Du Barry, and he, in 
 his turn, hastened to write to his brother 
 Guillaume, a young officer who was living 
 at the family home in Toulouse, and ap- 
 prised him of the brilliant marriage which 
 he had arranged for him. 
 
 Guillaume, who seems to have shared his 
 elder brother's willingness to do anything 
 that was likely to augment his revenues, 
 hastened to Paris, bringing with him the 
 power of attorney by which his mother
 
 A NEW SUN ON THE HORIZON 77 
 
 authorized him, in accordance with French 
 law, to contract marriage with such person 
 as he might think fitting. The contract of 
 marriage was immediately 
 prepared, but it was deemed 
 politic to delay the cere- 
 mony for a short time 
 in order that 
 a new certificate 
 of birth, less shameful than 
 the real one quoted on a 
 previous page, could be 
 forged and substituted. 
 
 In this document, 
 which, with the conni- 
 vance of persons high in 
 power, was actually en- 
 tered in the baptismal 
 register of the parish of 
 
 _ r . Orange woman. 
 
 Vaucouleurs, Jeanette is 
 described as the daughter of Jean Jacques 
 Gomard de Vaubernier and Anne Becu, 
 called Quantigny, and three years are taken 
 from her age. 
 
 These arrangements having been made, 
 the contract was duly drawn up and signed,
 
 78 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 and on the first of September the marriage 
 was celebrated. Immediately after the 
 ceremony, the husband returned to Tou- 
 louse, and there is every reason to believe 
 that he went with well-filled pockets. Per- 
 sons of his class did not do business merely 
 for the sake of their health in those days. 
 As for the bride, she returned to Versailles 
 and took possession of Lebel's quarters, 
 moving from them a short time later to the 
 apartment that had just been vacated by 
 the Princess Adelaide. These rooms were 
 situated in the second story, conveniently 
 near the apartments of the king, who could 
 pass from one to the other without being 
 seen. During the remainder of the year 
 1768 the liaison was conducted in strict 
 privacy, as the king was in deep mourning 
 for the queen, who had recently died, and 
 French etiquette forbade any public dem- 
 onstration of affection until the end of a 
 fitting period of grief. 
 
 That Louis XV was from the very first 
 thoroughly infatuated with Jeanette Du 
 Barry there can be no doubt. He loaded 
 her with presents, allowed her to make un-
 
 A NEW SUN ON THE HORIZON 79 
 
 limited drafts on his treasury, and cham- 
 pioned her cause in the many vexatious 
 quarrels which the jealousy of the other 
 courtiers forced upon her. 
 
 " How you all must have hated me in 
 those days," she said, years after the king's 
 death, while speaking to one of the great 
 princesses of the realm. 
 
 "Not at all, my dear," was the amiable 
 reply. " It was not that we hated you, but 
 that we all wanted your place." 
 
 Jeanette Du Barry must have been a 
 consummate actress, for while she was 
 simulating an ardor for her lover that 
 seemed fully as great as his own for her, 
 she kept her senses about her to a degree 
 that enabled her to make an estimate of 
 his character that is well worth recording 
 here. Nor does it read at all like the 
 rhapsody of a love-sick young woman. 
 
 " Louis XV, King of France, was one 
 of those sentimental egotists who believed 
 he loved the whole world, his subjects, and 
 his family ; whilst in reality the sole en- 
 grossing object was self. Gifted with many 
 personal and intellectual endowments which
 
 80 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 might have disputed the palm with the 
 most notable personages of the court, he 
 was nevertheless devoured by ennui, which, 
 by the way, he regarded as one of the 
 necessary accompaniments of royalty. De- 
 void of taste in literary matters, he despised 
 all connected with belles-lettres and es- 
 teemed men only in proportion to the 
 number and richness of their armorial bear- 
 ings. With him, M. de Voltaire ranked 
 beneath the lowest country squire, and the 
 very mention of a man of letters was terri- 
 fying to his imagination, because it dis- 
 turbed the current of his own ideas. 
 
 " He revelled in the plenitude of power, 
 yet felt dissatisfied with the mere title of 
 king. He ardently desired to win renown 
 as the first general of the age, and enter- 
 tained the utmost jealousy of Frederick II 
 of Prussia of whose exploits he spoke with 
 undisguised spleen and ill-humor. The 
 habit of commanding, and the prompt 
 obedience he had always met with had 
 long since palled upon his mind, and he 
 cared nothing for what was so easily ob- 
 tained. This satiety and listlessness were
 
 In Comedy Vein.
 
 A NEW SUN ON THE HORIZON 83 
 
 by many attributed to a melancholy dis- 
 position. He disliked any appearance of 
 opposition to his will, not that he particu- 
 larly resented the opposition, but that he 
 knew his own weakness, and feared lest he 
 should be compelled to make a show of 
 a firmness which he knew he did not 
 possess. 
 
 " For the clergy he entertained the most 
 superstitious veneration, and he feared God 
 because he had a greater dread of the devil. 
 In the hands of his confessor he believed 
 was lodged absolute power to confer upon 
 him the unlimited license to commit any 
 and every sin. He greatly dreaded pam- 
 phlets, satires, epigrams, and the opinion of 
 posterity, and yet his conduct was that of 
 a man who scoffs at the world's judgment." 
 
 There is much truth in this intimate por- 
 trait of the man who, for nearly sixty years, 
 was the constitutional ruler of France. No 
 woman could have found a more powerful 
 protector than he was ; but his very power 
 made the recipient of his favor a person to 
 be hated, envied, and intrigued against by 
 the other factions in the court.
 
 84 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 So it happened that while there were 
 many who, like the Due de Richelieu, 
 sought to ingratiate themselves with the 
 Favorite, and to warm themselves in the 
 rays of the new sun that had arisen on 
 the horizon of Versailles, there were others 
 who ranged themselves against her in open 
 or secret hostility. Chief among these 
 were the then prime minister, the Due de 
 Choiseul, and his sister, the Duchesse de 
 Grammont. Between this powerful couple 
 and the Favorite there was carried on a 
 war which eventually brought about the 
 dismissal of the prime minister from office, 
 and ceased only with the death of the king 
 and the downfall of his mistress. 
 
 The real cause of this enmity may be 
 traced to the endeavors of the duchess, 
 aided by her powerful brother, to obtain a 
 mastery over the king, and secure for her- 
 self the post which had been vacant since 
 the days of La Pompadour. In further- 
 ance of this excellent project, the Due de 
 Choiseul had exercised eternal vigilance in 
 regard to the moral welfare of the king, 
 and had taken pains to nip in the bud any
 
 A NEW SUN ON THE HORIZON 85 
 
 indication of a passion that seemed likely 
 to be lasting or serious. 
 
 On one occasion, about a year after 
 Madame de Pompadour's death, an attempt 
 was made by a court faction hostile to his 
 own to install in the vacant place a young 
 woman named Mademoiselle d'Esparbes, 
 who had the most beautiful hands in Ver- 
 sailles, and who had charmed the aesthetic 
 fancy of the sovereign by the dainty grace 
 with which she employed her slender, beau- 
 tiful fingers in picking cherries. She had 
 already been honored with a suite of apart- 
 ments at Marly, and all seemed to be going 
 well, when Monsieur de Choiseul, who had 
 been patiently biding his time, stopped her 
 one day on the grand staircase, and, in the 
 presence of the whole court, chucked her 
 under the chin and said brutally : " How 
 is your business going on, my girl ? " 
 
 These words literally killed the whole 
 scheme, for after this open affront the 
 king, whose interest in the woman was 
 very slight, did not deem it prudent to go 
 any further, and a few days later her apart- 
 ment was taken away from her, and she
 
 86 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 herself received a letter under the royal 
 seal, exempting her from paying court to 
 the king, and commanding her to retire to 
 the home of her father, the Marquis de 
 Lussan, at Montauban. 
 
 After this episode the Due de Choiseul 
 felt tolerably sure that his own place was 
 secure, and that it might be possible for him 
 to install his sister in the place that she 
 coveted. But Louis XV was tired of the 
 government of political women. He had 
 had enough of that sort of thing during 
 the Pompadour reign, and had long since 
 declared that no earthly power would 
 induce him to take a mistress from the 
 ranks of the nobility. But in spite of his 
 increasing coldness toward her, the duchess 
 continued in her efforts to charm him in a 
 manner so open as to excite the raillery of 
 the entire court circle. 
 
 The intrigue with Du Barry, she and her 
 brother at first regarded with contempt. 
 They thought that they saw in it the cun- 
 ning handiwork of their natural enemy, 
 Richelieu. And so both of them held 
 aloof from the newcomer. Very soon,
 
 A NEW SUN ON THE HORIZON 87 
 
 however, the prime minister realized that 
 a new power had arisen that might, in the 
 end, prove a formidable rival to his own. 
 He saw that he had no longer to deal 
 with a passing caprice on the part of the 
 king, but with a passion that had taken a 
 strong hold on the royal heart and was 
 growing stronger, instead of weaker, every 
 day. 
 
 It was a serious discovery for him, but 
 to his proud sister, who saw the place that 
 she had coveted for herself filled by a mere 
 waif from a milliner shop, it was maddening 
 beyond her powers of endurance. 
 
 In a rage, she stirred her brother on to 
 open hostilities, and made war herself by 
 means of pamphlets, street ballads, vulgar 
 verses and satirical newspaper articles. She 
 raked up the past life of the Favorite, 
 spiced it liberally with her own imagina- 
 tion, which appears to have been not over 
 clean, and had it set to music under the 
 name of " La Bourbonnaise." She even 
 imbued Voltaire, who had always been an 
 ally of her brother, with the idea for the 
 pamphlet, " The King of Bedlam," in which
 
 88 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 his wit passed over Madame Du Barry and 
 found a target in the king himself. 
 
 Fully as bitter in their hostilities as the 
 Duchesse de Grammont, although they did 
 not deign to show it as she did, were the 
 royal princesses, the daughters of the king. 
 This is scarcely to be wondered at, espe- 
 cially when we consider the recent death 
 of their mother. Nor is it surprising to 
 learn that these ladies united in vigorous 
 remonstrance when their father appro- 
 priated for the use of his new love the 
 apartments which belonged to his daughter, 
 the Princess Adelaide. 
 
 That Madame I3u Barry was able to 
 stem the tide of opposition that was raised 
 against her during the early part of her 
 reign, seems little short of marvellous when 
 we consider her low origin, previous man- 
 ner of life, and utter inexperience in the 
 ways of a royal court. Her success, though 
 due largely to her own good sense and 
 good nature, probably owed a good deal to 
 the constant care with which her brother- 
 in-law, Count Jean, watched over her from 
 his home in Paris, and gave her counsel
 
 A NEW SUN ON THE HORIZON 91 
 
 that helped her over every difficulty she 
 encountered. Although thoroughly de- 
 based, he was nevertheless a man of talent 
 and energy, and he knew too, that the 
 services which he could 
 render his former mis- 
 tress, who in her new 
 life could not distinguish 
 friend from enemy, were 
 of such value that she 
 could well afford to pay 
 him handsomely for 
 them. 
 
 Between 
 Versailles 
 and Paris a 
 corps of mes- 
 sengers was 
 in continual 
 service, car- 
 rying from 
 MadameDu 
 Barry letters 
 of inquiry 
 regarding 
 
 CV en t n e Objects seen in the milliner's shop.
 
 92 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 smallest details and bringing in return the 
 most explicit and minute instructions from 
 her crafty and experienced brother-in-law. 
 
 It is doubtful if the actress ever studied 
 the great part in which she has won such 
 signal triumphs on the mimic scene any 
 more conscientiously and carefully than 
 this young shop-girl did that of the extraor- 
 dinary one that she was called upon to 
 play at such short notice and with so little 
 experience. Certainly both women were 
 supremely fortunate in the matter of a 
 stage director. 
 
 So well did the king's Favorite follow 
 the instructions of her director, so much 
 native aptitude did she display for her call- 
 ing, that during the critical year which 
 elapsed between her first meeting with the 
 king and her formal presentation at court 
 she did not once gratify her enemies by 
 making herself ridiculous. 
 
 Moreover, she had found time and oppor- 
 tunity to strengthen her claims to a like 
 recognition by means of a none too accu- 
 rate genealogy of the Du Barry family, 
 which had been prepared in England, under
 
 A New Fancy,
 
 A NEW SUN ON THE HORIZON 93 
 
 the inspiration of the same brain that had 
 conceived the idea of the false baptismal 
 entry, and claiming for the Du Barry's 
 blood-kinship with the famous Irish family 
 of Barrymore. She had also obtained from 
 the hand of her former lover some pam- 
 phlets reflecting on the character of her 
 arch enemies, the Duchesse de Grammont 
 and her brother the Due de Choiseul.
 
 PRESENTED AT COURT 
 
 ER position in the per- 
 sonal regard of the king 
 having become secure, 
 the Favorite's next step 
 was to secure the much- 
 coveted and all-impor- 
 tant honor of a formal 
 presentation at his court. And in this, 
 as in all other matters affecting her inter- 
 ests, she received the support and counsel 
 of her brother-in-law. 
 
 To a woman in her anomalous position, 
 this formal presentation at court was a 
 matter of vital importance. Without it she 
 was merely the king's mistress, the fancy 
 of a passing moment, and, like others who 
 hang on princes' favor, liable to be set 
 aside the very instant that a fresh face 
 found favor in the royal eyes.
 
 PRESENTED AT COURT 95 
 
 Once presented at court, however, she 
 had the right to live openly in the palace 
 of her sovereign, to take her place in the 
 world as a woman whose position in soci- 
 ety was assured, to entertain ambassadors, 
 statesmen and generals, give orders to the 
 ministers, in short, to have a voice in all 
 matters of state. 
 
 From the very first Jean Du Barry had 
 urged her not to cease in her efforts to 
 secure for herself this distinction. He 
 knew far better than she did how much it 
 meant to a woman playing such a fascinat- 
 ing and hazardous game as the one in which 
 she had taken a hand. When she seemed 
 content with liberal presents of money and 
 jewelry, when she expressed perfect confi- 
 dence in the continuance of royal favor, 
 simply because she found herself lodged in 
 apartments that communicated easily with 
 those of the king, it was Jean Du Barry 
 who spurred her on to fresh exertions by 
 showing her that all this meant no more 
 than the capricious love of a man who had 
 been lavishing money and diamonds on 
 women all his life.
 
 96 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 Of course , this presentation was opposed 
 by a very strong court faction. The pow- 
 erful Due de Choiseul sought in every 
 possible way to prevent it, as did his sister, 
 the Duchesse de Grammont. The daugh- 
 ters of the king, who had been inexpressi- 
 bly mortified by their father's open lack of 
 respect for the memory of his dead queen, 
 were no less bitter in their opposition, and 
 in their efforts they found many powerful 
 allies in the most exalted court circles. 
 These and other persons of the highest 
 importance formed what seemed like an 
 impenetrable wall about the throne of 
 France. So great indeed was the opposi- 
 tion from within the ranks of his own fam- 
 ily, as well as from those of his advisers, 
 that the king, who seems to have had rare 
 skill in the difficult art of keeping out of 
 family rows, summoned his grand almoner, 
 Monsieur de Vauguyon, and addressed him 
 as follows : " La Vauguyon, you are a man 
 of a thousand. Listen attentively to me. 
 I wish much that the Countess Du Barry 
 should be presented ; I wish it, and that 
 too in defiance of all that can be said and
 
 PRESENTED AT COURT 99 
 
 done. My indignation is excited before- 
 hand against all those who shall raise any 
 obstacle to it. Do not fail to let my 
 daughters know that if they do not comply 
 with my wishes, I will let my anger fall 
 heavily on all persons by whose counsels 
 they may be persuaded ; for I only am 
 master and I will prove it to the last. 
 These are your credentials, my dear duke, 
 add to them what you may think fitting. 
 I will bear you out in anything." 
 
 The prelate undertook this delicate com- 
 mission, having first obtained from Madame 
 Du Barry her promise that the weight of 
 her influence would at all times be thrown 
 in favor of the clerical party, to which he of 
 course belonged, and not with their natural 
 enemies, the philosophers or free-thinkers. 
 
 Armed with this assurance, he soon ob- 
 tained from Madame Louise, the most pious 
 and obedient of the king's daughters, her 
 promise that she would yield to her father's 
 wishes. The princesses Sophie, Adelaide, 
 and Victoire he found less complacent, and 
 it was only by the exercise on his part of 
 the most adroit diplomacy and the most
 
 100 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 convincing and pious eloquence that he 
 succeeded in persuading them that it was 
 their duty, as daughters of the king, to 
 set an example in obedience. Finally the 
 four sisters met at the house of Madame 
 Adelaide and decided that as the king had 
 expressed himself so positively on the sub- 
 ject of the presentation they would receive 
 his mistress with every mark of courtesy. 
 
 The almoner hastened to Madame Du 
 Barry and informed her of his success. 
 Her joy was so great that she embraced 
 him with the greatest w r armth and a few 
 days later sent him a Chinese mandarin, 
 fashioned in porcelain, on whose finger was 
 placed a jewelled ring worth nearly forty 
 thousand francs. 
 
 The opposition of the royal princesses 
 having been silenced, the next difficulty 
 that lay in the path that led towards the 
 throne was that of obtaining a sponsor. 
 The etiquette of the French court, very 
 strict in this as in all other respects, de- 
 manded that every woman presented should 
 have as a sponsor some other woman of 
 title who was herself a member of the
 
 PRESENTED AT COURT 101 
 
 king's court. Ordinarily, it was not diffi- 
 cult for a candidate to obtain, from among 
 her own friends, a noblewoman qualified 
 for the post of sponsor and willing to 
 assume it. In the case of Madame Du 
 Barry, however, the opposition was so 
 strong and her notoriety so great that 
 every woman who was approached on the 
 subject either refused on one pretence or 
 another, or else demanded for her services 
 a sum so exorbitant as to stagger even such 
 an extravagant woman as the Favorite. 
 One lady who was applied to demanded a 
 large sum of money for herself, the com- 
 mand of a regiment for her son, and for 
 her husband, a government and the Order 
 of the Holy Ghost. Another, the Mar- 
 quise de Castellane of that day, stipulated 
 that she should receive a gift of half a 
 million francs and be created a duchess. 
 
 A presenteuse was found at last, thanks 
 to the indefatigable energy of the Due 
 de Richelieu, in the person of a certain 
 Madame de Beam, who was a woman of 
 great avarice and a chronic litigant as well. 
 This lady was at this time one of the par-
 
 102 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 ties in a law-suit involving several hundred 
 thousand francs, and Madame Du Barry's 
 influence with the chancellor of the king- 
 dom was a consideration that had great 
 weight with her. In addition to this in- 
 fluence, she demanded for herself a hundred 
 thousand francs and a station in the royal 
 household, and for her son, the command 
 of a regiment. 
 
 Even when her demands had been ac- 
 ceded to, this avaricious countess had the 
 effrontery to require the king's written 
 promise, and it was only by an artful strat- 
 egy on the part of Madame Du Barry that 
 the matter was finally adjusted. 
 
 But although a sponsor had been found, 
 the opposition of the Choiseul party was 
 not silenced, and it was not until the mis- 
 tress made a personal and tearful appeal to 
 the king, aided by the influence of her 
 friend the Due de Richelieu, that that 
 weak and vacillating monarch consented to 
 the ceremony which should give her once 
 and for all the status that she desired. 
 
 The presentation took place on the 22d 
 of April, 1769, and on that day vast num-
 
 PRESENTED AT COURT 103 
 
 bers of people went out from Paris to 
 Versailles to witness the passage of the 
 Favorite's carriage to the court. The ex- 
 citement and interest manifested in this 
 purely ceremonial act is not difficult to 
 understand when we remember that to 
 the clerical party, against which the Choi- 
 seul ministry had always arraigned itself, 
 Madame Du ISarry was not a mere courte- 
 san, the toy of an indolent, pleasure-loving 
 prince, but a veritable Moses sent for the 
 salvation of the chosen people of the 
 Church. In her, strange as it may seem 
 to us of a different civilization, were centred 
 to a large extent the hopes of the Jesuits, 
 for had she not already given assurance 
 through the grand almoner, who pleaded 
 her cause with the royal princesses, that her 
 influence would be thrown with that party ? 
 Therefore thousands of people gathered at 
 the gates of the park in Versailles and 
 waited patiently for the appearance of the 
 carriage with her well-known livery. 
 
 Within the palace the king, nervous and 
 ill at ease, stood waiting her coming, won- 
 dering at the delay, for the hour had long
 
 104 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 since passed, and annoyed by the clamor 
 that was borne to his ears from the throngs 
 about the gates. Choiseul, standing beside 
 him, grew more and more exultant as each 
 passing minute diminished the chance of 
 the presentation taking place that day. 
 On the other side of the royal person stood 
 Richelieu in his capacity of first gentle- 
 man, watching through the window with 
 the corner of his eye and hoping, almost 
 against hope, that the familiar equipage 
 would come within his range of vision. 
 
 " What means all this uproar ? Why are 
 all those people gathered about the gates ? " 
 demanded the king of his minister. 
 
 *' Sire," replied Choiseul, in sarcastic tones 
 that were almost jubilant, " the people have 
 learned that Madame Du Barry is to be 
 presented to-day, and they have hurried 
 here from every point of the compass in 
 order that they may at least witness her 
 arrival, as they are not able to be at the re- 
 ception which your Majesty will give her." 
 
 A moment later Louis XV glanced at 
 the clock, and then opened his lips for the 
 purpose of countermanding or postponing
 
 PRESENTED AT COURT 
 
 105 
 
 the presentation, but at this instant Riche- 
 lieu caught sight of the Favorite's carriage 
 crossing the great court and exclaimed, 
 " Sire, here is Madame Du Barry." 
 
 Sedan chair. 
 
 Woman-like, and knowing, too, the vast 
 importance of looking her best that day, 
 she had lingered too long at her dressing- 
 table. But, if the chronicles of that period 
 are to be believed, the results were well 
 worth the sacrifice of time. For neither 
 canvas nor marble has ever fitly repro-
 
 106 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 duced those charming seductions of form 
 and that exquisite beauty of face in which 
 were realized the ideal of eighteenth cen- 
 tury beauty. There was one portrait of 
 her, however, which, though it but faintly 
 pictured her charms, nevertheless moved 
 Voltaire to exclaim, " The original was 
 made for the gods ! " 
 
 Her hair was long, silky, curling like the 
 hair of a child, and blonde with an exquisite 
 auburn tint. Her eyebrows and eyelashes 
 were dark and curly, and beneath them the 
 blue eyes, which one seldom saw quite 
 open, looked out with coquettish sidelong 
 glances. The nose was small and finely 
 cut, and the mouth a perfect Cupid's bow. 
 The neck, the arms, her feet and her hands 
 reminded one of ancient Greek statuary, 
 while her complexion was that of a rose- 
 leaf steeped in milk. She carried with her 
 a delicious atmosphere of intoxicating, vic- 
 torious, amorous youth. 
 
 Her costume was a triumph of the dress- 
 maker's art and was of the kind called by 
 the women of her century " a fighting cos- 
 tume." Diamonds worth 150,000 francs,
 
 PRESENTED AT COURT 109 
 
 the king's gift of the day before, still fur- 
 ther adorned her and contributed to a 
 beauty that was so radiant and dazzling 
 that even her bitterest enemies were able 
 to comprehend the power that she exercised 
 over the king. The Countess de Beam, 
 also gorgeously attired, appeared with her, 
 delighted to have a share in the pomp and 
 splendor of the occasion. The royal prin- 
 cesses, true to the promise given their 
 father, received her with a degree of amia- 
 bility and courtesy which carried conster- 
 nation to the hearts of the Choiseul faction. 
 They would not suffer her to kneel before 
 them, but hastened to raise her in the 
 most gracious manner when she began to 
 perform that act of homage. 
 
 The king himself was even more gracious 
 in his manner towards her. She had made 
 a bet with him the day before, that he 
 would not permit her to bend the knee to 
 him, for he had threatened to permit her 
 to fall at his feet without making the least 
 effort to prevent it. Now, as he took her 
 hand when she began to stoop before him, 
 she exclaimed, " You have lost, sire."-
 
 110 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 " How is it possible to preserve my dig- 
 nity in the presence of so many graces ? " 
 he exclaimed in a voice loud enough to be 
 heard by those who stood near by. 
 
 That evening Jeanette Du Barry enter- 
 tained at her house a score of the highest 
 dignitaries in the land, in the presence of 
 whom the king embraced her warmly, say- 
 ing : " You are a charming creature," a 
 compliment which was quickly echoed on 
 all sides, and the next day all Paris knew 
 that her place by the king's left hand was 
 permanent and secure. 
 
 In the mere act of this presentation, in 
 the cabals which favored or opposed it, in 
 the great significance with which it was 
 invested, and in the splendor of the function 
 itself, there is material for a great drama. 
 In the play of Du Barry, however, it is 
 not touched upon.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE PETIT LEVEE 
 
 N the third act of his play 
 the dramatist teaches 
 the present generation, 
 in a manner so vivid 
 that no one can see it 
 without carrying away 
 a lasting recollection of 
 it, what it meant to be the favorite of a 
 Bourbon king a century and a half ago. 
 In this act Madame Du Barry is shown 
 in the bedroom of her apartments at Ver- 
 sailles, holding one of thepetits levees which 
 were of such ordinary occurrence in those 
 days. By this time the presentation has 
 taken place, her power is acknowledged by 
 all, and there is no prince or princess of 
 the blood royal, no woman of the haute 
 noblesse, no dignitary of the church, state,
 
 THE STORY OF'DU BARRY 
 
 or army who is above coming there to do 
 her homage. 
 
 To the student of history, this gathering 
 in the bedchamber of the most talked-of 
 Frenchwoman of her day is a scene of the 
 deepest interest. She is still in the heart 
 of her quarrel with Choiseul, and h^R visi- 
 tors this morning are many of them from 
 the ranks of her own personal supporters. 
 
 The most distinguished of these guests, 
 next to the king himself, is the polished 
 and sin-worn old diplomat, the Due de 
 Richelieu, who comes tripping in to pay 
 his court to the Favorite with all the 
 smirks and graces of a nobleman of the old 
 regime. Accomplished as he is in the arts 
 of the courtier, familiar by long experience 
 and practice in the school of diplomacy, 
 with the consummate and subtle art of mask- 
 ing his feelings and intentions behind a face 
 that smiles and gives no sign, he has not 
 been clever enough to deceive the woman 
 whose knowledge of court customs has been 
 gained within a single twelvemonth. In 
 the vernacular of to-day, she has " sized him 
 up" long ago, and her impressions of his
 
 THE PETIT LEVEE 113 
 
 character have been handed down to us 
 in the following words : 
 
 " This nobleman," she says, " when in 
 his seventy-second year, had preserved all 
 his former pretensions to notice. His suc- 
 cess in so many love affairs a success 
 which he never could have merited had 
 rendered him celebrated. He was now a 
 superannuated coxcomb, a wearisome and 
 clumsy butterfly. When, however, he 
 could be brought to exercise his sense by 
 remembering that he was no longer young, 
 he became fascinating beyond description, 
 from the finished ease and grace of his 
 manner and the polished and piquant style 
 of his discourse. Still I speak of him as a 
 mere man of outward show, for his attain- 
 ments were superficial, and he possessed 
 more of the jargon of a man of letters than 
 the sound reality. He possessed a most 
 ignoble turn of mind. All feelings of an 
 elevated nature were wanting with him. 
 A bad son, an unkind husband, and a worse 
 father, he could scarcely be expected to 
 become a steady friend. All whom he 
 feared, he hesitated not to trample under-
 
 114 THE STORY OF UU BARKY 
 
 foot, and his favorite maxim M r as, ' We 
 should never hesitate to set our foot upon 
 the necks of all those who might in any 
 way interfere with our progress.' ' Dead 
 men tell no tales,' he would always add. 
 Between himself and Voltaire, who called 
 him the ' tyrant of the tennis court,' a strong 
 personal enmity always existed." 
 
 Another important visitor is Monsieur de 
 Maupeou, at that time the Lord Chancellor 
 of the king, and of whom Madame Du 
 Barry says : 
 
 " Monsieur de Maupeou possessed one of 
 those firm and superior minds, which, in 
 spite of all obstacles, changes the face of 
 Empires. Ardent, yet cool ; bold, but re- 
 flective ; neither did the clamors of the 
 populace astonish, nor obstacles arrest him. 
 He went on in the direct path which his will 
 chalked out. Quitting the magistracy, he 
 became its most implacable enemy, and, 
 after a deadly combat, he came off con- 
 queror. He felt that the moment had 
 arrived for freeing royalty from the chains 
 which it had imposed upon itself. It was 
 necessary, he has said to me a hundred
 
 .
 
 THE PETIT LEVEE 117 
 
 times, for the kings of France in past ages 
 to have a popular power on which they 
 could rely for the overturning of the feudal 
 power. ' Before fifty years,' he said to me 
 once, 'kings will be nothing in France, 
 and parliaments will be everything.' As 
 brave, personally, as a marshal of France, 
 his enemies, and he had many, called him 
 a coarse and quarrelsome man. Hated by 
 all, he despised men in a body, and jeered 
 at them individually. Insensible to the 
 charms of our sex, he only thought of us 
 casually and as a means of relaxation." 
 
 Another notable figure at the petit levee 
 is the Abbe Terray, the Minister of Fi- 
 nance. This astute and utterly unprin- 
 cipled politician was not slow in allying 
 himself with the faction that gathered 
 about the Favorite, and she, on her part, 
 could not have found a more docile or use- 
 ful supporter. As Controller- General of 
 the Finances of the Kingdom, he literally 
 held the purse-strings, and he was politic 
 enough to loosen them whenever the king's 
 mistress commanded. That he was fre- 
 quently called upon to do so, may be
 
 118 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 inferred from the richness of the bedcham- 
 ber and its furnishings, as well as from the 
 fact that during the five years of her reign, 
 Madame Du Barry's personal expenditures 
 amounted to over twelve million livres, a 
 sum of money whose purchasing capacity 
 about equalled that of the same number of 
 dollars at the present day. Her dress- 
 maker's bill alone amounted to a quarter 
 of a million livres a year, and she had 
 already found that silver, even when it was 
 the work of the very best craftsmen in 
 France, was not good enough for her, and 
 must be replaced by solid gold. There 
 was a toilet service ordered in the same 
 precious metal, and the government paid 
 to Roettiers, the greatest carver of plate in 
 France, the sum of fifteen hundred gold 
 marks as an advance payment, before he 
 would undertake the work. But scandal, 
 caused by this piece of useless extrava- 
 gance, put a stop to the work, and the gold 
 toilet service was never finished. 
 
 It is not unlikely that an understanding 
 existed between Madame l)u Barry and the 
 Abbe Terray, through which the Minister 

 
 THE PETIT LEVE'E 119 
 
 of Finance secured for himself a percentage 
 of what he permitted her to squander. It 
 is a matter of history that his mistress, 
 known in fashionable Parisian circles by 
 the name of La Sultane, received money, 
 presumably in collusion with the Abbe, 
 for every act of favor or justice solicited 
 from the department which he controlled. 
 Indeed, this degraded creature and Madame 
 Sabatin, the mistress of the Due de la 
 Vrilliere, kept open shop for the sale of 
 preferments of all kinds. 
 
 The Count Jean Du Barry is also a visi- 
 tor at the petit levee, nor is it surprising to 
 see him in quest of money. The class of 
 men to which he belongs is 
 one that in all ages has found 
 its chief support in the earn- 
 ings of frail women. It is a 
 class, by the way, which has 
 not yet passed from off 
 the face of the earth, and 
 has its representatives in 
 the good society of the 
 present day as well as in 
 the slums. Jean Du ... 
 
 Punch bowl.
 
 120 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 Barry, who has always been known as a 
 man of extravagant tastes, is now rapacious 
 in his demand, and, from what we know 
 of his character, we do not feel that the 
 dramatist has strayed far from historical 
 accuracy when he reveals him in the light 
 of a blackmailer. 
 
 His Eminence, the Papal Nuncio, is here 
 too in the mimic scene, as he frequently 
 was in the flesh when the real Madame 
 Du Barry held her petit s levees in the great 
 palace of Versailles. Moreover he seems 
 to be a trusted adviser, as well as a friend 
 who lends the weight of his influence in 
 her behalf in her quarrel with the king. 
 
 Another guest is the young girl of six- 
 teen, the Princess Marie Antoinette, to 
 whose memory clings the tragic pathos of a 
 queen's martyrdom. 
 
 " She appeared to me less beautiful and 
 fair than pleasant and ladylike," says 
 Madame Du Barry, in describing the im- 
 pression made on her by this young prin- 
 cess on her first arrival from Austria. 
 "Her hair was of a reddish auburn, but 
 her skin was of a dazzling white. She had
 
 THE PETIT LEVEE 121 
 
 a beautiful forehead, a delicious set of teeth, 
 a well-formed nose, and eyes full of vivac- 
 ity and expression. Her air was majestic 
 and dignified. She walked well ; her figure 
 was well shaped, and her gestures were 
 more free and unstudied than those of the 
 princesses of the blood royal of France." 
 
 This princess, however, did not have agood 
 opinion of the Favorite, toward whom her 
 conduct at first was so frigid that the 
 king summoned the Austrian ambassador, 
 Mercy- Argenteau, explained to him his 
 wishes, and bade him use whatever influence 
 he possessed to induce her to conform to 
 them. The ambassador, alarmed at the 
 prospect of anything like coolness between 
 the two royal houses, and knowing how 
 much trouble can be brought about by the 
 obstinacy of one young woman, instantly 
 despatched letters to his sovereign, the 
 Empress Maria Theresa, in which he ex- 
 plained to her the precise state of affairs at 
 the French court. He described the in- 
 fatuation of the king for the new Favorite, 
 and took pains to relate the manner in 
 which His Majesty showed his displeasure
 
 122 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 when the least slight was put upon her. 
 In view of these conditions, he begged the 
 empress to use her influence with her 
 daughter, and persuade her to address a few 
 civil words to a woman whom the king had 
 honored by his regard. The empress saw 
 the force of his argument, and wrote at 
 once to her daughter, urging her to remem- 
 ber what was due the king at whose court 
 she was living. At last, in obedience to 
 her mother, Marie Antoinette consented 
 to receive the Favorite ; and statesmen, 
 who had foreseen, as an outcome of her 
 obstinacy possible trouble with Austria, 
 breathed freely again. 
 
 Whether or no the dauphiness ever 
 overcame her feeling of repugnance toward 
 Madame Du Barry to such an extent as to 
 attend one of her pctits levees, is a fact on 
 which history throws but little light, so we 
 may accept the picture as the dramatist has 
 painted it for us. Certainly her presence 
 in this scene lends a new interest to it. 
 
 Denys, the faithful servant who follows 
 Madame Du Barry's changing fortunes to 
 their bitter end, is a character who really
 
 THE PETIT LEVEE 125 
 
 existed, and who was deeply attached to 
 his mistress. 
 
 Another type of servitor was Zamore, 
 the black dwarf, whom we see squatting on 
 a rug beside the Favorite's bed. Creatures 
 of this sort were frequently maintained in 
 luxurious houses in those days, in Paris and 
 in London as well. We encounter them, 
 more than once, in the pictures which 
 Hogarth painted of dissolute London life 
 of exactly that time. Zamore received 
 innumerable favors at the hands of Madame 
 Du Barry and her royal lover, but, in the 
 end, turned against her, and at her trial 
 gave testimony which contributed mate- 
 rially to her conviction. 
 
 Madame Du Barry had received Zamore 
 at the hands of the usually penurious Due 
 de Richelieu, who turned him over to her, 
 clad in his native garb of pleated grass and 
 adorned with bracelets, earrings and neck- 
 lace of solid gold, fashioned in barbaric style. 
 He was a hideously ugly little savage with 
 no more respect for persons than one 
 would have looked for in a monkey. He 
 was funny, however, in a rude simian way,
 
 126 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 and could make grimaces and distort his 
 puny body in such a way as to set his 
 mistress off into roars of laughter. He 
 had scant respect for her visitors, and was 
 wont to amuse himself and the company 
 by snatching the wig from the head of 
 some aged courtier, leaving his victim a 
 bald target for the laughter of the rest. 
 
 Pleasantries of this order seem to have 
 been rather to the taste of his Most Chris- 
 tian Majesty, Louis XV, for history tells 
 us that once, in appreciation of some par- 
 ticularly entrancing exhibition of this subtle 
 and engrossing form of humor, he rewarded 
 the young African with the post of gov- 
 ernor of the Chateau of Louveciennes, an 
 office carrying with it a salary of one thou- 
 sand crowns. 
 
 The Jeanette Du Barry who figures in 
 this act has made distinct progress along 
 her chosen path since we last saw her in 
 the gambling house. It is true that she 
 is, at heart, the same wanton, good-hearted, 
 good-tempered young woman whose chief 
 concern is for the pleasures of this life ; but 
 now her destiny is assured, whereas her life
 
 THE PETIT LEVEE 127 
 
 at the gaming house was merely a prelimi- 
 nary glance into the brilliant, dissolute and 
 luxurious world that lay before her. Now 
 she has realized the very highest dream 
 that any woman of her class ever dared 
 to indulge in. The all-powerful king of 
 France is madly in love with her, and 
 there is nothing, from the dismissal of a 
 minister to the price of a jewelled bauble, 
 that she may not ask and receive at his 
 hands. 
 
 I declare that I can think of no more in- 
 structive spectacle, nor of one better worth 
 the consideration of a philosopher, than that 
 of this pampered mistress reclining in her 
 splendid bed, with the gorgeously capari- 
 soned ape, Zamore, by her side, and minis- 
 ters, prelates and royalty gathering to do 
 her honor. 
 
 The chief interest in this act is one of 
 love, and here the inventive genius of the 
 dramatist comes into play. Having taken 
 the love between Jeanette Du Carry and 
 Cosse-Brissac as the chief motive of his 
 drama, Mr. Belasco avails himself of his 
 dramatic license to assume that there was
 
 128 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 jealousy on the part of the king, and, logi- 
 cally enough, that that jealousy resulted in 
 a bitter quarrel between himself and his 
 mistress. He shows us, too, how the heart 
 of woman, even though that woman be the 
 Favorite of a king, must break all artificial 
 bonds imposed by high station and self- 
 interest and rule her whole life. 
 
 It is reasonable enough to assume that 
 Jeanette Du Barry had more than one love 
 affair beside that supreme one with the 
 king, during the period of her reign. Hos- 
 tile historians, who pander to that horror 
 of immorality and taste for reading about 
 it which characterizes Anglo Saxon virtue, 
 ascribe to her a legion of sweethearts, and 
 her own memoirs indicate that she was not 
 altogether true to the king. 
 
 Certainly she must have had plenty of 
 idle time on her hands ; for, although she 
 had succeeded Madame de Pompadour in 
 the royal esteem, she was wise enough not 
 to challenge comparison between herself 
 and her predecessor by mixing too much 
 in affairs of state. 
 
 The Pompadour had been a woman of
 
 THE PETIT LEVEE 129 
 
 distinct influence in the affairs of the world. 
 Not only had she amused the king with 
 her theatre, her conversation, her supper 
 parties, and the brilliant men and women 
 whom she gathered together for his enter- 
 tainment, but she had also sought to relieve 
 him of many of the serious duties of his 
 exalted position. Her life had been one 
 of constant intrigue ; of intimacy with 
 cabinet ministers, statesmen and men of 
 business ; of interest in politics, in short, 
 her role was one of actual power openly 
 exercised. 
 
 Madame Du Barry, on the other hand, 
 was content with her position as Favorite, 
 and, apart from her struggle with the 
 Choiseuls and the various squabbles with 
 the ladies of the court into which she was 
 drawn, she did not figure prominently in 
 the affairs of her time. Her chief delight 
 was in spending money, and nowhere is the 
 real history of the reign more accurately 
 summed up than in the four volumes of 
 her expense accounts purchased some years 
 ago by the National Library. 
 
 Like every woman of her class, she was
 
 130 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 passionately fond of the luxuries of life, and 
 utterly heedless of their cost so long as 
 there was some one to pay the bills for her. 
 In these accounts we read of dresses cost- 
 ing from one to ten thousand livres, of a 
 watch costing nearly six thousand francs, 
 of the same sum spent for the gildings on 
 her bed, of lace that cost three or four 
 thousand livres for each dress, of superb 
 furniture, of bronzes, of everything, in 
 short, that the richly decorative age of 
 Louis XV could supply. 
 
 The morning receptions in her bedcham- 
 ber were not given over altogether to the 
 visits of personages of distinction. It was 
 at this time that tradesmen came to her 
 with their newest and choicest wares, and 
 workmen received instructions and sub- 
 mitted to her the half-completed articles 
 of beauty and utility which she had 
 ordered, and which she loved to inspect 
 from time to time. That her taste was 
 good, is evident from such of her posses- 
 sions as are still in existence. Nor is this 
 to be wondered at, when we remember the 
 great influence that the demi-monde has
 
 c
 
 THE PETIT LEVEE 133 
 
 always exerted on the dress, jewelry and 
 other ornaments of the polite world. 
 
 The de Goncour Memoirs have this to 
 say about Moreau's picture of a fete given 
 by the Favorite in honor of her royal lover 
 at her Chateau of Louveciennes, December 
 27, 1771 : "Throughout the apartment, all 
 white and gold, a vapor of light seems to 
 rise from the lustres hanging in front of 
 the mirror between the columns, shedding 
 on them flashes to which other flashes 
 respond in other mirrors, handfuls of flame 
 which fling into the air four figures of 
 women carved in marble by Pajou, Le 
 Count, and Moineau, and standing on mar- 
 ble socles with golden wreaths. Around 
 the table, surrounded by curious lookers-on, 
 behind the round backs of the armchairs and 
 the clubs of the chattering guests' 
 
 perukes, the attendants, the 
 
 servants, the %^fifc ^^ persons carry- 
 ing dishes, 
 keep coming 
 and going rapidly, 
 some in yellow 
 straw liveries, others 
 
 Slippers.
 
 134 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 in crimson velvet coats with facings, with 
 blue collars and wristbands, with white 
 boot-tops and white gaiters, three-cornered 
 hats on their heads, and swords by their 
 sides. You see even little Zamore in a 
 turban with feathers, a rose-colored vest 
 and breeches, gliding towards a lady who 
 has doubtless left some bonbons on her 
 plate. The crystal, the silver, the struc- 
 ture representing an opera scene, which 
 rises above the tablecloth, the cordons bleus, 
 the diamonds, the smiles on the faces of 
 the guests, all keep the table in a glow ; 
 and in the brilliant light shed around them 
 is seen, by the side of Madame Du Barry's 
 pretty countenance, the handsome, noble 
 face of Louis XV." 
 
 There is more than a suggestion of all 
 this in the superb scene which constitutes 
 the fourth act of Mr. Belasco's play, the 
 act in which the highest point of dramatic 
 interest is attained. It is in this act, too, 
 that the dramatist touches the deepest and 
 most significant note in his entire work. 
 
 It is not easy to convey, in mere words, 
 an adequate idea of the splendid picture of
 
 THE PETIT LEVEE 135 
 
 luxury that is set before us here under the 
 rays of a smiling harvest moon. Up and 
 down the marble steps and across the stage, 
 ambassadors, noblemen, and court ladies 
 come and go, laughing gayly and with no 
 thought save for the caprice or intrigue or 
 ambition of the moment. Opera-dancers 
 whirl and pirouette on tiptoe for the en- 
 tertainment of the guests ; clowns, all in 
 white, come somersaulting across the floor ; 
 tables are spread in sumptuous fashion ; a 
 huge bowl of flaming brandy punch is 
 served, and the guests amuse themselves 
 by throwing about illuminated balls. At 
 a signal from the mistress, servants, bearing 
 a score of rich candelabra, come upon the 
 scene, and the stage is lit up with that real 
 candlelight which electricity cannot coun- 
 terfeit. 
 
 Never, perhaps, has our stage presented 
 such a luxurious and gorgeous spectacle as 
 this. But beneath it all there is an omi- 
 nous note that we, whose vision has been 
 made clear with the light of after-knowl- 
 edge, cannot help seeing. The writing is 
 on the wall, but there is no Daniel to
 
 136 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 interpret it. The keen, glittering knife 
 that the actress sees in fancy from the 
 moment when she first comes on the stage, 
 is hanging over a score of those bewigged 
 and bepowdered heads. 
 
 Valois, the young revolutionary, has 
 already been brought in by the guards, 
 and, before he can be taken away to execu- 
 tion, has contrived to fling in the faces of 
 his captors, a word of defiant warning ; but 
 they give him no heed. Now, however, 
 from without the gates, comes the noise of 
 angry mutterings and discontent, for the 
 people, starved and over-taxed to support 
 all this riotous waste, are clamoring for 
 bread. Their murmurings reach the ears 
 of Louis the Well Beloved, and he comes 
 striding out of his palace to demand its 
 cause. 
 
 " Am I king or not, that this rabble 
 should disturb my pleasure ? " he cries 
 haughtily. And which one of us is there 
 so dull and devoid of imagination as not 
 to catch a glimpse of the gleaming knife 
 conjured up by his words ? 
 
 The soldiers go out to disperse the mob,
 
 THE PETIT LEVEE 
 
 137 
 
 and their clamor ceases ; the distant roll 
 of the drums tells us that the name of 
 Valois has been written in his own blood 
 upon the long roll of those who have died 
 for principle ; the king and his bejewelled 
 mistress again lead the court in the mad 
 hunt after pleasure, but that clamor at the 
 outer gates is one that will not down. A 
 powdered head will fall for every drop of 
 Valois blood that has been shed to-night.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 A PRIME MINISTER'S DOWNFALL 
 
 N the month of July of 
 the year 1769, Sir Hor- 
 ace Walpole writes as 
 follows: "Well! I am 
 going to a quiet little 
 town where they have 
 had nothing but one 
 woman to talk of for this twelvemonth, 
 I mean Paris. Madame Du Barry gains 
 ground, and yet Monsieur de Choiseul car- 
 ries all his points. He has taken Corsica, 
 bought Sweden, made a pope, got the 
 Czarina drubbed by the Turks, and has 
 restored the Parliament of Bretagne, in 
 spite of the Due D'Aiguillon, for revenge 
 can make so despotic and ambitious a man 
 as Choiseul even turn patriot, - and yet 
 at this moment I believe he dreads my
 
 o 
 
 .1 
 
 v. 
 
 3
 
 A PRIME MINISTER'S DOWNFALL 141 
 
 Lord Chatham more than Madame Du 
 Barry." 
 
 Time has shown, however, that the great 
 minister who was at one time the virtual 
 master of France had more to fear from 
 the French courtesan than from the Eng- 
 lish statesman. The struggle between him- 
 self, egged on by his sister, the Duchesse de 
 Grammont, on the one side, and the Favo- 
 rite, aided by her own faction, on the other, 
 resulted at last in the dismissal of the min- 
 ister. Before this final catastrophe, how- 
 ever, occurred a contretemps between the 
 two women that may be said to have served 
 as a prelude to his downfall. 
 
 As may be easily believed, the duchess 
 was one of the first to pay court to the 
 dauphiness, Marie Antoinette, on her ar- 
 rival at Versailles, and so skilful was she 
 in the art of making herself agreeable, that 
 the princess conceived a strong liking for 
 her, and consulted her on innumerable sub- 
 jects relating to her life at court. 
 
 Now it is related that this young princess 
 was so innocent in regard to worldly wicked- 
 ness, that she once artlessly asked who Mad-
 
 142 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 ame Du Barry was, and what her precise 
 status was in the entourage of Louis XV. 
 It is not likely that the Duchesse de Gram- 
 mont, who had perhaps been waiting for a 
 convenient opportunity to express herself, 
 permitted the future Queen of France to 
 remain longer in the dark concerning the 
 character and antecedents of her grand- 
 father's mistress. Possibly she was one of 
 those raconteurs who, as the Irish say, 
 " never let a story go out without a cocked 
 hat and a cane." Certain it is that noth- 
 ing could equal the abhorrence with which 
 Marie Antoinette regarded the Favorite, 
 and the latter was not slow to attribute 
 this feeling to the efforts of her arch enemy, 
 the duchess. She complained to the king 
 again and again, but her lover did not like 
 to be drawn into quarrels not his own, and 
 it was not until the duchess affronted the 
 woman whom she detested in his presence, 
 and in such a manner that he felt himself 
 aggrieved, that he exerted his authority. 
 
 It was at a moment when both ladies 
 were on their way to a levee held by the 
 dauphin, and the duchess, while trying to
 
 A PRIME MINISTER'S DOWNFALL 143 
 
 pass the other, set her foot upon her train 
 in such a way as to tear it to tatters, after 
 which, without a word of apology, she went 
 on her way laughing loudly. It is difficult 
 to imagine what Madame Du Barry would 
 not have done to the duchess if she had not 
 chanced to read in the face of the king, 
 who had been a witness of the affair, an 
 expression of rage and offended dignity 
 which told her that she could safely leave 
 the task of avenging her outraged feelings 
 in his hands. 
 
 That very day the king summoned the 
 Duchesse de Grammont to his presence, 
 sternly rebuked her for what she had done, 
 and then banished her from his court for a 
 period of two years. Even the remon- 
 strances and entreaties of her brother failed 
 to have any effect, and the next day the 
 duchess departed, and the polite world 
 realized that Madame Du Barry's influ- 
 ence with the king was even greater than 
 had been believed. 
 
 If it had not been for the persistence of 
 Monsieur D'Aiguillon and others who, like 
 himself, were influenced by their own per-
 
 144 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 sonal ambition, it is doubtful if Madame 
 Du Barry would have persisted in working 
 to obtain the overthrow of the Due de 
 Choiseul. The triumph over his sister was 
 enough to satisfy a woman of her light, 
 easy-going nature who had no desire to be 
 dragged from her toilet-table and the mat- 
 ters which were of serious moment to her, 
 to take part in political cabals which she 
 imperfectly understood and for which she 
 cared but little. 
 
 At the very outset of her career at Ver- 
 sailles she had diligently paid court to the 
 great minister, to whom she wrote amiably 
 and in the humble tone of one who seeks 
 the friendship and regard of a superior. 
 She interested herself on behalf of his 
 brother, the Comte de Stainville, whom she 
 permitted to secure the reversion of the 
 Governorship of Strasburg, and she even 
 went so far as to ignore the contemptuous 
 attitude of the Duchesse de Grammont and 
 the fierce war of insulting ballads, pam- 
 phlets, and epigrams which the Choiseuls, 
 both brother and sister, waged against her. 
 Moreover, she did her best to make the
 
 
 
 The Favorite of Royalty.
 
 A PRIME MINISTER'S DOWNFALL 145 
 
 minister understand that her influence with 
 the king was such as to make her a person- 
 
 Screen and toilet table. 
 
 age of far greater influence than himself, 
 and she warned him that if he continued 
 
 10
 
 146 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 to struggle against her, he must inevitably 
 get the worst of it. 
 
 Meanwhile the exiled duchess was trav- 
 elling through France under pretence of 
 health-seeking, and busying herself with 
 the various parliamentary leaders whom 
 she met on the way. Naturally enough 
 the D'Aiguillon faction took it upon them- 
 selves to see that the king was informed 
 in regard to everything that the roving 
 duchess did and said, arid although this 
 knowledge made him cool towards the 
 adviser in whose talents he firmly believed, 
 nevertheless he continued to consult him, 
 to work with him, and to invite him to eat 
 and drink with him. 
 
 All this having been made known to 
 D'Aiguillon by his faithful pensioner, he 
 redoubled his efforts with the Favorite, and 
 besought her, as she valued her own power 
 at court, to use every art that she possessed 
 to extort from the king the lettre de cachet 
 which should send the Due de Choiseul 
 into ignominious exile. 
 
 Never before, perhaps, did the mistress 
 of a Bourbon king work with less zest
 
 and malevolence for the banishment of a 
 prime minister than did Madame Du Barry 
 for that of Choiseul. She was kept at 
 her work entirely by the persistency of 
 D'Aiguillon, who teased her night and day, 
 trying to interest her in his own ambitions 
 and hates, and seeking by every means in 
 his power to instil into her soft heart and 
 easy-going disposition some of the poison 
 of his own vindictiveness. 
 
 Roused at last by the ceaseless prompt- 
 ings of the ambitious D'Aiguillon, and the 
 strong pressure brought to bear on her by 
 everybody who had anything whatever to 
 gain by Choiseul's fall, she began to harass 
 her royal lover, and more than once used 
 her blandishments with such effect that 
 the lettre de cachet was actually written at 
 night, only to be torn up in the morning 
 when sober sense banished the fumes of 
 wine from the royal brain. It was not, 
 however, until the arts of political intrigue 
 had been nearly exhausted that the party 
 of the opposition found a mode of attack 
 which compelled the king to the belief that 
 it was necessary for him to take speedy
 
 150 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 and definite action. Choiseul had always 
 sought to impress the king with the idea 
 that his highest ambition for France was 
 to keep her at peace with all the rest of 
 the world. Against this impression the 
 opposition skilfully directed their forces of 
 attack by circulating the rumor that the 
 prime minister was really endeavoring to 
 restore his waning prestige by involving his 
 country in war. In proof of this, they 
 declared that he was trifling with the con- 
 fidence of Spain, and at the same time 
 intriguing against England. The king 
 well knew that a very few weeks before 
 his prime minister had actually placed on 
 the council table the scheme for a descent 
 on England which had been prepared 
 under the direction of Monsieur de Eroglie 
 in the year 1766, and had himself brought 
 forward witnesses to assure the king of its 
 practicability. 
 
 The confidence of Louis XV in his 
 minister having thus been shaken, Madame 
 Du Barry's turn arrived, and she, availing 
 herself of a favorable moment, told him 
 that if he wished to know the truth in
 
 A PRIME MINISTER'S DOWNFALL 151 
 
 regard to the negotiations with Spain, 
 he had only to send for the Abbe de 
 la Ville, M. de Choiseul's clerk, who 
 was thoroughly familiar ^with the whole 
 matter. 
 
 Now this Abbe de la Ville had begun 
 life as a Jesuit, and had left that order to be- 
 come a secular priest. When the great 
 Fenelon went to Holland as ambassador, 
 he accompanied him as the instructor of 
 his children ; but in a very short time his 
 taste for intrigue and diplomacy made him 
 a person of consequence in the eyes of 
 the ambassador, and he became secretary 
 to the embassy, from which post he was 
 subsequently recalled to take the posi- 
 tion of chief clerk in the office of Foreign 
 Affairs. 
 
 Accustomed as he was to having a voice 
 in all matters, great and small, the Abbe de 
 la Ville had been much chagrined through 
 the Due de Choiseul's habit of keeping 
 his own counsel, and of writing even the 
 most trivial of despatches in his own hand. 
 The D'Aiguillon faction knew therefore 
 that he could be depended on to support
 
 152 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 any measure aimed at the downfall of a 
 minister who despised his counsel and his 
 experience, and actually stood in the way 
 of his advancement. 
 
 On the 21st of December, 1770, the 
 abbe was summoned with much secrecy to 
 the king's cabinet, and asked, in the pres- 
 ence of Madame Du Barry, what the Due 
 de Choiseul's intentions were in regard to 
 Spain. 
 
 To this he made answer that the de- 
 spatches of the prime minister had not 
 been shown to him, but that if His Majesty 
 desired to learn for himself what they con- 
 tained, he had only to order his minister 
 to write a letter to the King of Spain, as- 
 suring him of King Louis's desire for 
 peace and determination to avoid war at 
 all costs. 
 
 " If Monsieur de Choiseul really desires 
 peace, he will do this at once," said the Abbe 
 de la Ville ; " but if he refuses on one pre- 
 text or another, it may be taken as evidence 
 that he desires war." 
 
 King Louis repaired at once to the Coun- 
 cil Chamber, and ordered Monsieur de
 
 I
 
 A PRIME MINISTER'S DOWNFALL 155 
 
 Choiseul to write a letter to the King of 
 Spain assuring him of the peaceful inten- 
 tions of his royal brother of France. Now 
 the prime minister had, as the D'Aiguillon 
 party well knew, just sent a courier to 
 Spain with a conciliatory letter, and there- 
 fore he replied to the king, saying that 
 before writing again it would be best to 
 await an answer to the letter which he had 
 just sent. Thereupon the king arose and 
 left the chamber without another word and 
 in a manner that showed that his anger 
 had been aroused. 
 
 Two days later, after signing a state 
 paper, the king threw the pen angrily on 
 the table, instead of giving it back to the 
 Due de Choiseul, who had handed it to 
 him. This sign of displeasure towards 
 his prime minister was noticed by those 
 present, so that the court was by no means 
 surprised to learn, two days later, of the 
 minister's downfall. 
 
 The lettre de cachet in the king's hand- 
 writing which was delivered by the Due 
 de la A r rilliere to the minister was couched 
 in the following words :
 
 156 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 I order my cousin, the Due de Choiseul, to 
 place his resignation of the post of Secretary of 
 State in the hands of the Due de la Vrilliere and 
 to withdraw to Chantellout until there is a fresh 
 order from me. Louis. 
 
 AT VERSAILLES this 24th of December, 1770. 
 
 The victory won, the Favorite showed 
 not the least particle of malice toward the 
 statesman whom she had helped to depose. 
 On the contrary, when the malevolent 
 D'Aiguillon sought to deprive him of 
 his post of Colonel- General of the Swiss 
 Guards without any indemnity, Madame 
 Du Barry used her influence with the king 
 against this scheme, and never rested in her 
 personal solicitations until she had induced 
 her lover to bestow upon the fallen min- 
 ister a hundred thousand crowns in money 
 and a pension of sixty thousand livres.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE WAGES OF SIN 
 
 HE wages of sin is 
 death," and no man 
 ever received payment 
 for a long life of self- 
 ishness, cruelty and 
 sensuality in such hid- 
 eous coin as that meted 
 out to His Most Christian Majesty, Louis 
 XV of France. 
 
 Death came to him in its most terrible 
 form in the spring of 1774, after a series of 
 warnings that had begun more than a year 
 before in a sermon preached in the chapel 
 in Versailles during Holy Week by the 
 Abbe de Beauvais in which he flagellated 
 the iniquities practised at court, and even 
 dared to hint at the turpitudes of the king 
 himself in a Biblical allusion concerning
 
 158 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 the sensual indulgence of Solomon. Some 
 weeks later the same young priest, who 
 had now gained the protection of the re- 
 ligeuse daughter of the king, Madame 
 Louise, preached a sermon on death which 
 made a profound impression on the worn- 
 out monarch in whose breast remorse was 
 already beginning to assert itself. 
 
 In this sermon the courageous and truth- 
 telling young abbe recalled to the king's 
 memory the death of the Duke of Bur- 
 gundy, of the dauphin and dauphiness, of 
 the queen, of his mistresses whom he had 
 the grace not to name in short, of all 
 those who had been nearest and dearest to 
 him ; and he gave him to understand that 
 his turn had long since come, and that the 
 Reaper stood waiting, sickle in hand, for 
 his harvest. And the king, listening to 
 these ghastly warnings, reflected with a 
 keen sense of dread that he was at that 
 time in his sixty -third year a period re- 
 garded as one of unusual fatality to men of 
 his mode of life. 
 
 The year 1774 came round, bringing 
 with it several happenings that served to
 
 
 
 R 
 
 1
 
 THE WAGES OF SIN 
 
 161 
 
 upset the equanimity of the sovereign and 
 
 of the courtesan to whom he clung closer 
 
 and closer as the months rolled on. Early 
 
 in the year the Genoese ambassador, whom 
 
 the king was accustomed to see every day 
 
 of his life, died suddenly. 
 
 D'Aimentieres followed 
 
 him to the grave within a 
 
 very brief time, and shortly 
 
 afterwards the Abbe de la 
 
 Ville, Choiseul's old enemy, 
 
 on coming to Versailles to 
 
 thank King Louis for a 
 
 political appointment which 
 
 he had given him, was 
 
 stricken with apoplexy and 
 
 died under his very eyes. 
 
 Lastly, his old friend and 
 
 associate, the Marquis de 
 
 Chouvlain, fell dead at his feet during a 
 
 game of picquet. 
 
 It was, therefore, with his always super- 
 stitious mind filled with all manner of 
 sinister forebodings that the king took his 
 seat in the midst of a brilliant throng of 
 
 courtiers to hear the last of the Lenten 
 
 11 
 
 Zamore.
 
 162 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 sermons preached by the same young abbe 
 whose warning voice had awakened in his 
 heart the terrors of death and of the life to 
 come scarcely a year before. From his 
 place in the pulpit this brave young apostle 
 of truth looked down into the royal pew, 
 and, fixing his eyes upon his sovereign, 
 addressed him directly, as was the custom 
 at that time : " Yet forty days, sire, and 
 Nineveh shall be overthrown." The king 
 turned pale, and slowly and solemnly the 
 preacher again enunciated the awful menace 
 of the Prophet. Then, growing fervidly 
 eloquent as he developed his subject, he 
 compared Paris to Nineveh, denounced the 
 infidelity of the age, the luxury and wan- 
 tonness in high places, and urged on all the 
 need of immediate repentance and purer, 
 higher living. Finally, speaking himself 
 with the voice of the real Prophet, he 
 solemnly warned the king and all his 
 wanton court that without repentance on 
 their part "the evil otherwise too surely 
 coming on France could never be averted." 
 And the king listened with increasing 
 pallor, sick with a nameless terror, as one
 
 THE WAGES OF SIN 163 
 
 who saw in a vision the reign of blood and 
 terror and the gleam of the executioner's 
 knife under which his successors were to 
 pay the penalty for the sins of generations 
 of Bourbons. 
 
 It was, therefore, with minds full of dis- 
 mal forebodings that the king and his mis- 
 tress entered upon the month of April, 
 1774, the month in which the Almanac de 
 Liege for that year had already announced 
 that " a great lady who played a role at a 
 foreign court would cease to do so." 
 
 The king was moody and melancholy in 
 the extreme, and spoke frequently about 
 his sickly state of health, the possibility of 
 death, and what seemed to disturb him 
 more than all the rest the frightful 
 account he would have to render to the 
 Supreme Being for the employment of the 
 life which had been given him in this 
 world. 
 
 The Favorite, who, like all women of 
 her class, was intensely superstitious, said 
 again and again : " I shall be glad when 
 this nasty month of April has passed," and 
 the king declared that he should not know
 
 164 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 an easy moment until after the forty days 
 predicted by the Abbe de Beauvais. 
 
 As the days went on, the king's melan- 
 choly increased, and his mistress, realizing 
 that it behooved her to drag him from the 
 depths of his despair, lest religious melan- 
 cholia should take possession of his mind, 
 organized a little pleasure trip to Trianon 
 for the closing days of the month. They 
 reached that charming retreat on the 26th, 
 and on the following day His Majesty 
 complained of headache and severe pains, 
 and was unable to follow the chase on 
 horseback. He returned from the hunt in 
 a carriage, and at once sought repose in the 
 Favorite's apartments, believing that he 
 was suffering from an attack of acute 
 indigestion. 
 
 Historians differ as to the origin of the 
 king's malady. The Abbe Badeau relates 
 that on the day of his arrival at Trianon 
 the king noticed a very pretty little girl 
 who was gathering grass for her cow. 
 Coming over to her he lifted up her head- 
 dress and hair, and found that she had very 
 fine eyes, and it occurred to him that she
 
 THE WAGES OF SIN 165 
 
 would look very odd if dressed in the garb 
 of a fine lady. The young girl was accord- 
 ingly dressed like a lady in court apparel, 
 and her face covered with rouge and 
 patches. In this garb she supped and 
 drank with the king, and the next day fell 
 ill of smallpox and died. Other historians 
 speak of the daughter of the gardener at 
 Trianon and of a young girl who had been 
 brought to the Pare aux Cerfs at the king's 
 desire. The truth is that at that time 
 there was an epidemic of smallpox in the 
 neighborhood, and the king very naturally 
 fell a victim to it. 
 
 During the day the king's malady grew 
 worse, and in the night he sent for his prin- 
 cipal physician, Lemonier, who found him 
 feverish, but showing no symptoms of a 
 nature to cause uneasiness. The Favorite, 
 dreading more than anything else the awful 
 fear of death which came crowding into the 
 heart of her lover with every attack of ill- 
 ness, urged him to remain at Trianon and 
 allow her to nurse him, without sending 
 word to the royal family. The king con- 
 sented to this, but, in the mean time, news
 
 of his indisposition reached Versailles, and 
 the dauphin hastened to despatch to his 
 grandfather's aid the surgeon La Martiniere, 
 who he knew exercised a strong influence 
 over the king and who was also an enemy 
 of Du Barry's. 
 
 La Martiniere reached Trianon on the 
 28th of April, and, being a man of strong 
 mind and imperative habits of speech, had 
 no difficulty in prevailing upon the vacil- 
 lating king to set out at once for Versailles. 
 He himself supervised the preparations for 
 the journey, and under his direction the 
 king was lifted from his couch to a carriage 
 and driven to Versailles, where he was 
 immediately put to bed. The members of 
 his family, including his daughters and the 
 dauphin, came at once to see him ; but after 
 a very brief conversation with each he sent 
 them away for the night, and spent the rest 
 of the evening with Madame L)u Barry. 
 The next day the doctors, who were still 
 ignorant of the nature of his malady, 
 prescribed three bleedings, which left the 
 patient in an enfeebled condition, and un- 
 doubtedly did much to hasten his death.
 
 THE WAGES OF SIN 169 
 
 The next day, the 30th, one of the doctors, 
 drawing near to the king with a wax candle, 
 discovered on his cheeks and forehead red 
 spots in which pimples were already begin- 
 ning to form, and knew at once that the 
 disease with which he was afflicted was 
 smallpox. Very much relieved at having 
 actually learned the nature of his complaint, 
 the physicians announced their discovery in 
 tones that were so re-assuring that it was 
 generally believed at court that the king's 
 illness meant only a ten days' confinement 
 to his room. Bourdeau, however, Madame 
 Du Barry's physician, shook his head doubt- 
 ingly when the news was brourht to him, 
 and exclaimed : " Smallpox at sixty -four 
 with a constitution like the king's is a 
 terrible disease ! " 
 
 And now outside the door of the sick 
 room began a fierce struggle between the 
 two rival parties of the court. The party 
 that rallied about Madame Du Barry made 
 every effort to push into the sick room the 
 woman whom the king loved, in order that 
 the impression might prevail that her influ- 
 ence with him was still paramount.
 
 170 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 The anti- Barry ites, on the contrary, cried 
 out against the continuance of the scandal, 
 demanded that the sacrament should be 
 administered, and called upon the pious 
 Monsieur de Beaumont to follow the ex- 
 ample of the Bishop of Soisons who, thirty 
 years before, when the king was thought to 
 be mortally ill at Metz, drove from his 
 side his then mistress, the Duchesse de 
 Chateauroux. 
 
 " Politics makes strange bedfellows," and 
 so it happened that in " this jobbing and this 
 trafficking in the conscience of the king," 
 as the Cardinal de Luymes called it, we 
 find the devotees and the Jesuits banding 
 together to prevent the king from receiving 
 communion, while the Choiseul party of 
 philosophers and sceptics are in league to 
 compel the Archbishop of Paris to admin- 
 ister it. 
 
 On the 2d of INI ay, the archbishop 
 arrived from Paris, bringing with him 
 the sacrament, and hesitating between his 
 conscience, which demanded of him the 
 expulsion of the Favorite, and a sense of 
 gratitude for the services which that Favor-
 
 THE WAGES OF SIN 171 
 
 ite had rendered to his party by the over- 
 throw of Choiseul and the elevation of 
 D'Aiguillon. Before the arrival of the 
 archbishop, Richelieu, D'Aiguillon, and 
 Madame Du Barry held a conference in 
 which it was decided to do their best to 
 prevent the administration of the sacra- 
 ment. The king's daughter, Madame 
 Adelaide, was easily won over to their side 
 by the doctors of the Du Barry party who 
 warned her that to even propose the sacra- 
 ment might easily give the patient his 
 death blow. Therefore the Due de Rich- 
 elieu met the archbishop as he was about 
 to enter the king's ante-chamber, and im- 
 plored him not to cause the death of their 
 sovereign by what he termed, with charac- 
 teristic flippancy, a " theological proposi- 
 tion." Then, with the graceful cynicism 
 which so well became him, he offered to 
 make his own confession to the prelate, 
 promising to regale him with such a collec- 
 tion of sins as he had not listened to in 
 many a year. Becoming serious again, 
 he represented to the archbishop that to 
 send away the Favorite was to insure the
 
 172 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 triumph of Choiseul, and that to injure 
 the woman who was a friend was also to 
 serve the faction that had always been out- 
 spoken in its enmity to the ecclesiastics. 
 As a final argument, he repeated to him 
 what Madame Du Barry had said to him 
 the night before : " Let the archbishop 
 leave us alone, and he shall have a cardi- 
 nal's hat. I will take care of that, and will 
 answer for it." 
 
 The result of the Due de Richelieu's 
 logical and convincing eloquence was that 
 the archbishop entered the sick room, 
 remained there for about a quarter of an 
 hour, and then went away without speak- 
 ing about the sacrament. The king was 
 greatly reassured by his silence on the sub- 
 ject of the Eucharist, and demanded that 
 Madame Du Barry should be summoned 
 at once to his presence. When she arrived, 
 he kissed her beautiful arms and hands with 
 a greater degree of pleasure than he had 
 shown toward her since the beginning of 
 his illness. 
 
 Disappointed but still undaunted, the 
 Choiseul faction turned to the Cardinal de
 
 THE WAGES OF SIN 173 
 
 la Roche-Aymon, and urged him to pro- 
 pose the sacrament. By this time they 
 had rallied to their support many of the 
 more devout of the clergy, among them 
 the Bishop of Car- 
 cassonne, who 
 appealed to 
 the cardi- 
 nal, in the 
 name of the 
 holy cross, 
 not to allow 
 King Louis to 
 pass out of the 
 world without 
 being anointed, 
 and called upon 
 him to so deport 
 himself in the sick chamber 
 that the king should, before 
 he died, show an example of repentance to 
 his country which he had scandalized. 
 
 As a result of the great influence thus 
 brought to bear on him, the Archbishop of 
 Paris visited the king on the 3d of May, 
 and there held a long conversation with
 
 174 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 him, the result of which was that in the 
 evening when Jeanette Du Barry, whom he 
 had sent for a few hours before, entered 
 his chamber, radiant in the belief that 
 her hold on him was as strong as ever, he 
 beckoned her to his side and whispered : 
 " Madame, I am very sick ; I know what 
 I have to do ; I do not want to begin 
 over again the scene at Metz, and there- 
 fore we must part. Go to Ruel, to 
 Monsieur D'Aiguillon's ; and be sure that 
 I shall always feel for you the tenderest 
 friendship." 
 
 A moment after she had gone weeping 
 from his presence, he called for her in a 
 voice that showed he was beginning to 
 become delirious. " Ah ! she is gone," he 
 said sadly, when he realized that she was 
 no longer in the room. " Then we must 
 go, too at least we must pray to Saint 
 Gene vie ve." 
 
 The reign of Jeanette Du Barry had 
 ended. And with it had ended, too, the 
 dynasty of left-handed queens of France, 
 which began with Diane de Poictiers, and 
 perished from off the face of the earth
 
 Alone with the King.
 
 THE WAGES OF SIN 177 
 
 when the last of the line was thrust from 
 the royal bedchamber. 
 
 But if the end of the Du Barry reign 
 had been commonplace, in what terms shall 
 we characterize the final passing of Louis 
 XV, known to his subjects of half a century 
 before as Louis the Well Beloved, and now 
 stretched upon his gorgeous bed with the 
 hand of death upon him and his mind a 
 prey to the most awful terrors ? 
 
 Just one week has passed since he turned 
 his back upon his mistress and cried in his 
 extremity for the consolations of the Church. 
 In 1744, when he was ill at Metz, six thou- 
 sand prayers for his recovery were ordered 
 at Notre Dame by devout subjects. In 
 1757, at the time of the assault upon his 
 life by Damiens, only six hundred were 
 called for, and now as he lies here at Ver- 
 sailles, with the death agony upon him, only 
 three pious souls have asked that the 
 prayers of the Church be said for him in 
 the great cathedral in Paris. 
 
 Torn by the terrors of a reproaching 
 conscience, he has summoned the priests to 
 his bedside, and they have performed their 
 
 12
 
 178 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 holy office. But even at the moment of 
 receiving absolution at their hands, he clings 
 to the idea of ruling by divine right, and 
 though the cardinal announces that His 
 Majesty repents of any scandals that his 
 conduct may have occasioned in his king- 
 dom, he qualifies it by adding that the 
 king considers himself responsible for his 
 conduct to God alone. 
 
 By nature intensely superstitious, he de- 
 mands that the clergy shall remain with 
 him in the pestilential sick room from 
 which all save his daughters and a few 
 other devoted souls have long since fled in 
 terror. During the few hours of life that 
 remain to him, he would rather listen to 
 the prayers of the religious faith to which 
 he has turned in his hour of anguish, than 
 permit his mind to dwell on the ignoble 
 life of vice and selfishness, of sins committed, 
 and good undone, that is fast drawing to its 
 pitiful close. 
 
 Little as we may envy this Bourbon king 
 the physical sufferings which mark his end, 
 we cannot help feeling that they must be 
 light indeed compared with the agony of
 
 THE WAGES OF SIN 179 
 
 remorse bred by the thoughts that come 
 crowding upon him, despite his efforts to 
 fix his mind on the consolations that reli- 
 gion extends to him. He must remember 
 that " the well-beloved " of fifty years ago 
 has not of late dared to show his face in 
 his own capital for fear of mockery and 
 insult. He must remember what France 
 was in the days of his predecessor, and what 
 she is now, with her peasantry ground down 
 under the heel of the most atrocious politi- 
 cal system ever known, her soldiers sent to 
 far-off climes to be butchered in useless 
 warfare, her colonies gone, her prestige van- 
 ished, and want, shame, and rebellion stalk- 
 ing her streets. He has often wondered 
 cynically how his uncouth, stupid grandson 
 will contrive to bear up under the kingly 
 crown for which he is predestined. Can 
 he think of him now without a prophetic 
 glimpse of the axe flashing across his 
 troubled vision ? Above all else that is pass- 
 ing through his mind, sharper than the stings 
 of conscience, more solemn than the pray- 
 ers of the Church, ring the awful words of 
 the Prophet as they fell from the lips of the
 
 180 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 Abbe Beauvais in the court chapel : " Forty 
 days yet, sire, and Nineveh shall be over- 
 thrown." The fortieth day has come and 
 is drawing to a close. Already the shad- 
 ows are deepening in the chamber whose 
 splendors are a mockery to the foul disease 
 that has laid this mighty sovereign low. A 
 candle has been lighted and placed in the 
 embrasure of one of the tall, sumptuously 
 curtained windows that looks out upon a 
 marble courtyard. Hundreds of eyes are 
 watching that candle from without, for it is 
 known throughout the palace that so long 
 as the king lives it will burn. 
 
 It is late in the afternoon, and the fortieth 
 day is almost passed, when of a sudden the 
 light in the window of the death chamber 
 is extinguished, and the courtiers come 
 pouring out of the rooms where they have 
 been waiting, and, with a noise that is abso- 
 lutely like thunder, rush through the corri- 
 dors and down the great staircases to the 
 chamber in which the new king, Louis 
 XVI, and Marie Antoinette stand waiting 
 for their reign to begin. At the feet of the 
 new sovereign the courtiers make their first
 
 THE WAGES OF SIN 181 
 
 obeisance, then rise and hurry away from 
 the house of death in which the loathsome 
 body of him who was once the hope of 
 France, Louis the Well Beloved, lies unat- 
 tended, save by a few of the minor clergy 
 and some menial attendants who must pay 
 with their lives for their fidelity. 
 
 Late at night the body, attended by a 
 scanty escort, is borne at a quick trot 
 through crowds of contemptuous Parisians 
 who line both sides of the road all the way 
 to the Abbey of St. Denis, where it is 
 hastily thrown into a vault. 
 
 It is a dark and awful picture, this final 
 passing of the French king. There is one 
 gleam of tenderness, however, bright with 
 the reflection of past glory, that falls across 
 his bier as it is carried with irreverent haste 
 through the gates of Versailles. A grizzled 
 veteran of the old wars shoulders his mus- 
 ket and brings his hand to salute, as the last 
 honor that he can pay to his dead king. 
 " After all," murmurs the vieux moustache, 
 sympathetically, " he was at Fontenoy."
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 MARIE ANTOINETTE'S REIGN 
 
 Long 
 
 HE king is dead ! 
 live the king ! " 
 
 " God help and pro- 
 tect us ! We are too 
 young to reign 1 " 
 
 Such, we are told, was 
 the beginning of the 
 reign of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. 
 That the young queen lost no time in 
 carrying out her oft-repeated threat to dis- 
 miss the Favorite from court the very 
 moment it should be in her power to do 
 so, is evidenced from the following letter, 
 placed in Madame Du Barry's hands by a 
 messenger the day after the body of Louis 
 XV had been borne at a rapid pace from 
 Versailles to St. Denis, and there thrust, 
 with scant ceremony, into the tomb.
 
 MARIE ANTOINETTE'S REIGN 185 
 
 VERSAILLES, May 12th, 1774. 
 
 I hope, madame, that you will not have any 
 doubts as to all the pain I feel at being obliged to 
 announce to you that you are forbidden to appear 
 at court ; but I am obliged to carry out the orders 
 of the king, who wishes me to impress on you that 
 his intention is, not to allow you to come there till 
 there is a fresh order made by him. His Majesty, 
 at the same time, is kind enough to permit you to 
 go and see your aunt in the Abbey of Pont-aux- 
 Dames, and I am going, for that reason, to write 
 to the abbess in order that you may not experience 
 any difficulty in the matter. You will be good 
 enough to acknowledge the receipt of this letter 
 through the person who brings it to you, so that I 
 may be able to assure His Majesty of the fact that 
 I have carried out his orders. 
 
 I have the honor to be, with respect, madame, 
 Your very humble and very obedient servant, 
 
 DE LA VRILLIERE. 
 
 Marie Antoinette's defenders claim that 
 she had nothing to do with the expulsion 
 of Du Barry, and lay great stress on the 
 fact that within comparatively recent years 
 there has been found, in the archives of the 
 Prefecture of Police, an entry which shows 
 that this order was entered there on the
 
 186 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 9th of May, 1774, the day before the king's 
 death, and the inference is, supported by 
 certain corroborative testimony, that the 
 king desired to have her put away for a 
 time, because she knew too many state 
 secrets. This is not unlikely, when we 
 consider the absolute indifference of Louis 
 XV to the feelings of every one about him, 
 even of those whom he believed that he 
 loved. His grandson, on the other hand, 
 was of an easy-going disposition, and it 
 is scarcely probably that he would have 
 adopted such harsh measures in regard to 
 a woman who had enjoyed the love and 
 confidence of his grandfather and prede- 
 cessor. The matter is touched upon, how- 
 ever, in a manner that should dispose of all 
 doubt, in a letter sent by the young queen 
 to her empress mother to announce the 
 death of Louis XV, and in which she says : 
 " The public expected great changes in a 
 moment ! The king has limited himself to 
 sending the creature away to a convent, 
 and to driving from the court everything 
 which is connected with that scandal." 
 There is something almost like a note of
 
 MARIE ANTOINETTE'S REIGN 187 
 
 warning in the words uttered by Du Barry 
 herself on receipt of the message which 
 sent her into exile : 
 
 " A nice reign indeed, that starts with a 
 lettre de cachet ! " she exclaimed, with a few 
 choice blasphemies, to the messenger who 
 has brought her the duke's 
 letter. She herself, to do her 
 justice, had never, so 
 far as authentic his- 
 tory asserts, asked 
 for a single lettre de 
 cachet during the 
 whole five years 
 of her reign, and this 
 in itself is a circumstance The Du L>arry coffee ^ 
 that redounds to the credit 
 of this " unmalignant, not wholly unpitiable 
 thing," as Carlisle has called her, especially 
 when we consider the fact that during the 
 whole period of her reign she was the tar- 
 get for every sort of attack that feminine 
 jealousy, court intrigue, or the political am- 
 bition of her enemies could devise. Her 
 predecessor, the Marquise de Pompadour, 
 left a very different record behind her.
 
 188 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 Jean Du Barry, although included in 
 the same order, was too smart to be caught. 
 The instant that he learned of the king's 
 death, he consulted a friend, named Goy, 
 as to what he should do, and this gentle- 
 man, who appears to have possessed a high 
 degree of common sense, replied that there 
 was nothing left for him but the jewel case 
 and the post-horses. 
 
 " What ! " demanded the Roue, with an 
 assumption of dignity, " do you advise 
 me to fly ? " 
 
 " Well," replied his friend, " you can 
 alter it to the post-horses and the jewel 
 case, if it sounds better." 
 
 The Roue took this advice, and in a few 
 hours was well on his way to Germany, 
 which country he reached in safety, thanks 
 to the fact that the period ante-dated that of 
 the telegraph and telephone. Two years 
 later, he returned to Toulouse, married 
 again, and for some time led what must 
 have seemed a very monotonous life to one 
 accustomed to such high intrigues as those 
 that had previously engrossed his attention. 
 It was his boast that, during his sister-in-
 
 MARIE ANTOINETTE'S REIGN 189 
 
 law's reign, he had " flung into the pave- 
 ments of Paris " eighteen million of francs ; 
 but that did not prevent him from harass- 
 ing her constantly for money until the 
 last days of her life. 
 
 When Louis XV died, one of the cords 
 and there were not many of them left, - 
 that had bound the French people to the 
 monarchy snapped in twain. By a curious 
 coincidence, on the same day, and almost at 
 the very moment of his death, news of 
 the passage of the Boston Port Act in the 
 English Parliament was first received in 
 this country. This bill was a measure of 
 retaliation for the Boston Tea Party of the 
 previous December 16th, and by its provi- 
 sions the port of Boston was to remain 
 closed to ships of all kinds until its inhabi- 
 tants should reimburse the East Indian 
 Company for the loss of the tea which had 
 gone to flavor the waters of the harbor. 
 
 The receipt of the news that the obsti- 
 nate old English king was still determined 
 to discipline the great lusty colony like a 
 refractory child, was marked by an exhibi- 
 tion of feeling that convinced statesmen
 
 like Adams, Hancock and their peers that 
 a revolution of the thirteen colonies was 
 one of the absolute certainties of the near 
 future. 
 
 So it happened that while Louis XVI, 
 with his queen at his elbow, was beginning, 
 with a spiteful lettre de cachet, a reign that 
 was destined to end in blood and ignominy, 
 the men who were dominant in the Ameri- 
 can colonies were beginning to prepare for 
 the great seven years struggle that destiny 
 had marked out for them. 
 
 As for Madame Du Barry, her reign hav- 
 ing ended with that of the king, she pro- 
 ceeded to the abbey designated in her lettre 
 de cachet, and Marie Antoinette began her 
 reign as the lawful queen of France. 
 
 If we marvel at the way in which Louis 
 XV and his court went dancing, drinking 
 on toward the deluge that the Pompadour 
 had predicted, we marvel all the more at 
 the way in which his grandson and his light- 
 headed young queen bore the sceptre of 
 government. 
 
 Neither one of them seems to have had 
 any sense whatever of impending disaster,
 
 MARIE ANTOINETTE'S REIGN 193 
 
 though even the old King Louis had often 
 remarked, " When I am gone, I should like 
 very much to know how Berry [the family 
 name for the dauphin, whom he thoroughly 
 despised] will contrive to stand up under 
 it all," meaning the republican element 
 which he himself had found it so difficult 
 to cope with. 
 
 It was not merely that they were " too 
 young to reign," they were too ignorant to 
 be intrusted with such an awful responsi- 
 bility as that of the government of the 
 kingdom of France. 
 
 Louis XVI was as much unlike his noble- 
 looking, aristocratic grandfather as it was 
 possible for a man to be. His manners 
 were awkward, his voice harsh and uncul- 
 tured, his clothing soiled and untidy, and 
 his mind dull, and his will weak and vacil- 
 lating. His appearance betrayed his habits 
 of gluttony, for he was obese of figure and 
 heavy of feature. When he dined in pub- 
 lic, in deference to the ancient French cus- 
 tom which decreed that the inviolable right 
 of the people of France was to see their sov- 
 ereign eat, he gorged himself to an extent 
 
 13
 
 194 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 that proved disgusting to those who had 
 been used to the elegancies of Louis XV 
 and his associates. He devoted himself 
 chiefly to the chase, and to amateur lock- 
 making and map-drawing, and kept a diary 
 which is very interesting reading. The 
 day in which he killed nothing was deemed 
 worse than wasted, and left no record be- 
 hind it save the single word " Nothing " 
 scrawled in the diary. 
 
 So unfavorable was the impression that 
 he created in the minds of his subjects that 
 his advisers deemed it prudent to counter- 
 act it by means of the suggestion, artfully 
 circulated, that after all such a simple and 
 frugal king was formed for his whole peo- 
 ple rather than for his court alone. 
 
 And yet some gleam of the impending 
 axe may have crossed even his dull, uncom- 
 prehending brain, for we are told that at his 
 coronation, at the very moment when the 
 crown was placed upon his brow, he raised 
 his hand suddenly to relieve his head for 
 the moment of the weight, and exclaimed 
 petulantly : " It hurts me ! " 
 
 As to the real character of the young
 
 MARIE ANTOINETTE'S REIGN 195 
 
 queen, it is not an easy matter to get at 
 the truth, so fierce has been the abuse of 
 her detractors, so fulsome the panegyrics 
 of her supporters. With the question of 
 her morals, we need not meddle, nor should 
 we lend a too ready ear to the stories that 
 were circulated in regard to her stories 
 of the kind that always will be circulated 
 so long as women of youth, beauty, and 
 high spirits shall be exposed to the fierce 
 white light of public fame. 
 
 That Marie Antoinette proved a far 
 greater calamity to the French people than 
 had Madame Du Barry, is a fact that it 
 would be difficult to gainsay, nor should 
 the circumstance that she was the legiti- 
 mate queen of France, and not the mere 
 mistress of a dotard king, serve as an ex- 
 cuse for her follies. Born in the purple, 
 and having as a mother the wisest of sov- 
 ereigns and the most prudent of counsel- 
 lors, a great deal more might have been 
 expected of her than of a young woman 
 with no inheritance but beauty, a sort 
 of bright native wit, and unfailing good 
 temper, who, transplanted from the shop
 
 196 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 counter to a seat which, though unlawful, 
 was none the less secure, on the steps of 
 the throne of France, had plunged into 
 luxuries and extravagances of the sort that 
 have a stronger fascination than anything 
 else in the world for women of her class. 
 She spent millions of the public money, 
 because it was given to her to spend, and 
 she spent it, too, without asking herself 
 whence it came. It was enough for her 
 that she held the envied place of Favorite, 
 and as she was not a lawful queen she 
 could not take upon her own shoulders the 
 responsibilities of the kingdom. 
 
 Marie Antoinette, however, came of a 
 class in which governing is as much of a 
 trade as is the profession of cooking in the 
 province of Ticino in Italian Switzerland, 
 from which have come the greatest cooks 
 and restaurateurs in the world. 
 
 The French people had the same right 
 to the services of their extravagantly paid 
 queen that the hotel-keeper has to those of 
 the high salaried chef, nurtured in an at- 
 mosphere of sauces, as she had been in that 
 of the Austrian court.
 
 MARIE ANTOINETTE'S REIGN 197 
 
 But although a brilliant and bea.utiful 
 figure in her husband's court, carrying her- 
 self with queenly dignity when occasion 
 demanded, and encouraging, by her patron- 
 age, the arts of music, painting, and statu- 
 ary, she was absolutely selfish in her pursuit 
 of her own enjoyment, reckless of the 
 results of her folly, and cruelly vindictive 
 in her treatment of those who, like Du 
 Barry, had incurred her dislike. 
 
 History has laid many evil things at the 
 door of the fallen Favorite, and one story, 
 which her enemies never tire of repeat- 
 ing, is to the effect that on one occasion, 
 when her royal lover was greatly exercised 
 over the partition of Poland, she inquired 
 innocently : " Where is Poland ? " This 
 anecdote does not do much credit to her 
 education, but after all it was not her 
 business, as the king's mistress, to know 
 anything about Poland. There is some- 
 thing far worse than mere ignorance on 
 the part of one who should have been well 
 informed, in the query of Marie Antoinette, 
 " Why do the people cry for bread, when 
 they can get such nice cakes for a penny ? "
 
 198 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 Many and interesting are the stories 
 related of the young queen during the 
 early years of her reign, and with many of 
 them we can sympathize ; while her impa- 
 tience of the elaborate ceremonial of court- 
 life, with its ponderous rules and etiquette, 
 as burdensome to her as the enormous 
 coiffure which she was compelled to wear 
 on her head, cannot fail to commend her 
 to us of a simpler, and, we hope, a more 
 sensible age. It is pleasant to read of her 
 mockery of Madame de Noailles, whose duty 
 it was to follow her about and remind her, 
 in low, respectful whispers, of neglected 
 points of etiquette. What more entranc- 
 ing picture is there than that of this beau- 
 tiful young queen lying prone on a bed of 
 forest leaves, and laughingly refusing to 
 rise until Madame de Noailles should be 
 summoned to tell her what particular form 
 of etiquette the rules of the French court 
 prescribed for a dauphiness who had been 
 thrown from her donkey. 
 
 Moreover Marie Antoinette will be en- 
 deared to Americans for all time because 
 of the influence which she used in our
 
 MARIE ANTOINETTE'S REIGN 201 
 
 behalf during our struggle with the mother 
 country. She helped to make Benjamin 
 Franklin, then accredited to her husband's 
 court, the rage of Paris, and under the 
 spell of his wit and diplomacy espoused the 
 cause of the colonies with all her heart. 
 This beautiful queen, the chivalrous Mar- 
 quis de Lafayette, and the American com- 
 missioner, who was none the less crafty 
 and adroit because of his Quaker garb and 
 unpowdered locks, did a vast deal to influ- 
 ence public opinion in France, and that, in 
 its turn, brought over the ministry to the 
 American side. The king, however, was 
 very averse to having anything to do with 
 the American disturbance, and even at the 
 moment of signing the treaty with the 
 United States of America, in 1778, said: 
 "You will remember that this is against 
 my better judgment." 
 
 That the king viewed the matter rightly 
 from his own point of view was amply 
 proved by subsequent events. For not 
 only did his contributions of men and 
 treasure to the American cause add enor- 
 mously to the great public debt under
 
 202 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 which France was then groaning, but the 
 success of our arms aided as we were at 
 a most critical moment by the French 
 served to spread abroad through the king- 
 dom the seeds of democracy. Soldiers re- 
 turning from America told stories of the 
 new land of liberty which served only to 
 fan the flames of discontent, and it is not 
 too much to say that one of the greatest 
 mistakes of the reign of Louis XVI, so far 
 as the stability of the monarchy was con- 
 cerned, was his taking part in a costly war 
 which gained for him the undying hatred 
 of England and failed to secure for him 
 the friendship of the new republic. 
 
 During the first years of her reign, the 
 young queen remained childless, and de- 
 voted herself exclusively to the pursuit of 
 pleasure. In the mornings she received 
 visitors in her bedchamber, as Du Barry 
 had done, and was scarcely less particular 
 than the former Favorite in her manner of 
 
 >v 
 
 exposing her charms to the gaze of her 
 admirers. In the afternoons she amused 
 herself with high play at the card-tables or 
 in the gardens of Little Trianon, and in
 
 MARIE ANTOINETTE'S REIGN 
 
 203 
 
 the evenings she went to masked balls and 
 late suppers in company with the worst 
 
 libertines of the 
 part in private the- 
 whieh the language 
 loosest sort, lost great 
 sums of money 
 at the gaming 
 table, and, in 
 short, lived in 
 such a man- 
 ner as seriously to 
 weaken her popular- 
 ity with the French 
 people and to alarm 
 her prudent mother in 
 Vienna. So long as the 
 Empress Maria Theresa 
 
 lived and Mercy- 
 
 Argenteau 
 
 tained the post 
 
 of Austrian 
 
 ambassador at 
 
 the French 
 
 court, Marie 
 
 Antoinette re- 
 
 court, took 
 atricals in 
 was of the 
 
 re- 
 
 Veritable night table actually used by 
 Du Barry at Versailles.
 
 204 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 mained to a certain extent under the 
 maternal control, and the correspondence 
 between the sovereign and the diplomat, as 
 well as that of the mother and daughter, 
 afford a marvellously interesting insight into 
 the history of that period. 
 
 No less interesting is the picture of court 
 life drawn by Mr. Thomas E. Watson in 
 " The Story of France " : 
 
 " As Frederick the Great loved Sans 
 Souci, and Washington Mt. Vernon, as 
 Mirabeau would slip away on Sunday to 
 lounge in the rose gardens at Argenteuil, 
 and Napoleon loved to saunter, hands 
 crossed behind him, along the quietudes of 
 Malmaison, Marie Antoinette sought to 
 create for herself an ideal retreat, an Eden 
 of the fancy, where she was to find true 
 friendship, true happiness, blissful repose. 
 The Little Trianon was a delicious bit of 
 marble architecture built by Louis XV in 
 a retired portion of the park of Versailles. 
 It was here that he had loved to lay aside 
 the trappings and formalities of royalty and 
 play the private gentleman, entertaining a 
 few choice spirits in the little palace, and
 
 MARIE ANTOINETTE'S REIGN 205 
 
 amusing himself with amateur farming and 
 flower culture in the lovely grounds. 
 
 " Louis XVI gave Little Trianon to his 
 wife, and with the eager delight of a child 
 she set about making it a paradise. The 
 world was ransacked for the finest trees, 
 the choicest shrubs, the loveliest flowers. 
 The rarest skill was employed in laying 
 out gardens, lawns, shrubberies, walks, 
 creating grottoes, hills, lakes and winding 
 rivers. No expense was spared ; the queen 
 demanded a fairy-land, and the gardener 
 gave it ; the taxpayers footed the bills, and 
 the queen was in ecstasies. The Little 
 Trianon became a gem, a marvel of beauty, 
 which all travellers went to see. 
 
 " Brilliant parterres, emerald stretches of 
 velvet lawn, waving masses of luxuriant 
 foliage, glimpses of marble statuary and 
 silvery waters, all were there to fascinate 
 the eye and kindle enthusiasm. Fountains 
 sprang up in the sun, sparkling and dancing 
 and splashing ; the rivulet wound in and 
 out, round and round, through the garden, 
 the lawn, the meadow ; the nightingales 
 sang in the shadow of the groves ; the
 
 206 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 marble Belvidere crowned the steep ; and 
 upon the enchanted island which rose from 
 the bosom of the lake rested the Temple 
 of Love. A model rustic village lined the 
 borders of the lake, and there was the mill, 
 the grange, and the manor-house for the 
 master, all complete. The dairy must not 
 be overlooked, that El Dorado dairy where 
 Blanchette, the cow, was milked by the 
 ' daughter of the Caesars.' The milk ves- 
 sels were of porcelain, rested upon marble 
 slabs, and conveyed Blanchette's milk to a 
 churn of silver. 
 
 " In this Eden the queen lived with a 
 select few of the younger members of the 
 nobility. The king himself was not to 
 come unless invited. Only the few were 
 welcome, only the congenial, the young, 
 the gallant, the gay. Dull care must not 
 enter here, nor gloom, nor weariness, nor 
 pain. 
 
 " In the lexicon of the queen's youth, 
 there was no such word as duty. To 
 frolic, to feast, to dress, to outshine the 
 brightest, to dazzle the eye of the be-
 
 MARIE ANTOINETTE'S REIGN 209 
 
 holder, to create a radiance in her own 
 immediate circle, to laugh, jest, play and 
 enjoy, was the whole of her gospel. 
 Such was high life all around her. Why 
 should n't she be gay ? Let others talk 
 of public distress, prate of economy and 
 preach of woes to come. It was an old 
 song that had been heard now since the 
 good year 1700 : ' We must amuse our- 
 selves.' On with the dance ; on with festi- 
 vals and theatricals ; on with the horse- 
 races, sleigh-rides, and lawn-parties ; on to 
 the opera, the opera-ball and the opera- 
 supper. Let us lose royally at faro, the 
 State pays ; let us enrich our pets, the 
 State pays ; let us lavish millions upon 
 Little Trianon, the State pays. Let us 
 whisper over the latest scandal, and titter 
 as we do so. Let us skate along the con- 
 versational surface as close as we can go 
 to the forbidden ground of the utterly 
 obscene. Let us mock at all things seri- 
 ous, decorous, and coldly prudent ! Such 
 was Marie Antoinette before trouble sobered 
 her thoughts, silvered her tresses and struck 
 the light out of her life. 
 
 14
 
 210 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 " At Paris, in the Bibliotheque Nationale, 
 you may see a book which speaks but too 
 convincingly of the true character of the 
 unfortunate queen. The cover is that of 
 the Catholic missal, for Marie Antoinette 
 was a devoted Catholic, and she was faith- 
 ful in her attendance at chapel ; but within 
 the sacred cover of this book of worship is 
 enclosed the contents of an obscene novel. 
 The priest could only see the cover, and he 
 would glorify God for so devout a worship- 
 per ; but the bowed head of the queen was 
 bent over a filthy love-story, and while the 
 priest talked of God, the queen was reading 
 the history of polite adultery. 
 
 " Marie Antoinette should be judged by 
 the standard of her own times, not by that 
 of ours. She should be compared to those 
 around her, not to those around us. En- 
 vironment is the father of us all environ- 
 ment and heredity." 
 
 In due course of time a daughter was 
 born to the queen, and afterwards, in 
 October, 1781, a son, and the whole nation 
 went wild with delight because their king 
 had an heir. Sir Samuel Romilly, who
 
 MARIE ANTOINETTE'S REIGN 
 
 happened to be in Paris at this time, was 
 saddened by the sight of the swarms of 
 hungry, ragged, dirty people who danced 
 in the public parks to the music of the 
 royal band to show their delight at the 
 advent of a child who was to be brought 
 up as a common oppressor. 
 
 The birth of this child served to restore 
 for the moment the popularity of the 
 young queen, which had waned materially 
 during the half dozen years of her reign, 
 because of her own conduct. Mr. Watson 
 has given us the picture of the rejoicings 
 with which the birth of the little dauphin 
 was celebrated, which is well worth quot- 
 ing as it shows us Louis XVI and his 
 Austrian queen at the one moment during 
 their reign when they really seemed to be 
 beloved by their subjects. 
 
 " People embraced each other in the 
 street, as though the happiness of the event 
 was personal to every citizen of France. 
 Addresses of congratulation poured in from 
 all the departments and public bodies. 
 Illuminations lit up the towns and cities, 
 processions thronged the streets, loyal songs
 
 212 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 were sung at the theatres amid deafening 
 applause, Te Deums were chanted in cathe- 
 drals, and melodious organs pealed forth 
 their richest notes. All France was glad, 
 deliriously glad. God had given the king 
 a son, and the people would not be left 
 without a royal staff to lean upon. The 
 guilds and trades-unions of Paris were as 
 exuberant in their manifestations of joy as 
 any place-hunter of the court. They spent 
 money freely to make a fitting display at 
 Versailles. Arrayed in the new uniforms 
 of their various organizations and accom- 
 panied by bands of music, the mechanics, 
 artificers, and tradesmen of Paris marched 
 out to Versailles and paraded in the court 
 of the palace. Chimney-sweepers, ele- 
 gantly dressed, carried an ornamented 
 chimney upon the top of which was 
 perched a chimney-sweep of the smallest 
 size. The butchers passed in review bear- 
 ing a colossal beef. Smiths hammered 
 away upon an anvil ; shoemakers made a 
 pretty pair of shoes for the son of the king, 
 and the tailors presented a tiny uniform of 
 the dauphin's regiment. For a long time
 
 "I 
 
 53 
 
 C
 
 MARIE ANTOINETTE'S REIGN 215 
 
 Louis XVI, the happy father, who could 
 not say * my son ' too often that blessed 
 day, stood on the balcony viewing the 
 parade, intoxicated by the enthusiasm which 
 prevailed. No happier day was his. King, 
 queen and people were united then, drawn 
 together by the dimpled hand of a child. 
 
 " Amid all these rejoicings what spectre 
 pushes its way to the front, marring the 
 universal pleasure ? It is the procession of 
 the worshipful coffin-makers, to whom it 
 had not occurred that a hearse or a casket, 
 borne in procession, would not add to the 
 exhilaration of the hour. Old Princess 
 Sophie, the king's aunt, weak of nerves 
 and querulous, thrilled with horror at the 
 sight, and had the worshipful coffin-makers 
 put out of the procession. 
 
 " The market-women of Paris came in a 
 body to see the queen, to congratulate her. 
 These women were dressed in black silk 
 gowns, wore diamonds, and had their ad- 
 dress inscribed upon the leaves of a fan. 
 The queen received these Dames of the 
 Hall most affably, and the king dined them 
 in the palace. The fish- women also came,
 
 216 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 also gained access to the queen, and made 
 three speeches of congratulation, one to 
 the king, one to the queen, and one to the 
 child. A more fervent spirit of attachment 
 than that which inspired these addresses of 
 the working people of Paris never found 
 expression. Gaze once more upon this 
 scene the king on the balcony at Ver- 
 sailles, tears of joy in his eyes, his heart 
 overflowing with happiness, and around 
 him the splendid and spontaneous tribute 
 of boundless affection laid at his feet by 
 the laboring classes of Paris. This was 
 October, 1781. 
 
 " The outburst of loyalty and affection 
 was not confined to Paris and Versailles. 
 It prevailed throughout the provinces. It 
 was universal and genuine. Songs, danc- 
 ings, music, festivals, celebrations, did not 
 cease till way into January, 1782."
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 IN RETIREMENT 
 
 ISTORY, that is to 
 say authentic history, 
 has very little to say 
 of the fallen Favorite 
 during the years that 
 passed from the mo- 
 ment when Louis XVI 
 began his ill-fated reign with a lettre de 
 cachet until that in which she fell a victim 
 to the Reign of Terror. 
 
 She remained in the abbey until early 
 in 1775, when she was permitted to regain 
 her liberty. Forbidden to live within ten 
 leagues of Paris, or the court, she purchased 
 the Chateau of Saint Vrain, situated a few 
 miles from Artajon and consisting of a 
 handsome house, provided with chapel, 
 stables, forecourt, etc., and a domain of
 
 218 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 about one hundred and forty acres. This 
 property, which still exists, had belonged 
 to the second son of Madame La Garde, 
 with whom, early in her career, when she 
 was simply little Jeanette Becu, she had 
 found employment as lady's companion. 
 
 Here she remained for 
 two years, giving balls and 
 other entertainments, re- 
 lieving the necessities of the 
 poor, and enjoying as best 
 she could the pleasures of 
 French country life. She 
 also founded two scholar- 
 ships in a school of art for 
 workmen, which her old 
 friend, M. de Sartines, the 
 ex-chief of Police, had estab- 
 lished in Paris. The deed 
 for these scholarships bears 
 the date of September 21, 
 1775, and on the same day 
 Bodyguard of she purchased, for fifty-three 
 
 thousand francs, a house and 
 thirty acres of land, which she presented 
 to her mother and stepfather, thus enabling
 
 IN RETIREMENT 
 
 them to live in comfort for the rest of their 
 days. 
 
 Having obtained permission to return to 
 Louveciennes, Madame Du Barry repaired 
 to that house with her great retinue of ser- 
 vants, and there lived for years a life that 
 was almost wholly devoid of exciting inci- 
 dent and was devoted largely to "charitable 
 work among her poorer neighbors. 
 
 One of her last appearances in the great 
 world in which she had once played her part 
 was on the occasion of the debut of the 
 beautiful Mademoiselle Contat, afterwards 
 the Countess de Parny, at the Theatre 
 Fran^ais. It was a brilliant audience that 
 gathered in honor of this lovely young de- 
 butante. Marie Antionette was there in the 
 royal box in company with her brother, the 
 Emperor of Austria, then journeying under 
 the incognito of Count von Falkenstein. 
 With them, were the Princesse de Lamballe, 
 the Countess de Polignac, the courtly and 
 elegant Baron de Besenval and the Count 
 de Vaudreuil, who shared with the tragedian 
 Le Kain the distinction of possessing the 
 most courtly and gracious manners toward
 
 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 the fair sex in all France. In boxes adjoin- 
 ing that of the queen, were the Due and 
 Duchesse de Chartres, in company with the 
 fascinating Mademoiselle de Genlis, whose 
 name the gossips associated with that of the 
 duke, Madame and Mademoiselle de Pro- 
 vence and the Countess d'Artois and a 
 host of other Parisian exquisites, while the 
 rest of the audience was made up of the 
 leading critics, poets, dramatists and artists 
 of Paris. 
 
 By many in the throng that clustered 
 about the royal box the Countess Du Barry 
 was recognized, simply dressed and closely 
 veiled, as she passed along the corridor on 
 the arm of the Due de Cosse-Brissac. 
 Watchful eyes saw her afterwards, still 
 veiled and hiding behind the thick silk cur- 
 tains of her box, for she had come from her 
 lovely chateau, not because she desired to 
 be seen in the gay world, but because of her 
 deep interest in the event of the evening. 
 
 Escorted by the duke, Madame Du Barry 
 left the theatre before the conclusion of the 
 play, noticing, perhaps, that she had been 
 recognized by the royal party, and being
 
 IN RETIREMENT 223 
 
 fully aware of the queen's antipathy to her. 
 Indeed Marie Antoinette that very evening 
 replied to her brother's question as to the 
 identity of the veiled beauty that she was 
 " that creature," a term which had pre- 
 viously shocked the good sense and taste of 
 Maria Theresa, when she encountered it, as 
 she frequently had, in her daughter's letters. 
 
 Concerning this incident, Lady Jackson 
 speaks her mind with her accustomed free- 
 dom, and at the same time relates how the 
 Austrian Emperor proceeded to gratify the 
 curiosity which had been awakened in him 
 at the sight of the famous Madame Du 
 Barry, and the buzz of interest and conjec- 
 ture that had gone round the theatre the 
 moment she was recognized. 
 
 " The retired life of ' the creature ' at 
 Louveciennes," says Lady Jackson, " natu- 
 rally provoked comparison with that of ' the 
 creatures ' of Versailles, and was not always 
 in favor of the latter. With the Parisian 
 public, the Favorite of the late king was far 
 less unpopular than the new favorites of the 
 queen, while at and around Louveciennes, 
 she was greatly revered and beloved for her
 
 224 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 kindness of heart, the interest she took in 
 the poor and her extreme benevolence. She 
 could not, on this occasion, have heard the 
 queen's petulant exclamation or the whis- 
 pered rebuke of the incognito Emperor. 
 
 " On the morrow, however, she was in- 
 formed that the Counts von Falkenstein 
 and Cobenzel begged permission to pay 
 their respects to the lady of Louveciennes, 
 and to be allowed to walk through the pic- 
 turesque grounds surrounding the chateau. 
 Madame Du Barry took much pride in her 
 park and grounds. She was accustomed to 
 walk in them daily -often for hours to- 
 gether. They were charmingly laid out in 
 the English style, and the fine range of green- 
 houses was filled with the choicest and most 
 beautiful flowers a luxury then only at- 
 tainable by the wealthy and great. The 
 pavilion was a perfect museum of objects 
 of art. Joseph and his friend seem to have 
 been greatly interested in them, and gener- 
 ally well pleased with all they saw not 
 omitting the fair chatelaine herself. 
 
 "She was then in her thirty-second year, 
 and still retained, without any tendency to
 
 IN RETIREMENT 225 
 
 embonpoint, the youthful grace of her tall, 
 slight, elegant figure. Powder dimmed 
 not the golden tinge of her wavy light 
 brown hair, and no rouge disfigured her 
 face. A strange contrast this must have 
 presented to eyes accustomed to the 
 painted faces of Versailles. She now 
 dressed with great simplicity, but always 
 in excellent taste. Leaning on the arm 
 of her Imperial guest, she conducted him 
 through those fine avenues of lofty forest 
 trees for which her domain was famous, 
 and to those sites whence the finest pros- 
 pects were obtained. And when, after 
 spending with her the greater part of the 
 day in admiring the beauties of nature and 
 art, in both of which Louveciennes was so 
 rich, Joseph took his leave, he replied to 
 her thanks for the honor of his visit to a 
 poor recluse : * Madame, beauty is every- 
 where a queen ; and it is I who am honored 
 by your receiving my visit.' 
 
 " Cynical as he was, and sometimes very 
 offensive, yet the Emperor Joseph, when 
 he pleased, could make very gallant 
 speeches and pay very flattering com- 
 
 15
 
 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 pliments. Nowhere does he seem to have 
 shown to so much disadvantage as at Ver- 
 sailles, for all he beheld there was out of 
 harmony with his ideas of what ought to 
 have been. He had a strong presentiment 
 of evil looming in the future for France, 
 and that the gloomy horizon was fraught 
 with danger both to her inert sovereign 
 and his thoughtless queen." 
 
 Another event which drew Madame Du 
 Barry from her retirement was the return 
 of Voltaire to France, and his apotheosis at 
 the Theatre Francais. The ostensible ob- 
 ject of the philosopher's visit to Paris was 
 to rehearse the actors who were to play his 
 new tragedy, " Irene," and for a time it 
 seemed doubtful whether this great French- 
 man would be allowed to return to Paris 
 after his years of exile. The clergy were 
 almost unanimous in urging the king to 
 forbid his return. But on the other hand 
 all Paris was aroused at the thought of 
 welcoming once more the great dramatic 
 poet, philosopher and enemy of shams, who 
 was anxious to undertake this long and 
 arduous winter journey in order that he
 
 IN RETIREMENT 229 
 
 might see once more the city that he loved 
 so well. 
 
 Worn out by the fatigue of his long 
 journey and the excitement and annoyance 
 of constant rehearsals, the venerable dram- 
 atist was unable to take part in the glories 
 of the first representation, accounts of the 
 progress of which were carried to his bed- 
 side, from time to time, during the even- 
 ing. It was for this performance, and 
 with a view of meeting Voltaire once 
 more, that Madame Du Barry came up to 
 Paris from Louveciennes, and it was at this 
 time that she met again, and for the last 
 time, the Due de Richelieu, and for the 
 first time Benjamin Franklin, who had 
 brought his grandson with him to obtain 
 the philosopher's benediction. 
 
 " Kneel, my son," said the famous 
 American, " kneel before the great man ! " 
 
 The youth obeyed, and Voltaire, laying 
 his hand on his head, said in English, 
 "God and Liberty!" 
 
 Voltaire was able to attend the sixth 
 representation of his play, but only after 
 having been nerved for the occasion by
 
 230 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 strong stimulants. He was carried from 
 the theatre to his home in an almost sense- 
 less condition, and a few days later was 
 dead. 
 
 The winter of 1783 did much to hasten 
 the downfall of the monarchy. It was a 
 period of unheard-of severity, memorable 
 above all preceding winters for its seventy- 
 six days of intense cold. In the splendid 
 abodes of the rich, where there was but 
 little provision for warmth, it was found 
 necessary to hang carpets and tapestries 
 over the huge doors and windows, and to 
 keep the chimney-places filled, night and 
 day, with blazing logs, whose heat, how- 
 ever, was more seen than felt, as it disap- 
 peared up the enormous chimneys. But in 
 the squalid streets of old Paris, where the 
 poor dwelt, the poverty was more bitter 
 and the spirit of discontent fiercer than 
 ever before. It was a difficult matter for 
 the police to keep the people in check and 
 prevent them from satisfying their own 
 hunger from the abundance so freely dis- 
 played by the wasteful and selfish nobility. 
 In the public squares, small doles of black
 
 IN RETIREMENT 
 
 bread were distributed to the hungry, many 
 of whom were also employed for a few sous 
 a day in the work of removing the snow 
 from the entrances to the great palaces and 
 hotels of the nobility and modelling it into 
 huge, uncouth statues, presumably of the 
 king and queen. The object of this was 
 to raise the cry of " Vive le Roi ! " and with 
 it " Vive la Reine ! " But as a general 
 thing, the cry of " A bas 1'Autrichienne " 
 made itself heard high above the perfunc- 
 tory clamor of the poor wretches who were 
 trying to hold their jobs by a display of 
 patriotism. So often, indeed, was this cry 
 heard and so bitter was its tone, that when 
 Marie Antoinette wished to enjoy herself 
 again with her sledges, it was deemed ex- 
 pedient to prevent it, for fear the sight of 
 such luxury should prove an irritation to 
 the suffering people. 
 
 At this time, too, the French soldiers 
 returning from their term of service in 
 America, full of enthusiasm for the cause 
 for which they had been fighting side by 
 side with the Colonists, urged upon their 
 countrymen the expediency of obtaining for
 
 232 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 themselves what the Americans, with their 
 aid, had procured by their long war of 
 revolution. These returned soldiers were 
 justly proud of their achievements in our 
 War of Independence, in whose benefits 
 they could have no part. But they natu- 
 rally expected that their valor in serving 
 their king would stand them in good stead 
 at home. They found, however, that Gen- 
 eral Count Sagur, whom the queen had 
 made minister of war, had issued orders 
 making it impossible for any but noblemen 
 to reach the grade of officer in the army. 
 The war being over, a great many promo- 
 tions were made, but not in the way of 
 rewards to men who had rendered service 
 to their country. 
 
 The only question asked of a candidate 
 was, " Have you four quarterings ? " If he 
 had not, nothing could enable him to rise 
 from the ranks. 
 
 It is worth remarking that in the mid- 
 dle of this very winter, young Napoleon 
 Bonaparte, then in his fifteenth year and a 
 student at the military college of Brienne, 
 divided his schoolmates into two armies,
 
 IN RETIREMENT 
 
 233 
 
 A corner of Du Barry's bedchamber in the palace at Versailles. 
 
 directed them in the construction of a snow 
 fortress, and himself led the attacking 
 party. For ammunition, they had snow-
 
 234 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 balls hard as ice, and in some cases, weighted 
 with stones. And history declares that not 
 until the fortress was entirely demolished 
 did its defenders surrender to the future 
 Emperor of France. 
 
 There were many in the court circle at 
 this time who recalled with feelings of dire 
 apprehension the extraordinary prediction 
 once made in the salon of Madame de 
 Coigny by that charming epigramist and 
 poet, Cazotte, who, at that time, divided 
 with Cagliostro and Mesmer the honors of 
 clairvoyance. Cazotte was a man of 
 dreamy religious sentiment, highly imagi- 
 native and a mystic. He did not pretend 
 to make diamonds and gold, to heal the 
 sick, or give public exhibitions of science 
 combined with quackery, as his rivals did, 
 but occasionally he went into a trance, and 
 it was then that he was supposed to be 
 endowed with second sight. 
 
 It was on one of these occasions that he 
 simply heaved a deep sigh and gave no an- 
 swer to the question of two or three ladies 
 of the court circle who demanded eagerly 
 the nature of his vision.
 
 IN RETIREMENT 237 
 
 " Speak, Cazotte ! " cried the ladies. " Tell 
 us what you see ! " 
 
 " Do not ask me. It is too sad ! " 
 
 " You must tell us what it is," per- 
 sisted the ladies, as they gathered about 
 him. 
 
 " Fearful things are coming on France, 
 coming upon you all even upon you who 
 speak to me," he replied at last in tones of 
 a half-conscious person. 
 
 " But what is it that you see ?" they 
 demanded. 
 
 " I see a prison," said Cazotte, shuddering, 
 " a cart, a large open place, a strange kind 
 of machine resembling a scaffold, and the 
 public executioner standing near it." 
 
 "And these things the scaffold and 
 the executioner are for me ? " asked Madame 
 de Montmorency. 
 
 " For you, madame," replied the seer. 
 
 " Do you see me there, Cazotte ? " asked 
 Madame de Chabot, laughingly. 
 
 " I see you there," he said. 
 
 " You are mad to-night, Cazotte," cried 
 Madame de Chevreuse, " or you are trying 
 to frighten us."
 
 238 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 " Would to Heaven, for your sake, 
 madame, that I were," he exclaimed. 
 
 " You say you see a cart ; is it not a 
 carriage, Cazotte ? " inquired Madame de 
 Montmorency. 
 
 " It is a cart," he answers. " To none, 
 after the king, will the favor of a carriage 
 be allowed." 
 
 " To the king ! " exclaimed several of the 
 company who had not hitherto joined in 
 questioning the dreamer. " To the king ? " 
 demanded Madame du Polignac, addressing 
 herself directly to Cazotte. 
 
 " To the king," he muttered, despond- 
 ingly. 
 
 " But the queen, myself ? " she asked 
 eagerly. 
 
 " The queen, too, is there. Madame de 
 Polignac stands in the distance and a mist 
 envelops her," was his reply. 
 
 " And yourself, Cazotte ? " 
 
 " As regards myself," he answered sadly, 
 " I am as the man who for three days went 
 round the City of Jerusalem, crying aloud, 
 ' Woe ! Woe ! ' to the inhabitants thereof, 
 but who on the fourth day cried * Woe !
 
 IN RETIREMENT 
 
 239 
 
 Woe!' unto himself 'woe is me!' A 
 stone from a sling was aimed at him, struck 
 him on his temple and he died." 
 
 Cazotte was guillotined in 1792. The 
 rest of his predestined victims perished at 
 about the same time, though Madame de 
 Polignac lived until the following year and 
 died in December, at Vienna, a place of 
 safe distance, that was perhaps signified 
 by the mist in which Cazotte saw her 
 enveloped.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE STORM BREAKS 
 
 OR more than fifteen 
 years Jeanette Du 
 Barry had lived quietly 
 on her beautiful estate 
 Louveciennes, keeping 
 up a few of her old 
 court intimacies, re- 
 ceiving visits now and then from foreign 
 princes and other distinguished travellers, 
 and enjoying a calm, happy life in which 
 there was neither intrigue nor agitation nor 
 danger of dismissal and disgrace. Her 
 affairs were prosperous, her debts settled, 
 and she was able to live handsomely and 
 have money to spare for her friends and 
 for charity. She was greatly beloved by 
 the poor and sick of the neighborhood 
 whom she visited and aided, and there was
 
 THE STORM BREAKS 241 
 
 no one in the town who had not a kind 
 word for the ex-Favorite of Louis XV. 
 
 Undoubtedly these years of exile were 
 the happiest in her whole life, and well 
 they might have been, for through them 
 all she was sustained and cheered by the 
 devoted love of Cosse-Brissac. 
 
 As years rolled on travellers ceased to 
 visit her, her name dropped out of the 
 public prints, and finally she came to be 
 forgotten of all the world save the little 
 one of her immediate vicinage. Her sym- 
 pathies were still with the royal family, and 
 she was outspoken in her denunciations of 
 the revolutionary party, which was gaining 
 in strength every hour, for the indignities 
 which it sought to heap upon the heads of 
 Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. 
 
 The deluge long since predicted by the 
 Marquise de Pompadour was underway at 
 last, and the axe that may have disturbed 
 the visions of Louis XV, that certainly 
 gleamed through the prophetic warning of 
 Damiens " the shabby man with the 
 penknife" who was so far ahead of his 
 time the axe that the actress sees in 
 
 16
 
 242 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 the very first act of the drama has become 
 a stern reality now. The days are begin- 
 ning to be busy ones for the executioner, 
 and those who value their heads are hasten- 
 ing to declare their friendship for the 
 nation and their hatred of royalty and 
 aristocracy. 
 
 So completely forgotten was the woman 
 who had played such a conspicuous part at 
 the court of the king that up to the begin- 
 ning of the year 1791 no attention was 
 paid to her by the aggressive patriots of 
 the revolutionary party nor had her name 
 been dragged into the papers or political 
 discussions for many years, save once when 
 some demagogue declared that the National 
 Assembly cost but a quarter of the sum 
 that Louis XV squandered on the woman 
 whom he himself had seen covered with 
 diamonds and giving away basketfuls of 
 louis d'or to her relatives. 
 
 In all probability the black storm which 
 was now gathering over France might have 
 broken and spent its terrific force without 
 making itself felt in the little chateau 
 where this still beautiful survivor of the

 
 THE STORM BREAKS 245 
 
 court of Louis XV was living out her 
 days peacefully and secure in the good 
 will of all around her, had it not been for 
 a comparatively unimportant happening 
 which served to alter the whole course of 
 her life. 
 
 On the night of January 10, 1791, dur- 
 ing the absence of Madame Du Barry, 
 who was visiting the family of Brissac in 
 Paris, the chateau was opened by robbers 
 and a vast number of diamonds and other 
 precious stones were stolen. In her en- 
 deavors to recover her property, she took 
 into her confidence the jeweller Rouen, and 
 he, in an ill-considered moment, caused 
 the dead walls of Paris to be placarded 
 with a long list of the precious stones, de- 
 scribed in detail under the words " Two 
 Thousand Louis To Gain." 
 
 This happened at a moment when 
 hunger, cold and misery, combined with 
 the insidious oratory of demagogues and 
 the inspiring words of patriots, were lead- 
 ing the people at a rapid pace toward an- 
 archy Nature's primitive remedy for all 
 social ills. These placards were displayed
 
 246 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 before the eyes of men and women who 
 were suffering for want of the bare neces- 
 sities of life. Being without occupation 
 they could find time to read and talk over 
 among themselves the great list of dia- 
 monds, sapphires, emeralds, rubies arid 
 pearls. And as they read, and wondered 
 how one human being could be so fortu- 
 nate as to possess all this wealth while they 
 went naked and hungry, they remembered 
 who and what this almost forgotten woman 
 had been. They had heard, perhaps, in an 
 exaggerated form, of the way in which 
 kings were wont to cover the bodies of 
 their favorite women with diamonds while 
 the peasantry perished of hunger and cold. 
 They had heard vaguely of luxury in high 
 places, of the wastefulness in Versailles, 
 while the poor were clamoring for bread 
 at the very palace gates. They had heard 
 all these things from the lips of their ora- 
 tors, half believing perhaps and wholly un- 
 comprehending the significance of it all. 
 
 Now, all at once, there was flashed into 
 the wan faces of these desperate ones a list 
 of the very jewels that had gone to deck
 
 THE STORM BREAKS 
 
 247 
 
 the body of their king's courtesan at the 
 time when they themselves perhaps had 
 seen their loved ones sicken before their 
 eyes and perish for lack of food. The mere 
 fact that a man of affairs 
 like Rouen should placard jl 
 the streets with such an -4-* 
 incendiary docu- 
 ment as th 
 without ever 
 thinking of 
 what it might 
 provoke, indi- 
 cates how 
 little even 
 the intelligent 
 part of the 
 French peo- 
 ple knew of 
 the dangers 
 
 that threatened. This, too, at a time when 
 the Revolution had actually begun. 
 
 About the middle of February of the 
 same year five men entered the shop of M. 
 Simon, the rich London lapidary, and 
 offered to sell him a quantity of precious 
 
 Spinnet of the period.
 
 248 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 stones for which they asked only about 
 one-sixth of their actual value. The lapi- 
 dary purchased them for fifteen hundred 
 pounds, and on learning from the men that 
 they had others of still greater value to 
 dispose of, promised to take them also, and 
 then quietly notified the authorities. The 
 men were arrested that night, and although 
 they contrived to destroy one or two of the 
 larger gems by throwing them into the fire, 
 the bulk of their booty was recovered and 
 word sent to the Countess Du Barry. 
 
 Overjoyed at the news, she left at once 
 for London, saw the jewels and identified 
 them, declaring under oath that they be- 
 longed to her. Unfortunately other legal 
 proceedings were necessary before the gems 
 could be turned over to her and she was 
 obliged to return to France, after leaving 
 them deposited with her bankers, sealed 
 with her own and their seal. 
 
 On the 4th of April she started again, 
 taking with her this time the jeweller, 
 Rouen, and remaining until the 21st of 
 May, when she returned again without 
 her property. A third journey followed
 
 THE STORM BREAKS 249 
 
 from which she returned late in August, 
 feeling much cast down and disappointed 
 over the tediousness of English law pro- 
 cesses. After Madame Du Barry's return 
 to France the National High Court entered 
 upon its functions at Orleans and the new 
 method of beheading prisoners by the 
 guillotine was adopted. It is said that a 
 model of this machine fell under the eyes 
 of Louis XVI at the time that it was under 
 legislative consideration, and he, being an 
 expert amateur machinist, suggested an 
 improvement which was actually utilized 
 by the inventor and is still in use in the 
 machine that is used in France at the 
 present day. 
 
 Things were marching briskly now and 
 the work of the executioner was growing 
 heavier every day. Lafayette, who, since 
 his return from America, had been a domi- 
 nant figure in the changing fortunes of his 
 country, was compelled to leave France 
 and fell into the hands of the Austrians, 
 who kept him in prison until years after- 
 wards when Napoleon Bonaparte demanded 
 his release. The king and royal family
 
 250 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 were made prisoners and, what was of far 
 greater concern to Madame Du Barry, her 
 devoted lover, Cosse-Brissac, who had 
 been removed from his command of the 
 king's military establishment, was beheaded, 
 together with hundreds of other prisoners 
 in the September massacres. His head 
 was carried to L,ouveciennes and thrown 
 through the window of the room in which 
 Madame Du Barry was seated. 
 
 In October of the year following, Mad- 
 ame Du Barry started once more for Lon- 
 don from which she returned in March, 
 1793. During this, as well as other visits 
 to England, she received attentions from 
 the hands of many of the most noted men in 
 the kingdom, and as it afterwards transpired, 
 her movements were carefully watched and 
 noted by spies in the employ of her ene- 
 mies at home. During her last visit the 
 Revolution had gained terrific headway, 
 the king and queen had perished on the 
 scaffold, and William Pitt, whom she saw 
 a number of times and who gave her a 
 medal that had been struck in his honor, 
 urged her to remain in England, knowing
 
 With Breaking Heart.
 
 THE STORM BREAKS 253 
 
 perfectly well the risk that she ran in 
 returning to a country that was inflamed 
 against the old monarchy and everything 
 connected with it. 
 
 Madame Du Barry, however, had full con- 
 fidence in the protection that would be af- 
 forded her in Louveciennes, which she had 
 left but a short time before a peaceful com- 
 munity, undisturbed by the storms that 
 were shaking the country to its founda- 
 tions, and inhabited by people who were 
 one and all grateful to her for what she 
 had done for them. 
 
 During her absence, however, a man 
 named George Greive, who claimed citizen- 
 ship in the United States of America, and 
 described himself as " factionist and anar- 
 chist of the first rank and disorganizer of 
 despotism in both hemispheres," had settled 
 in the village and impregnated its inhabi- 
 tants with the doctrines which he preached. 
 This demagogue was a friend of Marat and 
 was actually to have dined with him on the 
 day that Charlotte Corday rid the world of 
 his presence. Marat always hated Du Barry, 
 and it is more than likely that he suggested
 
 254. THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 her to Greive as one whom it would be easy 
 to destroy and whose wealth was sufficient 
 to yield something to the instrument of her 
 destruction. 
 
 Through the exertions of this patriot, 
 who at Marat's suggestion had lost no time 
 in domiciling himself in Louveciennes, the 
 villagers were persuaded that Madame Du 
 Barry had really turned emigree, and had 
 settled in England without any intention 
 of returning to her own country. Imbued 
 with this belief, seals were set on the doors 
 of her chateau as a preliminary step to con- 
 fiscation. But the sudden appearance of 
 the owner put a stop to this work, and the 
 mayor of the town was easily induced to 
 remove the seals. Undismayed by the fail- 
 ure of this plot, and knowing Du Barry's 
 popularity among the villagers, Greive' s 
 next attempt took the form of an address 
 to the authorities of the Department of the 
 Seine et Oise, in which, backed by the sig- 
 natures of thirty-six citizens of the village, 
 he complained of the presence there of many 
 aristocrats and suspected persons. On the 
 strength of this address, Madame Du Barry
 
 THE STORM BREAKS 255 
 
 was placed under arrest in her own house, 
 and, after official inquiry, was set at liberty 
 again, the authorities of the Seine et Oise 
 showing no disposition to deal harshly with 
 her. One of its members, indeed, Lavallery 
 by name, is said to have shown a decided 
 partiality for this still handsome and attrac- 
 tive woman of fifty. 
 
 Had Madame Du Barry procured her 
 passports and repaired to England the mo- 
 ment she was released, she would undoubt- 
 edly have enjoyed a much longer life than 
 she did. Unfortunately for herself, she 
 chose to remain in her chateau, trusting 
 to the integrity of her respectable neigh- 
 bors, and fearing that if she did leave the 
 country, her house, with all its exquisite 
 furniture and works of art, would be confis- 
 cated by the republicans. It may have 
 been that another lover engrossed her at- 
 tention at that time it seems that she 
 was never at a loss for a sweetheart but 
 certain it is that she chose to remain and 
 she paid dearly for the mistake. 
 
 Early in September, 1793, Greive began 
 again his denunciations of her, and on the
 
 256 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 22d of that month she was arrested and 
 lodged in the prison of Sainte Pelagic, 
 while seals were placed upon the doors of 
 her chateau. Madame Roland was incar- 
 cerated there at this time, and it has been 
 said that the widow of the recently guil- 
 lotined General Beauharnais, afterwards 
 Empress of France, was arrested on the 
 same day. 
 
 There is a story told of the ex-Favorite 
 during her imprisonment which, although 
 characteristic of her in many ways, can 
 hardly be reconciled with her conduct a 
 short time later, when brought face to face 
 with death on the scaffold. An Irish priest, 
 who had contrived to obtain access to her 
 in her cell, offered to save her if she could 
 supply him with a certain sum of money 
 with which to bribe the jailers. She asked 
 him if it would be possible to save two 
 women, and on learning that it would not, 
 she gave him an order on her bankers for 
 the necessary sum, and bade him save the 
 Duchesse de Mortemart, who was at that 
 time lying concealed in a loft in Calais. 
 The priest, having urged her in vain to
 
 THE STORM BREAKS 
 
 257 
 
 permit him to save her instead of her friend, 
 took the order, and with the money which 
 he obtained on it, went to Calais and 
 rescued the duchess from her attic retreat. 
 Then taking her by the arm, he set out on 
 foot, explaining to all who noticed his cleri- 
 cal garb, that he was a good constitutional 
 priest and as such had married the woman. 
 In this way he managed to pass through 
 the French lines to Ostend, where he em- 
 barked for England, taking with him the 
 duchess, who, in after years, related the 
 whole story to Dutens, the author of " Me- 
 moirs of a Traveller taking a Rest," in which 
 entertaining volume it is chronicled. 
 
 17
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 DREYFUS-LIKE JUSTICE 
 
 HE methods employed 
 in the trial of Madame 
 Du Barry would seem 
 incomprehensible to 
 American readers, were 
 it not for the fact that 
 the Dreyfus trial, con- 
 ducted on similar lines a very few years 
 ago, served to familiarize us with the man- 
 ner in which French tribunals administer 
 the Gallic equivalent of justice. We all 
 remember the important testimony offered 
 by the different French officers, who knew 
 that Dreyfus was guilty, " because it could 
 not be otherwise," and the weighty evidence 
 of those who made a profound impression on 
 the court by declaring that the prisoner was 
 certainly guilty, " because if he was not, 
 who was ? " We can also recall the pub-
 
 ^ 
 
 s
 
 DREYFUS-LIKE JUSTICE 261 
 
 lished accounts of the execrations hurled by 
 the populace at those who endeavored to 
 stem the fierce tide of racial hatred evoked 
 by the trial, and of the applause which 
 greeted that " hero of the hour," who was 
 shown to have taken away the captive's 
 writing paper and ink. 
 
 For the name Dreyfus, substitute that of 
 Jeanette Du Barry, go back a little more 
 than a century in time, and not a single 
 degree in civilization or mercy, and we 
 have the trial of the last of the race of 
 queens of the left hand that France has 
 ever known. 
 
 She was accused of conspiring against 
 the French Republic and favoring the suc- 
 cess of English arms ; of wearing mourning 
 for the late king ; of having in her posses- 
 sion a medal of Pitt, the English states- 
 man ; of having buried at Louveciennes the 
 letters of nobility of an emigre, and also the 
 busts of persons prominent at the court of 
 her royal lover ; and of having wasted the 
 public money by her extravagance. 
 
 The first witness against her was Greive, 
 who testified that he had found near her
 
 262 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 house a quantity of precious stones, together 
 with portraits of Louis XV, Anne of Aus- 
 tria, and the Regent, and a medal bearing 
 the likeness of Pitt. He also testified that 
 an English spy named Forth made fre- 
 quent journeys between Louveciennes and 
 London, ostensibly on business connected 
 with the diamond robbery, and that the 
 general opinion of the villagers was that 
 the robbery was nothing but a pretence. 
 
 A man named Blache swore that Madame 
 Du Barry wore mourning for Louis XVI 
 when she was in London, and one of her 
 discharged servants, Salanave, declared that 
 his dismissal from the household was due 
 to the fact that he was a patriot, whereas all 
 the other servants sympathized with the 
 aristocracy. 
 
 Then Zamore, the black dwarf, who owed 
 everything that he possessed to the favor of 
 his mistress, swore that most of her guests 
 were not patriots, and that he himself had 
 heard them rejoice over the defeats of the 
 armies of the Republic. He declared that 
 he had frequently rebuked Madame Du 
 Barry for associating with aristocrats and
 
 DREYFUS LIRE-JUSTICE 263 
 
 that he was positive that there had been 
 no actual robbery of jewels. 
 
 These were the most important wit- 
 nesses for the prosecution. There were 
 also a surgeon named Augustin Devrey, 
 who testified that he had " once heard the 
 Widow Collet say that some time after 
 the arrest of Brissac, Du Barry spent 
 the night in destroying papers ; " and one 
 Claude Reda, a fencing master, who 
 gravely declared that he "had heard it 
 said that when Du Barry was in London 
 she saw the Colonnes." 
 
 Certainly there is a Dreyfus-like ring, as 
 well as a suggestion of the mental capac- 
 ity of the jury, in these passages taken from 
 the speech of Fouquier-Tinville for the 
 prosecution : " You have judged the con- 
 spiracy of the wife of the last tyrant of the 
 French, and you have at this moment to 
 judge the plots of the courtesan of his in- 
 famous predecessor. You have to decide 
 if this Messalina born amongst the peo- 
 ple, enriched by the spoils of the people 
 and who, by the death of the tyrant, fell 
 from the rank in which crime alone had
 
 264 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 placed her has conspired against the 
 liberty and sovereignty of the people ; if, 
 after being the accomplice and the instru- 
 ment of the libertinage of kings, she has 
 become the agent of the conspiracies of 
 tyrants, nobles, and priests against the 
 French Republic. You know what light 
 the evidence of the witnesses and the 
 documents have thrown upon this plot ! 
 It is for you, in your wisdom, to weigh 
 the evidence. You see that royalists, 
 federalists, all these factions, though di- 
 vided amongst themselves in appearance, 
 have the same centre, the same object, the 
 same end. 
 
 " The war, abroad or in La Vendee, the 
 troubles in the South, the insurrections in 
 Calvaldos all march under the orders of 
 Pitt, but now the veil which covered so 
 much wickedness has been rent in twain 
 and nothing remains of the conspirators 
 but shame and the punishment of their 
 infamous plots. Yes, Frenchmen, we 
 swear that the traitors shall perish and 
 liberty alone shall endure ! In striking 
 with the sword of the law a conspiratrice,
 
 DREYFUS-LIKE JUSTICE 265 
 
 A corner of the, property room. 
 
 a Messalina guilty of plotting against the 
 country, you not only avenge the Re- 
 public, but you uproot a public scandal, 
 and you strengthen the rule of that mo-
 
 266 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 rality which is the chief base of the liberty 
 of the people." 
 
 With Madame Du Barry were tried also 
 the three Vandenyvers, members of the 
 firm of Dutch bankers with whom she 
 kept her account. The chief charge 
 against these men was that they had fur- 
 nished the accused woman with money in 
 the shape of letters of credit to be used by 
 her during her visit to London. Accord- 
 ing to their own admission, they furnished 
 letters of credit to Madame Du Barry 
 " because she had established the fact and 
 satisfied them as to her having passports, 
 and, not being judges of their validity, 
 thought there was nothing in supplying 
 her with the sums she demanded." 
 
 There was not a particle of evidence of 
 any sort of crime on the part of these finan- 
 ciers. The principal figure in the trial was 
 known to be a woman of loose morals, 
 upon whom had been squandered millions 
 of the public money, and it was not un- 
 natural that the vengeance of a long suf- 
 fering and now bloodthirsty people should 
 fall upon her head. For the murder of
 
 DREYFUS-LIKE JUSTICE 269 
 
 the Vandenyvers, however, there was not 
 one shadow of an excuse. 
 
 No witnesses were called for the defence. 
 Nor is this fact likely to prove a surprise 
 to any one familiar with the proceedings 
 in the Dreyfus case, or with certain still 
 more recent happenings in New York. 
 We all know how it fared with Zola be- 
 cause of his championship of the weak 
 against the strong, and such of us as live 
 in New York, believe that if there is one 
 thing more unlucky than walking under a 
 ladder, it is giving testimony in the courts 
 against a police detective. 
 
 That the jury had some qualms of con- 
 science about this blood-letting is indicated 
 by the fact that it deliberated for an hour 
 and a quarter, which is one quarter of an 
 hour more than was given to the considera- 
 tion of the case of Marie Antoinette. At 
 the end of that time it returned a verdict of 
 guilty on every count in the indictment, 
 and, Fouquier-Tinville having demanded 
 the " application of the law," all four pris- 
 oners were sentenced to suffer death within 
 the space of twelve hours.
 
 270 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 But Madame Du Barry, hoping to gain 
 time and perhaps mercy, sent for Denisot, 
 one of her judges, Claude Rougere, the 
 Deputy Public Accuser, and Tavernier, a 
 greffier, and to them made a confession or 
 declaration in regard to her concealed prop- 
 erty. To these men she gave a list of 
 about two hundred and fifty articles of jew- 
 elry and gold and silver plate which, to- 
 gether with several sacks of money, she 
 had buried in different parts of her garden. 
 In her terror, and perhaps without a thought 
 of what she was doing, she did not hesitate 
 to implicate in her confession those who 
 had helped her in her work of concealment, 
 some of whom paid with their lives the 
 penalty of their devotion to her. She firmly 
 believed that if she gave up everything her 
 life would be spared. But no sooner was 
 the confession ended than orders were 
 given for her execution on the following 
 day. 
 
 In the memoirs of the de Goncours we 
 find this striking picture of the last of the 
 favorites during the few hours that imme- 
 diately preceded her death :
 
 DREYFUS-LIKE JUSTICE 271 
 
 " At the reading of this sentence, pros- 
 trated, overwhelmed by stupor and horror, 
 Madame Du Barry suddenly lost the cool- 
 ness and the remnant of dignity which she 
 had exhibited during the trial. When she 
 saw that all was over, that she was about 
 to be led away and that the witnesses who 
 had been present during the scene rubbed 
 their hands and enjoyed her agony shame- 
 lessly, she was stricken with such a physi- 
 cal weakness that the gendarmes were 
 obliged to support her with their arms, 
 while the fear that she would die before 
 reaching the scaffold took possession of the 
 anxious multitude. 
 
 " The trouble, the fright, the utter help- 
 lessness, the prostration of the woman in 
 the presence of death and of such a death 
 - was so great that she, who all her life 
 had thought only of living, in one moment 
 forgot everything, affection, gratitude, debts 
 of love, sacred engagements, the secrets 
 and the devotion of those who had compro- 
 mised themselves for her. Hoping to save 
 her life by selling the lives of others, 
 believing that she could buy pardon, or at
 
 272 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 least a reprieve by giving up what remained 
 of hidden treasure, we find her on the day 
 of her execution at ten o'clock in the morn- 
 ing, quite pale after a night of terror, 
 trembling and supplicating between the 
 two wickets of the Conciergerie, flinging 
 toward the advancing executioner, toward 
 the hour of doom so nigh, toward the guil- 
 lotine looming about her, the precipitate 
 and breathless confession of everything that 
 she had buried, concealed and kept back 
 from the scent of the Republic and from 
 the cupidities of the year II ! To Justice 
 Denisot, to Claude Rougere, substitute of 
 the public prosecutor, Madame Du Barry 
 gives detail as to the precious objects buried 
 in the garden of Louveciennes, buried in 
 the thickets, concealed in the corridors and 
 in the cellar, in the garden of her valet, 
 that faithful Morin who will afterwards pay 
 with his head for his mistress's disclosure, 
 concealed in the house of the woman 
 Deliant, concealed on the premises of Citi- 
 zen Montrouy. 
 
 " Under the stroke of terror, she remem- 
 bers and finds everything again, bit by bit,
 
 DREYFUS-LIKE JUSTICE 273 
 
 louis by louis, down to a plate, down to a 
 spoon, for it is her life that she is going to 
 recover. In her zeal, in her anguish, fearing 
 that all this treasure will not suffice still to 
 pay for her pardon, she undertakes to write 
 to London, if it is the good pleasure of the 
 Tribunal, to get back all the articles in the 
 theft of 1791 deposited with Morland, with 
 Moncelet and with Ramson. Unhappy 
 being ! She forgot that the Revolution 
 would be her heir." 
 
 Jeanette Du Barry met death in a way 
 that even moved the blood-thirsty onlook- 
 ers to something like pity. It was a time 
 when the knife was for women as well as 
 men and when courage at the supreme mo- 
 ment of death was not a matter of sex. 
 Marie Antoinette, Madame Roland, Char- 
 lotte Corday and scores of others mounted 
 the scaffold with faces that were calm and 
 often smiling, and died without giving sign 
 of fear. These women died for some prin- 
 ciple in which they believed. Poor Du 
 Barry, however, died only because of her 
 beauty, which had turned the head of a king. 
 And with that beauty faded, her royal lover 
 
 18
 
 274 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 dead and gone, as well as the old order of 
 things for which he stood, she had nothing 
 to sustain her in her final hour. 
 
 Crouching in the cart, and with a face 
 as white as the robe she wore, she passed 
 through the great crowd that had assembled 
 to look upon the mistress of its former king. 
 AVith her were the Vandenyvers and they 
 sought to sustain her with words of cheer 
 and encouragement. Her only replies, how- 
 ever, were sobs and moans and inarticulate 
 cries for mercy. Greive, the anarchist, was 
 there among the rest, laughing heartily, as 
 he afterwards said, at the grimaces of the 
 unfortunate woman whom he had hounded 
 to the scaffold. The cart entered the rue 
 St. Honore and passed directly in front 
 of Labille's shop, where, a quarter of a cen- 
 tury before, she had learned her trade of 
 bonnet-making. A score of girls, employed 
 there now just as she had been in her young 
 days, had stationed themselves on the bal- 
 cony to obtain a glimpse of this world-famous 
 beauty who had once been an apprentice 
 herself in that very shop, had lived to rule 
 her king and to make and unmake cabinets,
 
 " Swear on the Cross ! "
 
 R 
 5 
 
 1 
 
 ,<a 
 
 sj
 
 DREYFUS-LIKE JUSTICE 277 
 
 and was now to crown her whole marvel- 
 lous career with a single moment of anguish 
 on the block. 
 
 At the sight of these girls looking down 
 upon her with pitying eyes, the condemned 
 woman seemed to awake to a sudden and 
 hideous realization of what was before her, 
 and shriek after shriek rang through the 
 crowded street. The executioner and his 
 assistants used all their force in their efforts 
 to prevent her from throwing herself to the 
 ground. Foiled in this desire, she leant over 
 the edge of the cart and frantically begged 
 for her life. 
 
 " My friends, save me ! I have never 
 done harm to any one in my life ! In 
 Heaven's name, save me ! " 
 
 It was almost the first time that the 
 spectacle of a woman dying in abject terror, 
 and without even a show of bravado, had 
 been seen in Paris, and something like a 
 murmur of pity began to make itself heard. 
 
 " Life ! Life ! Give me my life, good 
 people, and all my goods shall be yours ! " 
 she implored. 
 
 " Your goods ! Bah ! They all belong
 
 278 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 to the nation already ! " cried a man con- 
 temptuously, and a coalheaver standing in 
 front of him turned and levelled him to the 
 earth with a single blow in the face. 
 
 The people approved the act. The pity- 
 ing murmurs grew louder, and if the driver 
 had not urged his horse to a gallop, there 
 might have been a rescue. 
 
 Arrived at the gallows, it was necessary 
 for the executioners to lift her bodily from 
 the cart and up the steps. Even when tied 
 to the plank she struggled frantically and 
 begged piteously for just one second more 
 of life. The descending knife silenced her 
 cries, and the executioner held up before the 
 eyes of the crowd the bleeding head of the 
 woman who had done little, indeed, to de- 
 serve such a death. 
 
 The last act of the play compresses into 
 three short scenes the tragic, pitiable story 
 of Du Barry's persecution and death. In 
 the first of these scenes we see her living 
 on her estate in Louveciennes, attended by 
 her faithful servant Denys and one or two 
 friends of her former years. Here, at the 
 instigation of Greive, she is arrested,
 
 DREYFUS-LIKE JUSTICE 279 
 
 although nineteen years have passed since 
 death put an end to her relation witli the 
 king. These years have been full of 
 changes, not only for her, but for all France 
 as well, and in no respect are these changes 
 shown more plainly than in the dresses of 
 the revolutionary patriots. In the pre- 
 ceding acts of the drama, we have only 
 seen the laces, ruffles, small clothes and 
 elaborate coiffures of a luxurious and disso- 
 lute age. Now we see the ugly beginnings 
 of the sort of dress to which we, of the 
 present generation, have been condemned. 
 Escorted by soldiers of the Republic, and 
 with the angry murmurs of the mob ringing 
 in her ears, she is taken away to Paris, and 
 the scene changes to her prison cell in the 
 Conciergerie. Here she is visited by 
 Denisot, the judge of the revolutionary 
 court, and two associates, who, while buoy- 
 ing her up with vague hopes of a pardon, 
 take from her a finger ring, the very last 
 bit of property in her possession. This 
 done, they withdraw, the sound of work- 
 men, busy at the scaffold, is heard, and a 
 moment later the priest enters to apprise
 
 280 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 her of the failure of her appeal and to hear 
 her last confession. 
 
 At no moment during the play does the 
 actress make a more profound impression 
 on her audience than in that in which she 
 realizes for the first time that her last hope 
 is gone and that she must die. 
 
 Springing forward with a cry that is sur- 
 charged with the bitterest anguish and de- 
 spair, she begins the pleadings for life which 
 do not cease until the very end. But the 
 sentence has been pronounced, her petition 
 for clemency refused, and her life must 
 come to an end with to-morrow's sun. 
 
 But it is the last scene which, more than 
 all of the others, leaves its indelible mark 
 on the memory. And this one is almost 
 completely in accord with the happenings 
 set down in history. In only one particular 
 has Mr. Belasco made use of his license as a 
 dramatist, and that is in bringing Cosse- 
 Brissac on to the scene for a final word of 
 farewell with the woman whom he had loved 
 so fondly. The reason for this is obvious, 
 though, as a matter of fact, Cosse had 
 already been guillotined.

 
 
 DAVID BELASCO.
 
 DREYFUS-LIKE JUSTICE 281 
 
 Surely the sternest preacher of morality 
 could ask no more convincing portrayal of 
 the ending of a dissolute life . than Mr. 
 Belasco has given us in this awful repre- 
 sentation of the passage of the once pam- 
 pered and envied Favorite through the mob 
 that surges about the cart that is taking 
 her to the guillotine. 
 
 It is midwinter in Paris, and the curtain 
 rises on a scene through whose darkness 
 nothing can be seen but the flakes of fall- 
 ing snow. Almost imperceptibly the night 
 fades before the cold gray light of early 
 dawn, until there comes a moment when it 
 is hard to realize that we are not actually 
 gazing at a deserted street in which the 
 snow is swiftly and silently falling. Little 
 by little the day grows, and then we see 
 that this deserted street is the rue St. 
 Honore, and that the house directly in 
 front of us is the shop of Madame Labille, 
 where the milliner's apprentice, Jeanette 
 Vaubernier, gained some of her earliest 
 knowledge of the life in which she played 
 such a picturesque and wanton part. 
 
 The door of the shop opens and Hor-
 
 282 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 tense, the forewoman, who still carries in 
 her heart a loving remembrance of the 
 pretty, wilful Jeanette of other days, peers 
 down the street through the falling flakes. 
 The procession is on its way, and one after 
 another the windows along the street are 
 opened and heads thrust out to peer anx- 
 iously in the direction from which the 
 tumbrel bearing the condemned is ap- 
 proaching, to the accompaniment of a 
 hoarse clamor that grows in volume as it 
 draws nearer. 
 
 Soldiers take possession of the street 
 and stand ready to keep back the mob of 
 men, women and children that gather 
 from every side, filling every doorway, 
 climbing up on the steps of houses, and 
 even swarming up to places of vantage on 
 the statue in the square. 
 
 Now comes the advance guard that in 
 those days accompanied every victim of 
 the reign of terror to the place of execu- 
 tion. A bevy of brazen-faced young girls, 
 called " cart swallows," appear dancing 
 round the cart in which the last of the 
 royal Favorites is taking her final journey.
 
 On the Way to Execution.
 
 DREYFUS-LIKE JUSTICE 285 
 
 As they turn the corner, the mob bursts 
 into hoarse shouts of triumph, and surges 
 against the restraining lines of soldiers in 
 a mad attempt to forestall the execu- 
 tioner's work. 
 
 It is a triumph of stage management, 
 this mob, but which one of us, so absorb- 
 ing is the interest in the play, stops to 
 think of it ? Stage mobs there have been 
 in New York a plenty, but never one like 
 this. 
 
 It was a wonderful mob, organized and 
 directed according to the system in vogue 
 in the Saxe-Meiningen Company, that 
 roused itself under the spur of Marc 
 Antony's oratory when Ludwig Barnay 
 played at the Thalia Theatre nearly 
 twenty years ago. There was another 
 great mob in " Paul Kauvar " organized 
 and directed by Steele Mackaye. Very 
 effective, too, was the work of Heinrich 
 Couried's mob when " The Weavers " was 
 given at the Irving Place Theatre. There 
 have been dozens of stage mobs that could 
 be cited, but not one in any serious drama 
 that was not black-browed and sullen in
 
 286 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 its whole attitude. Here, at one of the 
 most tragic moments that can be imagined, 
 the whole scene swarms with a mob which 
 is exultant and greedy for the blood that 
 is to come and which is nevertheless not 
 sullen but sardonic. It is a mob that 
 taunts its victim with her immoralities 
 and fills the whole street with bursts of 
 hideous laughter at the mere idea of this 
 wretched woman ever having known a 
 love that was pure and honest. 
 
 There are a score of different well-con- 
 ceived and carefully costumed Parisian 
 types in this mob, but no one notices them. 
 The entire interest of the audience is cen- 
 tred in the jolting two- wheeled cart which 
 pauses for a moment on its way to the 
 scaffold in the Place de la Revolution. 
 The cart has three occupants, the exe- 
 cutioner, red-capped and grim ; Jeanette 
 Du Barry, white with fear ; and the priest 
 in his black robe who remains with her to 
 the end. 
 
 It is difficult to conceive of such abject, 
 pitiful terror as that shown by this wretched 
 woman, who crouches at the feet of her
 
 DREYFUS-LIKE JUSTICE 287 
 
 confessor, her beautiful hair cropped close 
 for the knife, the ashen pallor of death 
 already in her face. 
 
 " Ha, ha ! You 're afraid to die ! " 
 screams a woman in the mob. 
 
 " Yes, I know I 'm afraid to die," she 
 responds in piteous tones, and the street 
 echoes with shrill, sardonic, mirthless 
 laughter. 
 
 From the balcony of the milliner's shop, 
 Hortense, faithful and courageous, throws 
 a bunch of violets into the cart, and utters 
 a few words of farewell. The mob turns 
 toward her with the fierce remonstrance of 
 wild beasts threatened with the loss of 
 their prey. 
 
 Cosse, the one pure love of her life, 
 presses close to her for a parting word, 
 while the mob beats against the line of 
 soldiery and curses and howls till the priest 
 with uplifted cross commands them, in the 
 name of the Lord, to allow the condemned 
 woman to go in peace to her death. 
 
 " It 's too bad, Cosse," she says at last, 
 in a voice low and despairing and which 
 finds its way into every heart in the audi-
 
 288 THE STORY OF DU BARRY 
 
 ence, " it 's too bad we never went into the 
 country to pick those violets." The driver 
 cracks his whip, the wheels turn, and again, 
 with blood-curdling shouts, the crowd 
 surges around the cart as it passes on to 
 the scaffold, and we who have watched the 
 play can almost see the knife that awaits 
 her coining, the same knife that gleamed 
 across the actress's fancy the moment she 
 set foot on the stage.
 
 PRINTED FOR FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
 BY THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, JOHN WILSON 
 AND SON (INC.), CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
 
 A 000 674 292 8