many misfortunes we might have spared each other ! There remains
for you at your age a long career to enjoy: the decline of mine may
still shed on it some advantage by making use of my experience and
of the position in which at this moment I find myself.

" M. Jame can inform you of some of my views for the purpose
of being useful to you in my turn, and I would be ungrateful for the
first time in my life if when I owe to you the facility of appearing
in my own city with honour, I did not on my return sacrifice my time
and my attentions to serve you. This may be and will be so, my
dear sister ; you will still profit by some flashes of my genius. They
have often lighted up your path. I repeat to you, they will light it
up still. . . . You and he (M. Jame), my dear sister, are the
only friends I know. I have been repulsed with arms of brass by
persons whom blood and gratitude ought to render inviolably at-
tached to me: you alone will have the merit of having set me up
again on the top of the wheel. I am not laying a tax on the extent
of the service you have promised to render me. I shall receive with
thankfulness what will come from you. It is the last service of this
sort I have asked from you, and if there were within my reach any
negotiable bill or any article of furniture that could be sold, be sure
I could not have asked you for anything. It is with tears in my eyes,
I repeat to you, that I see you forced to deprive yourself of your
capital in order to assist me to get out of the abyss in which I am,
for I am firmly convinced that you are just as destitute of money
as I am myself ; but I have nothing except a life-mortgage, and if I

149



Madame Dxi Barry

ever, in spite of his debts and of his creditors, the Comte
Jean lived in great style. He gambled in the most desperate
fashion, kept five mistresses, married the sultana of his
harem to a Chevalier of Saint-Louis, for whom he got a
pension of 2,000 crowns so that he might have the usufruct
of it to himself. He held under the baptismal font a child
of Beauvoisin whose baptism cost, in sugar plums and in
presents, 25,000 livres. Installed for a little while in the
chateau of Triel, where he had around him all the gamblers
of France, he lost 7,000 louis at one sitting, and he boasted
when rising from the table that he had got to his fifth mil-
lion. The Comte Jean appeared as a product of rotten civili-
zation, one of the decadents of his time, as a type in which
seems to exhibit itself in its shamelessness, in its cynicism, in
its scandalous contempt for every human religion, the moral-
ity of a " Rameau's Nephew." 1 It was the Comte Jean who
said, when people spoke of his losses at play, " Don't worry,

1 An allusion to Diderot's remarkable work, "Le Neveu de Ra-
meau," in which the vices of a parasite in the days of pre-Revolution-
ary France are ruthlessly gibbeted. TRANSLATOR.



die without having repaid by some service that which you render me,
you and I know that it is to no purpose.

" I do not insist on appearing at Luciennes on account of the pecu-
liar reasons you mention. I do not see, however, why you should
not make an appointment in Paris at the house of M. Darnet, or
elsewhere; perhaps an hour's conversation would be instructive and
profitable.

" May Heaven preserve you, my dear sister : I have been told that
it has taken care of your freshness and your figure, I thank it for
doing so."

ISO



Madame Du Barry

my friends ; 'tis you'll have to pay for all this." It was the
Comte Jean who, with reference to a money-order refused
by the Abbe Terray, went shouting all over Paris that he
would blow up the Controller-General, that he would blow
up D'Aiguillon, that he would blow up the ministry. It was
the Comte Jean who came to demand from the Farming
Committee for his friend Desaint the directorship of Paris,
and, when he was told that the post had been already given
to the Sieur Chomel, cried out against it : " As if everyone
did not know it was he who had the honour to give a mistress
to the King . . . and let them take care not to put
him into a temper ! ' ?1

The scandal this time was too marked and too public.
He was advised to go and spend a few months in his mar-
quisate at Lisle in order to learn, as Madame du Barry put
it to him, to " turn his tongue seven times in his mouth
before speaking." He left in a state of dissatisfaction at
not having been sustained by his sister-in-law against the
ministers ; he returned home in a very bad temper at not
having seen his exile abridged by having credit given to
him, and, as a sequel to two or three scenes which he had
with her, the Roue launched against his former mistress the
cruel ballad which he composed or inspired:

" Woman of shame !
Why are you so proud with me?

My Royal Dame !
Whence comes all your dignity?

1 Horace Walpole says of Du Barry (Memoirs of the Reign of
George III., Vol. II., p. 200) : " He seems to have been a consum-
mate blackguard." TRANSLATOR.

ISI



Madame Du Barry

If you ever get faded, and have to climb down

In the street,

You will meet
Some kind " pals " of yours on the town.

Woman of shame, etc.

" When the monk, your sire, said,

Mass to buy you a crust,
And your mother got bread

By the wages of lust,
You were humble and meek,

And just as you should be :
Then no more of your cheek

When you're dealing with me !
Now listen ! be just your old self,

Or some day you may find yourself sold ;
And, though I love you better than pelf,

Let me show I can kick, as of old.

Woman of shame !
Do you think I am broken at last ?

My Royal Dame !
Don't forget what you were in the past ! " l

The ftes 2 were not discontinued at Luciennes, where
around this spring table of the King, who at first had at
either side of him only the Marchale de Mirepoix and the
Marquise de Montmorency, came to sit down in succession
all the ladies of the Court. In the beginning there were
the Duchesse and the Vicomtesse de Laval, then that Com-
tesse of Choiseul, whose husband was the personal enemy

J The original of the ballad, " Drolesse," is couched in much
stronger language than the translation here given of it. TRANS-
LATOR.

2 The " Secret Memoirs " refer to a fete given in March, 1773, by
Madame du Barry, at which there were four spectacles and a hun-
dred comedians, singers, and dancers from three theatres. At this
fte an armed Cupid came forth from an egg.

152



Madame D\i Barry

of the Duke, then also Mesdames de Valbelle, de Nesle,
d'Avaray de 1'Aigle, d'Harville, and that Madame de Crenay
who had been lampooned in some verses :

" Crenay is a coquette,
And on light toe she trips,
And so plump is her waist that she often slips :

Then Fenelon lifts her in excellent style,
And each guest applauds with a ringing cheer ;
She is fair and fat and as round as a sphere,

But she dances all the whole." 1

The Duchesse de Mazarin with the Princesse Kinski con-
sented to be half admitted, 2 and, so to speak, remained on
the threshold of the little palace, ready to be replaced by
more illustrious ladies. And so with other and older names
in France. For with time they were all bound to " hop " to
the fetes. Would the news not go round one day that
Madame de Forcalquier, she who was known as the " Bel-
lissima," was at Choisy, which was the antechamber to
Luciennes ? " To see in a grated box the new actress in the
comedy?'* "No, madame, she must be supping there."
" Supping ! Ah ! I'm quite sure she's not. I know what she
thinks, and I'll bet on it against anyone who likes," " Do

1 " Crenay fait la coquette,
Et veut encore danser,
Sa taille rondelette souvent la fait glisser,

Notre Fenelon la releve en cadence,
Chacun s'ecrie a 1'unisson
Elle est bien grasse, elle est bien ronde

Mais tou jours va qui danse."

2 Letters of the Marquise du Deffand to Horace Walpole." Paris,
1812. Tome II.

153



Madame Du Barry

not bet, Madame ! There can be nothing more certain." 1 In
fact the Duchesse de Forcalquier, who grew indignant, not
more than three months before, at being suspected of such
infamy, had allowed herself to be enrolled amongst the list
of ladies who supped with the Du Barry.

For these fine ladies, will Luciennes be what Bellevue
was? Will Versailles find in the enchanted palace noble
pleasures, charming amusements. No, the Court will meet
there only the broad and unrefined diversions of a common-
place household. The mistress of Luciennes will not invoke
Racine and Tragedy to distract the ennui of a King's old
age. She will not have recourse to the piquant comedies, to
the refined operas, to the delightful inventions of Madame
de Pompadour. She will not awaken the echoes of Belle-
vue's past, and the memory of those charming ballets, of
those felicitous allegories, of those pretty verses, of that
light, lively, warbling music. But she will give dressing-
room suppers bachelors' suppers, where ceremonial, wit,
epigrams, improvised couplets, and fashionable recreations
will be replaced by noisy mirth and the risky jests of Cour-
tille, from which nothing will be lacking save Ramponneau's
face. The Du Barry will have plays acted before the King
not by ordinary comedians, but by the comedians of the
Boulevard du Temple.

The Du Barry will inaugurate at the Court the repertoire



1 " Complete Correspondence of Madame du Deffand." By M. de
Sainte-Aulaire, Paris, 1866. Tome II.

154



Madame Dm Barry

of the theatre of one Guimard. And the merriest of Colle's
comedies, the one that shows least regard for public decency,
" Truth in Wine/' will afford her the satisfaction of seeing
the fine ladies of Versailles blush. Then, during supper,
there will be sung by Larivet and his wife such gay couplets
that they will embarrass even the Favourite's own female
friends. After " Truth in Wine," after the shameful sug-
gestiveness and broad jokes, the Du Barry will introduce
the delights of Audinot's " Penny Show," which will one
morning astonish all Paris by the unexpected announce-
ment:

" His Majesty's booth comedians will to-day give no per-
formance at the theatre as they are going to Court." And
the most vulgar play in Audinot's choice repertoire will end
with the " Fricassee," that loose country-dance which the
common people dance in public-houses. 1 Vile, ignoble
laughs, which will teach the language of the streets, the
fashions and the accent of " forest fetes " to this corrupt
Court, which as yet had, however, preserved all the graces,
and, if we may say so, all the decencies of corruption.

Enboldened by their license, the Du Barry, abandoning
through familiarity her fine airs and the position in which
good-fortune had placed her, shook off the mask she wore
as Favourite, became " La Lange " of former days, and

"Secret Memoirs of the Republic of Letters." Tome VI. At
this representation, which took place on the 8th of April, 1771, Ma-
dame du Barry amused herself infinitely and laughed with her breast
exposed."

155



Madame D\i Barry

from her mouth burst forth the language of her protegee,
Madame la Loque, the fish woman. And the roofs of Ver-
sailles, astonished and filled with shame, had to listen to a
woman addressing a King of France in the language of the
gutter. Here was the great evil produced by the King's
intrigue with Madame du Barry: she ruined (deplorable
ruin!) the respect for royalty. In this scandal lay the sin
that is too light a word the crime for which Louis XV.
had no remorse, of which the Du Barry's conscience could
not realize the shamefulness, and of which the monarchy
had to endure the penalty. Dreadful and lamentable sample
of the law made for Kings and which condemns them not
to have it in their power to descend to the appetites of their
pleasures, or to compromise the familiarity of their hearts,
without compromising in their persons the human religion
which they represent, the principle of which they are the
image, the dignity which they betoken, royalty itself.

Indeed, by contact with the Du Barry, everything around
the King was debased and invisibly crumbling. The disci-
pline of Versailles was lost, while the curiosity of Paris grew
bolder. The sanctuary of the royal majesty flew open, and
showed the alcove of which the fair Bourbonnaise sportively
drew the curtains.

The people lost faith and illusion when this gay wanton,
excited by champagne, was heard smashing the glass of the
" Oeil de Bceuf." Everywhere in the midst of this royalty,
still standing and almost entire, Madame du Barry works
evil by following her vocation and obeying her instincts as

156



Madame D\J Barry

a courtesan. She is that charming instrument of destruc-
tion, a pretty mistress in a great heritage ; and in her phi-
losophy of nature, in her laughter which treats everything
familiarly, in her insolent spirit of camaraderie, in her mis-
chievousness and romping sluttishness, so brazen-faced, in-
genuous, and charming, in that intolerance of all hierarchies,
in that deprecation of all grandeur, in those aggressive out-
bursts of contempt for the men and women of the Court,
there is the groundwork and the fatal vengeance of every
woman of pleasure that curious tendency, like the wanton-
ness of a dreadful child breaking the things with which it
plays. One day when, after sipping punch out of a ladle,
she put it back into the bowl, the King reproached her for
compelling everybody to drink her spittle, and did she not
give this reply : " Well, I want everybody to drink my spit-
tle?" 1

Involuntarily and by her nature she discredits everything
that approaches her, everything that touches her. Whether
she pushes Zamore's fingers into the Chancellor's peruke,
or with her throat in the air gets the Papal Nuncio to pre-
sent her slippers to her while jumping out of bed in her
chemise, she always plays this part of scoffing at, lessening,
and lowering to her own tone and her own level, the insti-
tutions, the traditions, the qualities, and even the State
measures of the French Monarchy. Barriers, venerations,

1 Extract from the " Memoirs of Horace Walpole on the Reign of
George III." (year 1771), given in the "Letters of Horace Walpole,"
published by the Comte de Baillon. Didier, 1812.

'57



: Madame D\i Barry

the prestige and the solemnity of the representation of the
will, of the love even of the King, everything that places the
King above humanity even while he is brought into close
relations with it, sinks under the follies and caprices of the
last of the Royal Favourites. " Let some years pass away,
and the crown will be no more," said an Englishman, " than
the nightcaps of two lovers." This throne around which
y Louis XIV. had maintained the etiquette of adultery, this
\ throne in which Madame de Pompadour sat with some re-
/ mains of decency, will resemble, under the insults and inso-
lences of the Du Barry that cord of Saint Louis on which
thejpyrtesan Lacour made the old Due de la Valliere spit !
^ And the idea occurs to you to ask yourself whether this
.^-Maughter of the people who introduces Billingsgate into
V Versailles was not predestined to be the portress of the
\ revolution in the palace of our Kings, and to open a way
V Vor the bloody work of October,



158



X.



Madame du Barry's Qualities as a " Good-natured Girl of the
Town." Her Family. Her Daughter, Madame de Boissaisson.
Marriage of the Vicomte Adolphe. Fresh Attempts of the Favourite
to Get into Marie Antoinette's Good Graces. The Ear-rings worth
700,000 livres. Project of a Dissolution of the Du Barry's Marriage
by the Pope.

BUT, if, by the fatality of her nature, the Favourite did
all this injury, if she was guilty of being a courtesan and of
involuntarily using her instincts for the ruin of the mon-
archy, the woman redeems herself by the easy virtues " of a
good-natured girl of the town " we must have recourse to
this popular phrase; it is the only one which paints \yith
one touch Madame du Barry. Madame du Barry loved
neither vengeance nor spite; and even the books of the
Revolution rendered her this much justice : " she did not hu-
miliate even those whom she might have ruined/' 1 She com-
promised with the pamphlets; she punished her enemies
merely with roguish tricks. She did not silence people with
lettres de cachet; she did not send epigrams to the Bastille.



1 " The Gallery of French Dames to serve as a Sequel to the Gal-
lery of the States-General." London, 1790. Madame du Barry is
there represented under the name of Elmire.

159



Madame D\J Barry

The mystifier who parodied her just as she was, dressing
his mistress as Comtesse du Tonneau, 1 knew beforehand
that he did not risk martyrdom. It is she herself who asked
pardon for Sophie Arnould, at whose hands she had been
subjected to a calumnious attack. 2 Her reign had only one
Latude, a Latude in the enjoyment of freedom Theveneau
de Morande, whom she did not insist on having drowned or
suffocated, but whom she bought with a large sum of
money. 3 Her resentments and her angers were only out-

1 " The Countess of the Cask."

1 " Secret Memoirs of the Republic of Letters." Tome V.

* Theveneau de Morande, the author of the Breast-plated Gazet-
teer, had in 1774 forwarded to Madame du Barry from London,
where he had taken refuge, the prospectus of a book of which 6,000
copies were printed and which was entitled : " Secret Memoirs of a
Public Woman, or Essay on the Adventures of the Comtesse Dub
from her Cradle to the Bed of Honour." 8vo. London. 4 vol-
umes. Two negotiations, conducted by Bellanger and Preaudeau de
Chenilly, failed. The Duke determined to send Beaumarchais to treat
with the pamphleteer. Beaumarchais had an interview with Theve-
neau de Morande, who agreed to suppress every edition on the con-
dition that he would receive 32,000 livres in cash, and that a pension
of 4,000 livres would be secured to him, of which half would revert
to his wife on his death. Every copy was consumed in a brick-kiln
in the neighborhood of London, save one, of which the leaves were
cut in two, and each half was to remain hidden in the hands of Beau-
marchais and of Theveneau de Morande so as to provide against a
new publication of this work, in which case the conditions of the
agreement were to be null and void. This was the story told to
Dutens by Beaumarchais, who declared that the " Summary," the
"Anecdotes," in short, all the other books which appeared about
Madame du Barry, had no connection with the book of Theveneau
de Morande. Had the book been really quite destroyed? (" Memoirs
of a Traveller taking a Rest." By Dutens. Bossange, 1806. Tome

160



Madame D\i Barry

burst of childishness which subsided, like her resolutions,
like her obstinacies, like her refusals of permission to go to
Chanteloup, under the mockery, the laughter, and the pretty
sayings of the Marechale de Mirepoix. 1 She was generous
as grandly, as foolishly, as a courtesan who is not avaricious.
She gave and allowed to be taken everything around her,
working with her purse for the advantage of those who had
known, served, or pleased her. She had in her heart the de-
votedness of the people, their natural attachments, the senti-
ment of the family. She went, every fortnight, to spend a
day with her mother, whom she addressed as the Marquise of
Montrable, 2 to whom she had given quarters in the convent
of Saint Elizabeth as well as a carriage, a country-house,
and a little farm-house called the Maison Rouge 3 near Lon-

1 The story of the whip given by Madame du Barry's chamber-
maids to the Marquise de Rosen, her former darling, who had aban-
doned her, if the anecdote is true, is but a joke in very bad taste.

* The Marquise de Montrable had learned very little of orthog-
raphy in her new position. Here is a receipt truly curious for a
quarter of the pension which her daughter allowed her : " J'ay recu
de madame la comtesse du barry par les mens et de denier de mon-
sieur buffants la somme de trois cent livres pour un quartier de la
pension quelle a bien voula ma cor det Le dit quartier echu du i er
Juillet, 1777." Catalogue of Autograph Letters of the 21 st of Jan-
uary, 1856.

* We find in the accounts of Madame du Barry, who had re-entered
into possession of this little estate after her mother's death, a lease
of the property entered into with M. and Madame Morgan, commen-
cing the ist of April, 1792. This is the Morgan denounced by Greive
for his counter-revolutionary intrigues.

II.) The "Secret Memoirs" speak in May, 1773, of another book
printed at Strasburg, with obscene prints and forming a sequel to the

161



Madame D\i Barry

jumeau. On her mother's death, on the 2Oth of October,
1788, she assigned for the benefit of the Sieur Ran<;on de
Montrable, her mother's husband, a life annuity of 2,000
livres, to recompense Ran<;on for his kind conduct towards
his spouse. She gave a pension to Madame Quantiny, her
mother's sister; she obtained posts for and pushed on four
of the latter's children. She took with her the last comer, a
little girl, whom she brought up as her daughter, and whom
the public believed to be her child. This was the child chris-
tened " little Pierrot " or again " Betsi," whose roguish
face Drouais painted above the door of Luciennes. As long
as her life lasted, we find Madame du Barry in familiar and
helpful relations with her family. A very affectionate letter
of the 24th of August, 1788, dated from Metz and written
by a niece married to the Marquis de Boissaison 1 invites
Madame du Barry, while her husband will be under the cov-
ering of the camp, to come and spend some days with her.
She promises her fresh butter, eggs from her hens, sends
her delicious preserves, and ends her letter by saying that
her little Hercule a name which recalls Brissac does not
let a day pass without asking her : " When are we going to
return to Luciennes ? " But would not this niece be a

1 Revolutionary Tribunals : The Du Barry's " Dossier." National
Archives W 16.

" Porter of the Carthusians." This book, which entered into details
as to the amours of the King and the Du Barry, would have been
seized, with its printed sheets, engravings and the manuscript, and
nobody would have possessed a copy of it.

162



Madame D\i Barry-
daughter of Madame du Barry? No book of the period, I
am aware, affirms positively that Madame du Barry was
never a mother; and yet M. d'Allonville declares that
Madame du Barry had a daughter without knowing who
was the father, that she married her. with a dowry of 100,000
francs to a nobleman possessed of no means. He declares
that in 1838 this daughter and a granddaughter of Madame
du Barry resided in Munich, while the grandson (Herculc,
without doubt) was a major-general in Russia. M. D'Allon-
ville even mentions the name of the nobleman who was the
husband of Madame du Barry's daughter, who appears to
have been the Marquis de Boissaisson, an emigre during the
Revolution. 1

The injuries done by the Roue to his sister-in-law,
Madame du Barry's just resentment, the distance from her
person at which she kept him, did not prevent the Comte
Jean from recommending himself in some suppliant letters
to the Favourite in the name of the past, from soliciting her
" good heart " and her credit for the purpose of getting a
wife for his son, the Vicomte Adolphe, who had first been
a page of the King, then an officer in His Majesty's regi-
ment of infantry, then cornet of Light Horse of the Guard,
with the rank of campmaster of cavalry, and who boasted of
having in his pocket a commission as first equerry of the
King which he had carried off by assault from MM. de
Coigny and de Polignac. 2

1 " Secret Memoirs." By the Comte D'Allonville. Werdet, 1838.
Tome I.
J The Vicomte Adolphe had only the promise of the post. The ap-

163



Madame Dxi Barry-
Many attempts to get the Vicomte Adolphe settled into a
great family had already been made by Madame du Barry.
At one time, she had taken it into her head to marry him
to Mile, de Bethune; she had been stopped by Louis XV. 's
cold reception of this proposal, perhaps because he consid-
ered it insolent pretension on the part of the Du Barrys to
seek to form an alliance with the Sully family. Then the
Favourite fell back on a natural daughter of the King
known under the name of Mile, de Saint Andre ; but the ne-
gotiations for this marriage were broken off owing to the
firmness and plain-speaking of the tutor before they were
already far advanced.

It was in consequence of this rupture that the Comte
Jean, in a letter which he asked the Favourite to read in her