Majesty, but had held the candle, and for that reason she begged
him no longer to put his foot in her abode.
1 " The Annals of Louis XV." A. Villefranche at the Widow Lib-
erty's, 1782. Second Part.
178
Madame D\i Barry
against her, the surprise of finding behind women her best
friends. The Abbe Terray himself, the man who appeared
the most attached to her fortune, had placed near the Fa-
vourite one of his bastards, Madame d'Amerval, whose
youth, giddiness, and childishness amused Madame du
Barry. It was at the moment when the Abbe exhorted the
Favourite, while awaiting the dissolution of her marriage, to
follow the example of Madame de Pompadour, to yield to
the physical caprices of the King, softly urging her to put
La d'Amerval into the bed of Louis XV. But Madame du
Barry had the instinct that, under the cloak of a passing
fancy, the minister Bonneau was slyly raising up a rival
against her. 1 Finally, in her own family, in the person of
her niece, the beautiful Madame Adolphe du Barry, she had
to fear an instrument of ruin worked by the Comte Jean, 2
who, always ambitious of governing the kingdom, believed
that he was more easily master of his daughter-in-law than
of his sister-in-law. And there again did not Madame du
Barry find herself associated in the Roue's plans with the
Comte d'Aiguillon, whom people accused to the aunt of in-
fidelities with the niece? 3
1 " Memoirs concerning the Administration of Finances under the
Ministry of the Abbe Terray." London, 1786.
* When people spoke to Madame du Barry of the plans of the
Comte Jean and of the impression made on the King by the beauty
of Mile, de Tournon, the Favourite said gaily that " the office of
the King's mistress would not pass at least out of the family." But
at heart she felt very uneasy.
* Of infidelities the Due d'Aiguillon was very capable, but of mach-
inations to overthrow the Favourite it is far less credible that he
179
Madame Dxi Barry
But more than all the light women of the Court and the
city there was to be dreaded on behalf of Madame du Barry
a more dangerous woman : this was Louis XV.'s daughter,
Madame Louise the Carmelite, who, under the mantle of
Saint Theresa, sent to her for the occasion of making her
vows, 1 wanted to rule France from the depths of her cell
Madame Louise, with whom the Chancellor, deserting Lu-
ciennes, went every eight days to communicate.
The great friendships between the cousins had grown
cold. The Favourite had not been able to obtain from the
Chancellor the pardon of the bankrupt Billard, the nephew
of Billard du Monceau. Then Maupeou had not been with-
out knowing of D'Aiguillon's secret attempts to re-establish
the Parliament on the assurance of the Princes that he
would be whitewashed; he was not ignorant of the support
given to these attempts by Madame du Barry up to the day
when she saw that the King, glad to be rid of the " black
robes/' determined to keep near him the man who had
delivered him from them. 2 The result was coldness and
almost hostility between the Minister and the Favour-
ite. But, apart from any little grievances which he
1 " Life of Madame Louise of France." By the Abbe Proyart
Perisse Freres. 1860. Tome I.
1 " Anecdotes about the Comtesse du Barri." London, 1775.
was guilty, and very slight credit is to be given to those stories,
which are belied by the courageous attachment of the Duke to the
Du Barry when she had fallen into disgrace.
180
LOUISE.MARIE OF FRANCE
To face page 180
Madame D\i Barry-
could have against the mistress, Maupeou was above all
driven to withdraw from her and from her party by
his knowledge of humanity, by the presentiment that
in the Bourbon growing old religion was quite ready
to reappear. And he thought that, at the present
moment, it was more useful to him to be on the side of
the confessor than on the side of the mistress. So the Chan-
cellor played the devotee, denouncing now the ministers
who were dragged at the feet of this woman of loose morals,
who lived only with comedians, singers, jugglers, all peo-
ple with talents which brought them ill-repute and reproba-
tion. Sustained by the Chancellor, Madame Louise assumed
more authority every day. The King often came to see her,
and at each of his visits Madame du Barry trembled. At
the beginning of 1772, the two of them, Madame Louise and
the Chancellor, had even arranged a marriage between the
King and the Archduchess Maria Elizabeth, sister of the
Emperor, she who had said that she would never marry the
King of France. And on the 25th of January, Madame du
Barry, seeing the King starting for Saint-Denis, flung her-
self at his feet, said to him that she knew her ruin was de-
termined upon, that she preferred to receive her conge from
the mouth of the King than to have the humiliation of re-
ceiving it from the Black Cabal, that the Chancellor and the
Archbishop were knaves, 1 and prevented by this scene the
" Journal of Events as they came to my Knowledge." By Hardy.
National Library. Manuscripts. French Supplement, 6680.
181
Madame D\i Barry
Hsit of the King. Later on, it was again Madame Louise
and the Chancellor, who, playing upon a caprice of the King,
filled Louis XV. for a moment with the desire to marry the
Princess de Lamballe, and drew on Madame du Barry, when
she jested with the King about the report of this marriage,
the severe rejoinder: " Why, I might do much worse."
The proposed marriages did not take place, but the action
of the Carmelite on the King remained powerful, and be-
came greater as the years accumulated on Louis XV.
There was, above all, each year, an epoch which was
always a critical time, Easter week, when every effort
was made in order that, according to the expression of
Madame Louise, " the good God should take possession
of her father's heart 1 in order that the King should be
induced to go to Communion." In vain did the Favourite
make the gay remark, " Well, if His Majesty makes his
Easter duty, I'll make mine." 2 She spent no less than an
entire fortnight in a state of mortal apprehension.
The King was growing old ; and age, years, the fatigue of
life, the weariness of the soul, in place of appeasing his pas-
sions, only irritated the capriciousness of his desires. That
physical obsession, which takes possession of certain old
men, made its prey of Louis XV. with advancing years. The
love which had filled his head and his body was no longer
1 An expression of Madame Louise's letter when she learned about
the Du Barry's dismissal from her father's bedside.
2 " Anecdotes about the Comtesse du Barri." London, 1775.
182
Madame D\i Barry
more than an appetite and a brutality of his heart ; and he
seemed no longer to have living within him anything but
furious and half -dead desires. . . . For a moment, how-
ever, after Madame de Pompadour's death, the King en-
tered into a sort of Platonic liaison with a charming
woman, the Comtesse de Seran, whose tastes he gallantly
consulted by having a suite of apartments furnished for
her use in blue. 1 For some months there was a discreet,
respectful relationship, an interchange of polite language,
pleasant chats which had all the charm of familiarity,
court paid to the lady with those graces and those
courtesies so natural to Louis XV. when he wished to
please. It might be said that a rejuvenescence took
place in the King's thoughts, a return to his first
amours 2 with the Comtesse de Toulouse; and the Court
believed that this was the commencement of one of
those liaisons which border on love without quitting
friendship, one of those tender, delightful kinds of inter-
course which make even an old man's soul amorous. But
this Platonism of Louis XV. was quickly killed by the Du
Barry's caresses, those caresses of the brothel, attacking only
the physical side of love and leading into the rut of animal-
ism. Unsatiated, the King went from Madame du Barry to
others, and from caprice to caprice, exhausting love with-
out exhausting temptation, tormented, restless, burning,
trembling, and interrupting his pleasures only to throw him-
1 " Memoirs of a Father." By Marmontel. Paris, 1804. Tome III.
1 Nous revenons tou jours a nos premiers amours. TRANSLATOR.
Madame Dxi Barry
self into religious acts which he made his female flatterers
share in. In this fever, wine, punch transported by
Madame du Barry from London drawing-rooms to the sup-
per of her own rooms in the palace, 1 every stimulant, was
used by the King, sustained him, lent him the energy to
keep him from growing old. Between the mistress and the
lover there was no longer any bond save that of habit and
sensuality, stripped of every bond of mind, stripped of
even all the decent coquetry and all the modest elegance
that had attached the King to Madame de Pompadour.
And just picture to yourself, Madame de Pompadour with
her shepherdess's costume, her straw hat, her ribbons, her
beauty in fitting attire, her charming veils; then see the
Du Barry in the costume which restores youth fulness to
the King, in her disguise as a Bacchante, 2 half-naked under
gauze, and her neck brazenly exposed, you will have a
representation of the two amours of the King.
In the meantime, the King was more than sixty years old.
These amorous excesses had produced in the case of the old
man ailments the nature of which he communicated to his
principal surgeon, La Martiniere. Louis XV. went to his
consultations, conformed with his prescriptions, even made
him sleep for several months in his own bed-room. And one
night in the month of May, 1773 of that month the whole
1 "The Breast-plated Gazetteer or Scandalous Anecdotes of the
Court of France." Printed a hundred leagues from the Bastille, at
the Sign of Liberty, 1781. "The Breast-plated Gazetteer" goes fur-
ther.
" Anecdotes about the Comtesse du Barri." London, 1775.
184
Madame Dxi Barry
of which Louis XV. would not see next year Madame du
Barry's elderly lover, talking about the sad decay of his
faculties, ended by saying with a sigh : "I see that I am
no longer young, that I must put on a break." " Sire," re-
plied La Martiniere with his plain-speaking, " you will do
better to unyoke."
The Lenten sermons preached by the Abbe de Beauvais
at the Court during the Holy Week of the year 1773 made a
deep impression on the King's mind. Suddenly there fell,
in this chapel of Versailles, on those lost fine ladies, on those
pandering courtiers, the bold language of an obscure man,
who flagellated everybody's turpitudes, who dared to mount
up to the King's person, assigning to Louis XV. and his
concubine this courageous Biblical allusion : " In short this
monarch (Solomon), sated with sensual indulgence, tired
from having exhausted with his withered senses every sort
of pleasure that surrounds a throne, ended by seeking for a
new sort in the vile remains of public license." To the in-
dignation of the courtiers, to the complaints of Madame du
Barry so pitilessly pointed at, Louis XV. contented himself
with answering that the Abbe de Beauvais was doing his
business.
Another sermon had a more decided effect on Louis XV.,
returning day and night to his terrified imagination. It was
a sermon on Death, at which the young preacher protected
by Madame Louise, reducing to nothingness that list of
centenarians which had just been given by the editor of the
" Gazette de France " in order to fill the King with illu-
185
Madame Dxi Barry
sions, and to make him believe in a far greater longevity in
his own century than in past centuries, brutally destroyed
the security brought by this lying adulator, showed the King
the Death of the Eighteenth Century leaning over the bed-
side of the men of his age. Then he brought back and
recalled to the King's memory the death of the Duke
of Burgundy, the death of the Dauphin, the death of the
Dauphiness, the death of the Queen, the deaths of beings
who had been dearest to him, of his mistresses whom he did
not name, but whom he recalled as having been carried oil
in the flower of their age, letting him understand that his
turn had long since arrived, and stamping and driving into
the brain of this Bourbon, haunted since youth by the dis-
turbing dream of nothingness, the fixed thought of an ap-
proaching end. 1
Thus penetrated and beset by those words, by those recol-
lections, by those menaces, by those predictions of death,
the King also reflected with a sense of dread that he was
in his sixty-third year, a time regarded as a climacteric date
fatal to old men. 2 Then there happened to take place around
Louis XV. a succession of startlingly tragic deaths. The
ambassador of Genoa, Sorba, whom he was accustomed to
see every day, died suddenly. D'Armentieres followed
1 For a moment it was said that the Abbe Beauvais had fallen
into disgrace. The contrary happened. The Abbe de Beauvais was
nominated Bishop of Seney, and, in the Lent of 1774, when he again
preached at Court, His Majesty laughingly challenged him to fulfil
the engagement he had made to preach at Court in the Lent of 1776,
although he was a Bishop.
* " Secret Anecdotes about the Comtesse du Barri." 1775.
186
Madame D\i Barry
Sorba very closely. The Abbe de la Ville, the instrument of
Choiseul's ruin, coming to thank him for the place of Di-
rector of Foreign Affairs, was struck with apoplexy under
the King's eyes. Lastly, one evening, when Louis XV. was
playing picket with Madame du Barry, and the Marquis de
Chouvelin, that old friend and former associate in his pleas-
ures, sat propped up against the back of his arm-chair,
Madame du Barry, raising her eyes, said : " What a grimace
you are making, Monsieur de Chouvelin," whereupon the
King turned round: Chouvelin fell dead at his feet. 1
The Lent of 1774 came round, and a remark which fell
from the terrible mouth of the Abbe de Beauvais agitated
the King's mind like a summons from God. The young
preacher had just hurled against the walls of the chapel of
Versailles, the menace of the prophet : " Forty days more,
and Nineveh will be destroyed ! " 2
On her side, Madame du Barry, superstitious like all
women of pleasure of her kind, was devoured by vague
anxieties and secret presentiments, so that she several times
allowed this remark to escape from her before her intimate
friends : " I would be glad if this nasty month of April
had passed." This was the month when the Almanac of
Liege for the year 1774 announced that " a great lady who
played a role at a foreign Court would cease to do so."
1 " Secret Memoirs of the Republic of Letters." Tome VII.
2 In the " Conversations of the Other World," Louis XV., speak-
ing to the Prince of Conde, says : " You know well, cousin, that it
was that cursed sermon of Maundy Thursday that killed me."
187
Madame Du Barry
The King now spoke about his sickly state of health and
the possibility of his death, and sometimes, at the end of his
remarks, about " the frightful account we would have to
render to the Supreme Being for the employment of the life
which he has bestowed upon us in this world." 1 The poli-
ticians, foreseeing the approaching entrance of the confessor
on the scene, under the pretext that the Abbe Maudoux's
sight was very weak, strove to replace that ecclesiastic, who
was opposed to intrigue and devoted to Marie Antoinette,
by a more pliable confessor.
The Favourite, of whose dismissal before six months
D'Aiguillon himself had given an intimation to Mesdames, 2
the Favourite, who realized the instability of her position,
and who knew that she could only hold her own by drag-
ging the King's mind out of the blackness of his thoughts,
set her wits to work to find voluptuous distractions for him.
She had triumphed in the Lent of 1773 by giving orders for
the performance of an erotic opera. She tried to kill the
action of the Lent of 1774 on the remorseful feelings of the
King by organizing a little pleasure-trip to Trianon in the
closing days of the month of April.
On the 27th of April, the King, who had arrived the pre-
vious night at Trianon, felt unwell, he could not follow the
1 " Secret Correspondence between Maria Theresa and the Comte
Mercy-Argenteau." Didot, 1875. Tome I.
9 " Complete Correspondence of Madame du Def fand." By Sainte
Aulaire. Levy, 1866. Tome .
188
Madame Dxi Barry
chase on horseback, and when he alighted from his carriage
on his return complained of a violent headache. 1
He retired to Madame du Barry's apartments, imagining
it was indigestion; but his illness grew worse, and in the
night he sent for Lemonnier, his principal physician. Le-
monnier found the King feverish, but no symptom of a na-
ture to cause uneasiness. Madame Du Barry, dreading the
weakness of the King's mind, that terror of the devil which
was now awakened in him by every attack on his health,
sought to prevail on him to get nursed at Trianon without
giving notice to the Royal family, and she was aided and
sustained in her desire by the Due d'Aumont, the first gen-
tleman of the Bed-chamber. The King's indisposition was
known during the day at Versailles. The Royal family did
The story of the passing fancy to which the King's death was at-
tributed is told in these terms by the Abbe. Beaudeau : "During the
last days of April, the King was at Trianon with the Du Barry.
While out walking he saw a little girl gathering grass for the cows
she was minding. He saw that she had very fine eyes. He came
over to her, and lifted up her head-dress and her hair. When she
had been cleaned up, the King thought she would be 'charming' if
she were dressed as a fine lady. 'Well! let us dress her.' Here is
their little peasant dressed like a lady with rouge and patches. She
is truly 'charming.' 'Let us make her sup with us- Her embarrass-
ment will amuse us.' Meanwhile, her brother died of smallpox;
next day she caught it, and died of it on Saturday. And there is the
tale or the history." Let us say that nothing is less proved than this
story of the King and the little cowherdess, as Beaudeau pretends.
Voltaire informs us that there was at this time an epidemic of small-
pox in the neighbourhood, and the King might very simply and very
naturally have fallen a victim to it.
189
Madame Du Barry
not run the risk of coming to see the King, but the Dauphin
despatched to his grandfather the surgeon La Martiniere,
an enemy of the Du Barry, who had exercised a certain in-
fluence over the King's mind since those occasions when he
slept in Louis XV. 's bed-room the year before.
La Martiniere, having reached Trianon on Thursday,
April 28th, had no trouble, with his imperative and abrupt
style of speaking, in triumphing over the invalid's vacillat-
ing disposition. He prevailed on the King to set out as soon
as the carriages had arrived. He himself watched the prep-
arations for the journey; and the King, swathed in his
morning-gown, was put into a carriage and conveyed at
a walking pace to Versailles into the midst of the Court,
within reach of the Church.
The King, on his arrival, was carried up to bed, received
the Royal family, but only for an instant, and sent them
away, telling the Dauphin not to come back till he sent for
him. Then he spent the rest of the evening with Madame
du Barry.
The night of the 28th was bad. The King had fever and
some hallucinations ; he began to be frightened by his condi-
tion. The doctors, Lemonnier and La Martiniere, decided
on the morning of the 29th that the King should be bled,
and asked the patient to let other doctors be brought in, with
a view to opening a permanent consultation. The King,
at Madame du Barry's suggestion, named Bordeu, the Fa-
vourite's doctor, and Lorry, the Due d'Aiguillon's doctor.
The news of the bleeding produced a great impression
190
Madame Du Barry
at Court. The antechamber was filled with courtiers, who
entered the patient's bed-chamber along with the doctors
summoned for the consultation.
The doctors, still ignorant of the King's malady, an-
nounced that there would be a second bleeding in the after-
noon and a third bleeding during the night or on the fol-
lowing day, if the second did not free the King from his
headache.
" A third bleeding," said the King ; " but in that case it
must be some disease. ... I would be glad if they
could avoid doing it to me."
A third bleeding was not only for the King a sign of a
grave malady ; it was a promise of victory for the Choiseul
party, a promise of defeat for the Du Barry party. The
anti-Aiguillonists, the anti-Bat ryites, began to have hopes
for their political views of a return to God through the ter-
ror inspired by this bleeding; the Aiguillonists and the
Barryites began to fear that it would lead to the mistress's
expulsion, so much so that D'Aiguillon, Richelieu, and
the Due d'Aumont circumvented Lorry and Bordeu and
got them to put aside all question of the third bleeding.
The second bleeding, in which four great basins of blood
were taken from the King, left him quite prostrated. 1 About
1 To this bleeding has since been attributed the bad course of the
King's malady and finally his death, as it had been effected in the
beginning of the eruption. The doctors were put on their guard
against the idea of small-pox by an eruption on the skin, which the
King had in his youth at Fontainebleau, and which had been de-
scribed as small-pox.
191
Madame Du Barry
five o'clock, nevertheless, the King sent for his children,
and kept them for half an hour without uttering a word. It
was not a good evening with him ; the fever increased. The
Due d'Aumont wanted to send for Madame du Barry; but
an altercation broke out between the Duke and the doctors,
who were opposed to the admission of Madame du Barry,
The Due d'Aumont did not venture to go any further, and
Madame du Barry had to be satisfied with a conference
with the Due d'Aignillon.
On Saturday, the 3Oth of April, the King, having been
carried for the sake of the convenience of those around him
from a large bed to a small one, a doctor happened to draw
close to Louis XV. 's face a wax-candle, which brought into
full view on his forehead and cheeks red spots in which
pimples were already seen to have gathered. There could
be no doubt about it any longer. It was small-pox.
The doctors, as if relieved at having their uncertainty
ended, announced the disease almost gaily, saying that the
King was wonderfully prepared for it, and that all would go
well. And the Court was reassured, believing it meant eight
days' confinement to bed, in spite of the menacing response
of Bordeu : " By Jove . . . small-pox at sixty-four,
with a constitution like the King's, is a terrible disease ! "
In the pestiferous apartment Madame Adelaide, Madame
Victoire, and Madame Sophie had been shut up with their
father. . . . Louis XV. had sunk into a state of ex-
treme exhaustion, mingled with an anxiety which could not
be calmed. He no longer spoke. His eyes were at the same
192
MADAME LA DUCHESSE DE CHATEAUROUX
To face page 192
Madame D\i Barry-
time haggard and fixed. The party of the Du Barry began
to get frightened, and pushed into the King's chamber
the woman whom he loved in order to awaken in the dying
man a little of the sensual life, and in order to have it re-
peated out of doors that the favour of the mistress still con-
tinued. As a consequence of some strong words exchanged
between the Prince of Beauvau, Choiseul's friend, and the
Due d'Aumont, it was La Borde, valet of the quarter, who
was in the pay of the Du Barry party, who gave the order
in the King's room. So, every evening, La Borde sent out
everybody, went to look for the Favourite, and led her to
the bedside of the King, who showed in his weakened con-
dition little gladness at seeing her. 1
Meanwhile, the anti-Aiguillonists and the anti-Bar ryites
cried out against the scandal, demanding that the sacrament
should be administered to the King, urged the pious M. de
Beaumont to imitate the example of the Bishop of Soissons,
who in 1771 drove away from the side of the King the
Duchesse de Chateauroux. And it so happened (strange
fact!) that " in this jobbing and this trafficking in the con-
science of the King" this is the expression of Cardinal de
Luynes the party of the devotees and the Jesuits banded
themselves in a league to prevent the King from receiving
communion, while the Choiseul party, the party of the phi-
losophers and of the sceptics, entered into a league to impose
" Memoirs of the Baron de Besenval." Baudouin Freres, 1821.