by some servants of her household. Instinctively, and with
the first impulse, her suspicions fastened on Zamore, that
1 On a manuscript note of Greive in the " Dossier " of the Du
Barry we read: "Lastly, the representation made by the woman
Rohan-Rochefort that her table was splendid, that it would have
been better to diminish it in order to furnish succour to the volun-
teers of La Vendee, to which the Du Barry replied, ' Drink, drink ! '
with a disdainful air, as if she did not think them worth bothering
about."
266
Madame D\i Barry
negro, of whom the Revolution had made a man and of
whom treason was going to make a citizen. She knew the
ideas that he had adopted. She remembered that he alone
amongst her servants had not been arrested when she was
brought to Versailles. It was he-, this Zamore, on whom
she had heaped favours, who had been held over the bap-
tismal font by Madame du Barry and the Prince de Conti,
who sold to Greive the secrets of Luciennes. Madame du
Barry dismissed him immediately, she freed her house of a
spy ; she believed that she had banished an ingrate for ever
from her sight. But Zamore was destined to appear once
again and for the last time in Madame du Barry's life at
the Revolutionary Tribunal!
The club was becoming more menacing to the chateau,
more furious and more declamatory against Madame du
Barry. What months were those seven months passed by
the proprietress of Luciennes with Greive's club at her
door!
Every hour it was necessary to defend herself against im-
prisonment, against death. Madame du Barry escaped one
denunciation only to be exposed some days later to another
denunciation. She only left the prisons of Versailles to be
menaced by the prisons of Paris. Then, the unhappy
woman, as if she were distracted, wrote this letter:
" To the Citizens, Administrators of the Department of
Versailles.
" Hitherto, citizens, some agitators have made vain ef-
forts to disturb my tranquillity. I had to oppose to them my
267
Madame Du. Barry
conscience and your equity, well convinced that I had in it
an assured rampart against their malevolence. They have
devised other means of tormenting me. But they will be
powerless since my cause is submitted to you.
" When I had only to repel a denunciation, the knowledge
of which the law attributes to you, and which it appears can-
not go beyond your jurisdiction or have any other issue after
your decision, I did not think I ought to have added en-
treaties to my petition or turn aside your attention from
important objects in order to fix itself on a matter which
was personal to me. But to-day the denunciation has as-
sumed a character of gravity and of publicity which im-
poses on me the duty of promptly repelling the calumny.
The malignity of my denouncers has reached such a point
that I have everything to fear from them. I am, therefore,
placed in a position that compels me to solicit from your zeal
the promptest execution. I venture to add, citizens, that
humanity makes this your duty. ... I do not want to
waste your time by explaining to you all my motives for
fear. I shall impart it to the commissary whom you deem
fit to appoint, and who will make you understand in his re-
port that I have deserved to have you come to my aid." *
The citizen Lavallery was sent to Luciennes, and he per-
suaded Madame du Barry to withdraw to Versailles under
the eyes and under the immediate protection of the depart-
ment. Madame du Barry confessed to him that all her for-
tune, consisting of cash, jewels, and plate, was concealed in
1 Madame du Barry's "Dossier," National Archives, W 1 16.
268
Madame Dxi Barry-
different parts of her house, that the members of the club
knew it through Salenave, through Zamore, through her
chambermaid, the Widow Cottet, who gave information as
to everything about the house, and that her departure
would expose Luciennes to the avi<dity of the gang, to the
domiciliary visits and the rummagings of all these men, the
municipal officers on the one hand, and the National Guards
on the other. Nevertheless, on the following day, Madame
du Barry changed her mind, and made preparations to go
to Versailles j 1 but on the day after Lavallery's visit, the club
of Luciennes held a meeting and decreed that a deputation
should be sent to Versailles to denounce Madame du Barry
there beforehand to the Revolutionary Committee of the
commune.
At the same time, Blache, in his capacity of agent of the
Committee of General Safety, was to denounce her anew in
Paris to the Committee, whose members had been renewed.
The deputation from Luciennes, having reached Versailles,
agreed with the Revolutionary Committee of the city that a
petition should be made to the Committee of General Safety
in order to obtain an extension of powers, which would pre-
vent the department from mixing itself up in the arrest of
1 One day as she was getting ready to start for Versailles, a
woman named Renaut came and asked with screams and vocifera-
tions if Madame du Barry was really quitting Luciennes, and, as
"La Renaut" heard Madame du Barry asking a chambermaid who
was the person who was making so much noise, she flung at the pro-
prietress of the chateau this answer: "It is a woman who was in
this country before you, and who will be there after you, do you
understand ? "
269
Madame D\i Barry
Madame du Barry. It was, moreover, agreed that three
members of the department should be denounced, amongst
whom was Lavallery, the avowed protector of Madame du
Barry. 1
In the midst of this life of mortal anxieties Madame du
Barry continued, however, to love. Like those illustrious
prisoners of the Luxembourg prison, who distracted their
thoughts from the contemplation of the scaffold by the ten-
der occupations of their hearts, the mistress of Luciennes
escaped every moment the menacing present by means of
what the age called " instants of happiness/' Another suc-
ceeded to Brissac, another who idolized this woman of fifty
with the passionate tenderness of the defunct old Duke.
1 In fact Lavallery had become her correspondent, her devoted
protector, and in all her difficulties the Comtesse addressed herself
to the humanity of the Republican, who was touched by the woman's
beauty and grace. Here is a letter addressed to Lavallery, which
forms a portion of Madame du Barry's "Dossier": "I have just
learned, citizen, that the Minister of Foreign Affair?, in sending on
to the administration of the department the translation of the cer-
tificates which were delivered to me in London, had drawn attention
to the fact that he had not seen without astonishment that in these
documents the title of Comtesse had been given to me. I am no less
astonished than he, and if I had known of the form in which these
certificates were sent to me, I should certainly not have allowed
to subsist a title which offends the laws of my country, to which I
will remain invariably attached. I have no knowledge of the English
language. I had to trust myself to an Englishman to conduct the
prosecution on my behalf, and this inadvertence might easily have
escaped his attention since he had previously known me under that
title; and it was under this title, which was not then prohibited,
that he began and continued the legal proceedings which he was
employed to conduct on my behalf."
270
LE DUG D'ANGOULEME
To face page 270
Madame D\i Barry
Truly, we must say it here, there is something inexplicable
in the charm which did not cease with age, the fascination of
this creature of love, the absolute sway she exercises over
the lover, and the tone of respectful and grateful adoration
of the letters which at the same time implore and thank the
divinity. During this liaison between Madame du Barry
and the Prince de Rohan-Rochefort, generated perhaps by
the tears poured out by them together over the death of
Brissac, it happened one day that the happy living one who
had taken the place of the dead was called upon to choose
a portrait of Madame du Barry amongst those which the
Duke had given orders to Madame Lebrun to do of his mis-
tress. And the entire story of this last love of Madame
du Barry is given and told us in this letter, so full of attach-
ment toward the woman and her image, in this letter which
preceded only by a fortnight the arrest of Louis XV/s
Favourite :
:i This Saturday, September 7th, 1793.
" I send you, my dear and tender friend, the picture which
you desired to have, sad and fatal present, 1 but which I feel
quite as much as you can yourself that you ought to desire
to have. In such a situation as ours, with so many sub-
jects for pain and unhappiness, it is some nourishment for
our melancholy which we seek and which suits us beyond
all else.
1 Doubtless a portrait of Brissac. This letter, which had already
been repubiished with some abridgements by Madame Guenard,
has been repubiished by M. Dauban, as one never before published.
271
Madame Du Barry
" I have had a search made for the three portraits of you
which were in his possession. They are here. I have kept
one of the little portraits. It is the original of her who wears
a chemise or white dressing-gown with a feathered hat on
her head. 1 The second is a copy, with the head finished,
but the dress only printed in rough outline. Neither of
them is framed. The large picture by Madame Lebrun
is charming and bears a ravishing likeness to the original ;
it is a speaking picture with an infinite sweetness of ex-
pression; but truly I thought it would be indiscreet to
choose it, and the one I am keeping is so agreeable, so life-
like and so piquant that I am extremely content with it and
transported with happiness at possessing it. The portrait
commenced by Letellier is only a pencil-sketch, and the pic-
ture is hardly more than a rough draft which might become
a good likeness.
"As for your large portrait and the one I am keeping,
tell me, my dear friend, whether you wish me to send them
or whether I ought to have them brought back to where they
were, in short, what destination you think best for them.
I desire nothing more than to have one of them which I can
wear about me, and which will never leave me. Come,
then, dear love, to spend ten days here. Come and dine at
my house with whomsoever you choose. Come and give me
some instants of happiness there is none without you.
Reply about everything I have asked you to tell me. Come
1 Madame Lebrun says it is a portrait which she painted for the
Due de Brissac.
272
Madame D\i Barry
to see a mortal who loves you beyond everything up to the
last moment of his life. I kiss a thousand times the por-
trait of the most charming woman in the world, whose
heart is so good and so noble that it merits an eternal at-
tachment." 1
1 Revolutionary Tribunals. The Du Barry's "Dossier," National
Archives, W 1 16.
273 1 8
XVI.
Definitive Arrest of Madame du Barry : She is confined in Sainte-
Pelagie. The Anecdote about Madame de Mortemart. Heron de-
nouncing the Vandenyvers, the ex-Favourite's Bankers. Greive's
Annotations on the Papers seized. The Preparation of the Heads
of the Indictment by Greive. The List of Necessary Witnesses
drawn up by Greive. Transfer of the Accused to the Conciergerie.
A NEW petition had been drawn up by Greive, signed by
the members of the Committee of Versailles, and forwarded
to the Committee of General Safety, which this time author-
ized the Committee of Versailles to use for the public wel-
fare powers which had been entrusted to it, and declared
that the constituted authorities would be responsible for the
obstacles which might be opposed to the execution of these
decrees. Then Greive succeeded in procuring a list of the
sums paid to the account of Madame du Barry by Beaujon
and prepared by Montvallier, Madame du Barry's steward,
a list reaching six millions 1 ; and, armed with this document,
1 List of the sums paid to the account of the Comtesse du Barry
by Monsieur Beaujon while she was the Favourite at the Court of
France :
JULY ISTH, 1774.
Observation.
Montvallier has drawn attention to the fact that he cannot render
the work more complete, considering that he has not the continuation
of M. Beau jon's memoranda, and there is even a gap between that
of the isth of February, 1772, and that of the loth of September
following, and that a number of documents without memoranda
274
Madame D\i Barry
and with the decree of the Committee of General Safety,
he kept worrying and working upon the members of the
Committee of Versailles till he obtained the order to arrest
Madame du Barry.
On the 22nd of September, he repaired to Luciennes,
have been delivered up by Madame du Barry for this gap, mounting
up together to the sum of 93,200 livres, spent on the following arti-
cles, viz. :
FIRST ARTICLE.
From Goldsmiths, Jewellers, and Dealers in Trinkets :
Goldsmiths 3i3,328/. 4$. d.
Jewellers i,8o8,635/. 9^. d.
Dealers in Trinkets I58,8oo/. s. d.
2,280,7631. 13*. -d.
ARTICLE II.
From Silk merchants, Lace dealers, and Millinery establishments:
Silk stuffs 369,8io/. 15*. d.
Linen and Laces 2I5.988/. 6s. d.
Fashionable Articles of Dress Ii6,8i8/. 6^. d.
Haberdashery 35,443*. 14^. d.
738,061 /. is. 3d.
From different Perfumers, Furriers, Hatters,
Braziers S2,I48/. $s. d.
ARTICLE III.
For Furniture, Pictures, Vases and other ornaments :
Furniture 24,398/. iSs. d.
Pictures, Vases 9i,5i9/. 19*. d.
H5,9i8/. 17*. d.
ARTICLE IV.
From Tailors and Embroiderers :
Tailors 6o,322/. los. d.
Embroiderers . 47IJ78J. s. d.
S3I.SOO/. ioj. d.
275
Madame D\i Barry
accompanied by two gendarmes, the Mayor, the Justice of
the Peace, and a number of municipal officers, showed his
order to Madame du Barry, had the seals affixed by the
Justice of the Peace, and forced Madame du Barry to get
ARTICLE V.
For purchases of Carnages and Horses and Forage:
Carriages and keep 67,470*. is. d.
Horses 57,347*. s. d.
Forage 6,8io/. s. d.
131,627;. is. d.
ARTICLE VI.
From Painters, Sculptors, etc. :
Gilders 78,026/. s. d.
Sculptors 95,426*. s. d.
Gilders 48,78s/. 12*. 6d.
Founders 98,000*. s. d.
Marble-cutters 17,540*. Ss. lod.
From various working Joiners and Locksmiths 32,240*. Ss. d.
Total 370,018*. gs. 4d.
ARTICLE VII.
For the Old and New Works of Luciennes :
Old Works m,475*- 6j. gd.
Gardens 3,739*. 19*. d.
New Works 205,638*. i6s. Sd.
Gardens 3)0 oo*. s. d.
Total 323,854*. 2s. Sd.
ARTICLE VIII.
Sums paid which cannot be applied to different
accounts, the motives or payments not being
known 55,619*. 2s. d.
ARTICLE IX.
For extraordinary expenses, presents, gratuities,
alms 47,535*. 5* *
276
Madame Du Barry
into a public vehicle called a " guinguette," where the gen-
darmes posted themselves at her side.
It is related that, during the journey, Greive, having
found near the engine of Marly the cabriolet of the Che-
valier d'Escourt, 1 left the gendarmes in the public vehicle,
and stepped into the cabriolet along with the woman whose
fate at last he held in his hands. What was it that took
place? Did Greive wish to sell life to Madame du Barry?
1 A note by Greive at the back of the printed heading of an in-
dictment gives us this information : " D'Escourt had already ar-
rived in a cabriolet with a man-servant at the Du Barry's door on
the day of her arrest; but, having ascertained what had occurred
in her house, he fled at full speed. Our brave Sans-culottes seized
him and caught him with some difficulty at the foot of the Bougival
mountain." ( Revolutionary Tribunals : the Du Barry's " Dossier,"
National Archives, W 1 16.)
ARTICLE X.
Sums paid divided into three parts, the first con-
sidered as for the account of Madame du
Barry and the second for her affairs :
By Madame du Barry directly or on her
account to the Comte, Vicomte, and
Demoiselles du Barry and others i,o8l,052/. 15 s. gd.
By her agents and others, including the
acquisition of the Pavilion of the Ave-
nue de Versailles 66i,623/. i6s. gd.
ARTICLE XI.
To the account of the construction of the build-
ing of the said Pavilion i8,ooo/. j. d.
ARTICLE XII.
Balance payable 20,ooo/. s. d.
General total 6,52i,oo3/. s. d.
Certified to be correct and in accordance with the memoranda
mentioned above. At Luciennes, July I4th, 1774.
Signed: MONTVALLIER.
277
Madame D\i Barry
Madame du Barry was provisionally lodged in the prison
of Sainte-Pelagie, and her servants were confined in La
Force. As she was without anything she required, she was
obliged to borrow two hundred and fifty livres from the
citizen Montrouy, who sent a bed to her in prison.
In his curious and veracious memoirs, 1 Dutens relates
this anecdote. An Irish priest found an opportunity of
seeing Madame du Barry in her prison. There he offered
to save her, if she could supply him with a certain sum of
money to bribe the gaolers and make the journey. Madame
du Barry asked him whether he could save two persons.
On receiving a negative answer from the priest, she said to
him : " In that case, I will give you certainly an order on
my bankers for the payment of the necessary sum, but I
prefer to let the Duchesse de Mortemart escape from death
rather than myself. She is concealed in a loft in a certain
house in Calais. Here is an order on my banker: fly to
her aid ! " The priest, after having urged her to allow him
to save her, seeing that she was determined to sacrifice her-
self, took the order, drew the money, went to Calais, rescued
the Duchesse de Mortemart, dressed her as a common
woman, and, taking her under the arm, made her travel on
foot with him, saying that he was a good constitutional
priest and that he was married to this woman. The people
shouted " Bravo ! " and let him pass. He thus passed
1 " Memoirs of a Traveller Taking a Rest." Paris : Bossange,
1806. Tome III. He says the Conciergerie ; it is more probable that
it is Sainte-Pelagie.
278
Madame D\i Barry-
through the lines of the French army, and came to Ostend,
from which he set out for England with Madame de Mor-
temart, whom I saw in London. ... In the case of
Madame du Barry, in the case of this woman so much
attached to life, so cowardly up to a few days before her
death, the heroism of this devotion surprises, astonishes,
appears improbable. We hesitate to believe her to be
equal to so beautiful and noble an act of self-sacrifice in
favour of even the daughter of Brissac, of her whom she
had promised to love like a sister, and I would not refer to
Dutens's anecdote, if it did not appear from what he says
that he heard the story from the lips of the Duchess herself.
Now, did Madame du Barry really believe that she would
be sentenced to death, and was it not her view that the
Revolution would rest satisfied with the confiscation of her
property? This is an idea, a hope, which she is shown to
have cherished in Sainte-Pelagie, and it is confirmed by
the singular announcement which appeared in several news-
papers " that Madame du Barry had been set at liberty and
her goods confiscated for the benefit of the nation."
While Madame du Barry was in Sainte-Pelagie, Salenave,
that man-servant whom she had dismissed for his disloyalty
to her, had become a member of the Revolutionary Com-
mittee of Versailles. Greive had an interview with him;
and both of them, uniting their efforts, drew on the Revo-
lutionary Committee to take recognizance of the fact that
the seals had been affixed to Luciennes by the Justice of
the Peace of Marly. They were authorized to cancel these
279
Madame D\i Barry-
seals, 1 and they had Fournier Pere and Zamore, who had
been discharged from Luciennes for his patriotism, ap-
pointed keepers with a guard of six patriots.
On the other hand, the inhabitants who were attached to
Madame du Barry and who clung to the recollection of her
benevolent acts, drew up and signed a second petition to
obtain liberty for her. Greive, anxious as to the result of
the petition, called upon Heron, the member of the Com-
mittee of General Safety, to whom Madame du Barry's
" Dossier " had been entrusted. He found in Heron an old
enemy of Vandenyver, Madame du Barry's banker, with
whom he had formerly come into collision in a banking
transaction, and whom he had denounced with the assist-
ance of the pen and the gloomy dreams of Marat in a book
entitled : " Plot to cause a General Bankruptcy of France,
of Spain, and, as a result, of Holland and England." The
mania of this wretched fear-stricken madman was that he
had been continually pursued by these Dutch bankers. He
imagined that on the loth of August he had been shot at
five times by Vandenyver. Under the shock of these terrors,
under the promptings of his eagerness for revenge, Heron
precipitated the indictment against the bankers, who were
sure to drag Madame du Barry with them to the scaffold.
At the same time that Heron prepared the materials for
his report against Vandenyver, an information was lodged
on the evidence of the correspondence seized at Madame du
1 The Du Barry's " Dossier." National Archives.
280
Madame D\J Barry
Barry's house at Luciennes, an information which Heron
seems to have entirely given over to Greive..
I have under my eyes all this faded paper, 1 in which are
mingled together marked copies of songs with accounts of
expenses, those letters written in .the security of peaceful
years or in the alarms of revolutionary years, these gallant
love-letters of courtiers, these billets-doux of fine ladies
with their framings of blue ribbons or of rosy shells, letters
of business, letters in which there is little trace of conspiracy,
at the sight of which you are filled with astonishment when
you see a cross traced violently in red pencilling on some
indifferent lines, and above, fastened by a big pin, a little
card containing an accusing commentary. Some of these
letters have at the bottom of them a touching, a heartrend-
ing entry : " Ne varietur. Sainte-Pelagie, Brumaire, Year
II.," which follow the three signatures of Voulland, Jagot,
and Du Barry. But let us give a sample of these
cards, of the criminality which the men of the Revolution
extracted from the most innocent relations of friendship,
from the least reprehensible portions of a correspondence
and finally from the regrets of beloved beings who were
ever most resigned. On an insignificant letter signed R.
R. R. we read : " Of the old aristocracy the person who
was formerly Princesse de Rohan-Rochefort, a woman as
1 Revolutionary Tribunals : " Dossier " of the woman named
Jeanne Vaubernier du Barry . . . and of Vandenyver, accused
of understandings and counter-revolutionary correspondence with
the emigres. National Archives, Box W 1 16.
281
Madame Du Barry-
wicked as foolish, and who enjoyed a certain favour with
several administrators of Versailles." On a letter not
signed asking Madame du Barry if she was always annoyed
by the smell of the river, we read : " This letter is from the
old man who was formerly Prince de Beauvau." On a
letter of Louis d'Armaille, which goes back so far as 1786,
we read : " Letter of the former Marquis d'Armaille, ar-
rested the other day by the order of the Commune of Paris."
On a letter of Madame Lebrun, dated from Naples, in which
she recalls herself to M. de Brissac's recollection as well
as to that of the wife of the Portuguese Ambassador and the
Marquise de Brunei, we read : "Letter of the woman Lebrun,
painter and mistress of Colonne." On a letter not signed,
in which one lady asks another for a loan of her Greek
chemises, we read : " Marcel thinks this letter is from the
woman Bondeville, wife of an ex-President, an enfeoffed
aristocrat. These women saw each other always on Fridays
at the Opera, a meeting-place of the aristocrats." On a
letter of Thelusson, we read : " He is one of the most im-
portant bankers in London, nephew of Thelusson, who was
formerly a partner of Necker, and a great enemy of the
Revolution." On a letter of Forth, the English police agent
whom Madame du Barry employed for the recovery of her
diamonds in London, we read : " Proof of her intrigues with
emissaries of the Court of London, of Berlin, and with
Forth, the celebrated English spy, who has never ceased
intriguing against France, and above all since Franklin's
time. He and Bethune Charost have been the most active
282
Madame D\* Barry-
emissaries of the Court of London, of Berlin, and of The
Hague, and it is this Forth who, it is to be presumed, has