CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY GIFT OF David G. Flinn Cornell University Library DC 135.D81D73 The life and times of Madame du Barry, 3 1924 009 629 209 DC ,081 D73 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MADAME DU BARRY BY ROBERT B. DOUGLAS Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924009629209 -_j\\Aj)MiEm^ /< ml }i^r'-z^-/)nucud ^ (f rai)<5~p^\Jji ^^ The Life and Times OF MADAME DU BARRY ROBERT B. DOUGLAS "Xaipoig, yvvai, sv, yuQ axoD^s ' oiKTeiQa ei y'," icpriv, " fiv nd^og ovx iS6fi,r\v "A Ttoaov rjiS^iari voov ri%av.sg &X},' i'Ss Ari^riv vaistg, ayXairiv iv %$ovl v.arSsiiivr}.'" Agathias. With an Engraved Portrait MDCCCXCVI LEONARD SMITHERS ,ntiltiiil'"///r w . LONDON ^ , ^*.^ GEORGE H. RICHMOND & CO. /n ,Vf'<"""''X /'< , ' NEW YORK < ,■ '*' 0\ '''',}' - V' V '^■. 'v \ ''■;- O '\ ' A '.>^ q![.^ /[ j)^.^'"^ q fJ:. Thou unclean, yet unmalignant, not unpitiablc thing! What ii. course was thine: from that first truckle bed (in Joan of Arc's country) where thy mother bore thee, with tears, to an unnamed father: forward, through lowest subterranean depths, and over highest sunlit heights, of Harlotdom and Rascaldom — to the guillotine-axe, which shears away thy vainly whimpering head ! Rest there uncursed ; only buried and abolished : what else befittered thee ? CARLYLE, French Revolution, Vol, I, Book I, Chap. IV. .*<' PREFACE The ethics of comparative morality, or immorality, are not easy to understand. Why, it might be asked, are. the virtuous English so tender towards the failings of Nell Gywn, whilst the French, who do not regard concubinage as at all a heinous oflFence, overload with obloquy the memory of Jeanne du Barry ? . In birth, in circumstances of early life, and in character, the two women closely resemble one another, yet the English " general reader '' still preserves a kind of sneaking regard for the one, and has learned, at second hand, to detest the other. This is due to the fact that he has derived all his knowledge of Du Barry from French historians, who have handed down to each other — as methodically, and almost as intelligently, as a row of workmen passing bricks from a cart to a building — the statements of Pidansat du Mairobert and that industri&us compiler of fictitious Memoirs, Mile. Guenard. Translations of several of these supposed Memoirs have lately appeared, and it is to be feared have been accepted by the uncritical portion of the public as genuine. It is not improbable that the M^moires historiques de Jeanne Gomard de Vaubarnier may be included in the series, and as Mile. Guenard was VI' PREFACE indebted to her imagination for her facts in the compilation of that book, I judge this to be a good opportunity to bring out a 'Life of Madame Du Barry' which, despite many shortcomings, should aim at giving a truthful account of the last mistress of Louis XV. Lest it should be imagined that I am stricken with the prevalent mania for rehabilitating, and have tried to white- wash Jeanne du Barry, I may state in advance that I have not been so foolish as to attempt anything of the kind. I have simply tried to show that she was not as black as she was painted, and that the portraits of her which have been given by three generations of historians have been overcharged with shadows. Paris, / January, i8g6. CONTENTS 3i5ooft tbe mtat ASPIRATION CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTORY 3 II. BIRTH — GENEALOGY — SCHOOL-DAYS 25 III. LOVE AFFAIRS 37 asooft tbe Seconb ELEVATION I. HIS MOST CHRISTIAN MAJESTY 69 U. THAT CONVENIENT CREATURE, A HUSBAND 89 lU. PRESENTED AT COURT IOC IV. ERRANDS OF MERCY I ID V. A SHAM FIGHT AND A REAL QUARREL I20 VI. A PORTRAIT DRAWN BY A SOLDIER'S HAND .... I3I VII. " HE FELL, LIKE AUTUMN FRDIT THAT MELLOWED LONG " 1 58 VIII. AN EXAMPLE FROM ENGLISH HISTORY 1 79 IX. THE SCARLET WOMAN AND THE SCARLET ROBES . . 191 X. "BASE INGRATITUDE CRAMS, AND BLASPHEMES HIS FEEDER" (1771) 198 XI. A LITTLE BLACK BOY (1772) 215 XII. THE WRONGS OF POLAND (l772) 222 XIII. A REFRACTORY PRINCESS (l773) 232 VIII CONTENTS CHAPTER I'AO^ XIV. THE KING'S COFFEE POT (l773) ^'^° XV. PROVIDING FOR RELATIONS {l773) ^5' XVI. THE APPROACHING ENd(i774) 261 XVII. "DEATH LAYS HIS ICY HAND ON KINGS" (l774) ■ • ^72 ffiooft tbe XLblti) EXPIATION I. THE FALLEN FAVOURITE (1774) 285 n. A GRIEF, AND A CONSOLATION (c775 — 1778). . . . 299 III. AN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CHATELAINE (1779 — ^1788). 316 IV. MADAME DU BARRY VISITS ENGLAND 333 V. THE DEATH OF DE BRISSAC (1792 — 1793) 341 VI. THE LAST SCENE OF ALL (1793) 348 VII. EPILOGUE 380 NOTES 385 S3ooft tbc jfirst ASPIRATION Qui n'a pas v&u avant 1789 n'a pas eonnu la douceur de vivre. Talleyrand. THE LIFE AND TIMES OP MADAME DU BARRY CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY "Voltaire," wrote Horace Walpole to Horace Mann, "loves all anecdotes that never happened, because they prove the manners of the time.'' If the old philosopher ever uttered the dictum, which Walpole appears to think absurd, he probably had in mind some of the many books of "Anecdotes " and " Memoirs " which abounded at that time — books that were from title page to colophon a tissue of lies, " gross as a mountain, open, palpable.'' The authors of these precious productions made no attempts to verify the statements to which they gave publicity; they had no opportunities for research, or, if they had, did not avail themselves of them, for historical accu- racy would have meant loss of piquancy, and without piquancy there would have been few purchasers. 4 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry Whether Voltaire ever spoke or wrote the words ascribed to him by Walpole, it is certain that no literature could have better "proved the manners of the time." Carlyle called the years before the Revolution the " Paper Age, or Era of Hope." Alas, it was an age of paper spoiled by worthless print, and hope that fell short of fulfilment. Literature, if so it could be called, took its tone from the vices and corruption of the Court. A great nation beginning to be stirred with aspirations for freedom, asked for spiritual food, and there was vouchsafed unto it only Dead Sea apples— books that were no books, indecency doubled with dulness, sickly sentimentalism coupled with cant. In justice to the authors or compilers of these "Anec- dotes," "Memoirs," etc., it should be owned that they were not meant for publication — at least not primarily. The author was first careful to make his residence in London or Rotterdam, and then he announced that the Memoirs of some well-known personage would shortly appear. The subjects of these Memoirs or Anecdotes knew perfectly well that the history narrated would be fictitious, and that every deed in their real or imaginary lives would be put in the worst possible light, but they had no adequate defence against the libeller. The only three courses at his or her disposal were indifference, retaliation, or submission to extortion. If the person threatened showed contempt or indifference, the book appeared and was eagerly bought, the stories were believed (for, of course, if they were not true they should have been denied) and the anecdotist reaped a fair harvest. Reta- liation, either by the pen or by the cudgel, was expensive and not satisfactory: to employ a pamphleteer to answer Introductory 5 charges made by a brother scoundrel presupposed that the same persons who read the libel would also read its refuta- tion, and of two equally disreputable scribblers would believe only the latter. The cudgel, even when it could be applied, was only a temporary remedy; — the anecdotist, as soon as he had recovered, dipped his pen in the vinegar he no longer required for his bruises. By far the simplest and most effectual method was to buy off the libeller (especially if it could be done out of the public money) by paying a lump sum, and perhaps also a yearly pension. In that case — if the payments were made regularly — the publication was deferred ' until the Minister or Favourite was in disgrace or at all events not in a position to punish the libellers, even though the pension continued to be paid, for though there may be honour amongst thieves there was little or none amongst these filchers of cha- racter, and insatiable blackmailers. The evil that these men and women did lives after them — the characters they blackened have remained tarnished, for until within the last few years historians often copied from each other, and mis-statements were repeated. Carlyle alone of all writers seems to have estimated most of these Memoirs and pretended Auto- biographies at their proper value. His strong common- sense, imswerving honesty, stem loathing for a lie, and hatred for all sickly sentimentality and cant, enabled him to detect with unfailing accuracy all that was true, and reject all that was false. More than once in the course of his great "prose epic," the History of the French Revolution, does he allude almost pathetically to the diffi- culty of rescuing the poor little grain of truth from amongst the rampant weeds of error which had grown up around 6 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry it and choked it; and in one foot-note mentions a state- ment that "was not only a lie, but, singular to say, was capable of being proved to be so." For students of the present day the task is easier. Over the quagmires through which Carlyle laboured so painfully a road has been made by careful and conscientious French historians, and the destination can now be reached without danger, though, to continue the simile, the road is broken in some places, indistinguishable in others, and needs wary walking. No one has suffered more at the hands of the baser sort of anecdotists and memoir writers than has Madame du Barry. She was a woman of low birth, little education, and no reputation, and for six years she was " Queen of France, or nearly so.'" Naturally, she was marked down as a quarry by all the pamphleteers. It was so very diffi- cult to make her out better than she was; it was so very easy, and withal so profitable to make her out worse than she was. Her good qualities, her kindness of heart, and easy good-humour, served only to embolden her enemies by making them secure of immunity from punishment. "We must shut up the Bastille; you will send no one to it," her Royal lover used often to say to her. A satirist who wrote some sorry verses about Madame de Pompa- dour was sent to prison for eighteen years, and Latude for practising on her what was only a practical joke, or harmless "sell," was sent to the Bastille, and remained there thirty-five years, before he made his escape. Ma- dame du Barry was far less revengeful. When the lieu- tenant of poUce waited upon her and said, "Madam, we have caught a rascal who writes scurrilous songs about ' Chamfort: Anecdotes. Introductory 7 you : what is to be done to him ?" her reply was " Make him sing them, and give him something to eat ! " Still, it was better to be on the safe side, and libellers preferred to write their books in England or in Holland — or at all events date them from there — for the King's mistress might change her mind, or the King might think his honour touched through her; as he did in one instance to be noted presently. Had Madame du Barry reflected in what light these ■stories would place her with posterity, it is possible she would not have been so lenient. The letters and memoirs, which purport to be autobiographical, bear some degree of vraisemblance, and, in default of better information, have been accepted as true by writers whose honesty of purpose cannot be doubted. As a consequence of this she has been painted as a monster of depravity and vulgarity, and has, when arraigned at the bar of History, met with worse than the scant justice meted out to her by the Revolu- tionary Tribunal, and on evidence no better than that adduced by Fouquier-Tinville when he demanded her head because she had worn mourning for the late King, and possessed a medal bearing the portrait of Pitt. Not thus should History be written. Viewed impartially by the knowledge we now possess we can but feel for her more pity than horror. She was unchaste, but the chaste women at the Court of Louis XV could be counted on one's fingers. She did no good to her country: true, but she did not avail herself of the vast opportunities she had for doing harm. Had she not been raised, by the ambition of an adventurer and the senile lust of an old dotard, to the bad eminence she attained, she would have flaunted her little day in the streets of Paris with others 8 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry as fair and frail as herself, - until the hospital and the fosse commune claimed her, and the moralists and histo- rians would have had some other subject for their diatribes. For it cannot be supposed that the King's character would have changed, and that if he had never seen Du Barry he would never have had another mistress. Princesses and Duchesses whose ancestry dated back to the Crusades, were anxious for the position of mailresse en titre, and their fathers, husbands, and brothers, schemed to get it for them. Some years after the death of Louis XV, the Comtesse du Barry, who was then living in retirement, paid a visit to the Princesse de Beauvau. The conver- sation turned upon Court life in the time of the late King. "Ah," said Madame du Barry, with a sigh, "how you all did hate me in those days ! " "Hate you?" replied the Princesse. "Not at all, my dear, I can assure you. We only wanted your place." Other classes had other reasons for hating Madame du Barry. "The nobles through a spirit of caste, the philo- sophers because they were protected and encouraged by Choiseul and his sister, the people from hatred to the royal profligacy— all took up the cry against Madame du Barry, whose only crime was that she was fit for the degrading position to which the love of the King had called her. i " It should be remembered that her power (for it can hardly be termed happiness) endured for less than six years, and was followed by nineteen years of seclusion which to one of her vain and giddy temperament must have been as bad as imprisonment, > Julia Kavanagh: Woman in France in the Eighteenth Cen- tury, Vol I, p. 300. Introductory g and terminated with a violent death which her cowardice rendered ten times more painful. Surely the most rigid moralist will concede that she paid a heavy price for her sins. To arrive at a fair estimate of her character it is ne- cessary that we should examine briefly the evidence upon which she has been condemned to the execration of posterity. From the day when Louis first felt her power of fascination, epigrams and songs were made about her. They owed their existence mainly to the Due de Choi- seul and to his sister the Duchesse de Grammont. The latter was said to have aspired to the place of maitresse en litre, and her brother espoused her cause, but it was not until later that there was declared enmity between him and the King's favourite. These literary small arms had no effect, and were treated by Madame du Barry with amused contempt. The first and most successful attempt to " blackmail " the King's mistress was that of Thevenot de Morande. Charles Thevenot, the son of a procureur, was born at Amai le Due in 1748. He was educated with a view to following his father's profession at Dijon, but, even when a schoolboy, displayed a remarkable aptitude for getting into disreputable scrapes. He ran into debt, and finally his father refused to give him any more money. Young Thevenot enlisted in a regiment . of dragoons, but soon became disgusted with soldiering, and promised to lead a better life if his father would purchase his discharge. His father consented, but young Thevenot was no sooner free than he ran away to Paris, where he assumed the name of De Morande. He became a chevalier d'industrie and lo The Life and Times of Madame du Barry attracted the notice of the police. Swindlers foimd short shrift in those days, but unfortunately, before he could get hanged, his father obtained a lettre de cachet, and had his son locked up, first at Fort I'Eveque, and afterwards at Armentieres. After being in prison some fifteen months he was released, and at once went over to England. Ere long he discovered his genius for libelling, and issued Le Gazetier Cuirasse which contained scurrilous stories about everybody of importance who was not prepared to pay a good price to have them suppressed. Then Madame du Barry came into favour, and he in- timated to her that he was about to bring out a book entitled TTie Private Life of a Public Woman. She was perfectly well aware that if he was acquainted with the facts of her life the book would be bad enough, and that if he had to invent his facts it would be worse still, and she implored the King to prevent the publication. Louis was so intensely selfish that had it merely been a matter of protecting his mistress from the insults of a libeller, he would have taken no steps in the matter, but he was in some degree personally affected, so he sent three or four men over to England with orders to capture De Morande and throw him iato the river. De Morande, however, was too old a hand to be caught napping, and managed to get timely warning of the arrival of these emissaries, and, before they had time to carry out their programme, he denounced them as spies, and they quickly returned to France, having [narrowly escaped the two-fold fate of being torn to pieces by the mob, and lodged in prison by the English Government. Just at this time Beaumarchais was having his celebrated law suit with Gutzman. Louis admired the man's ready Introductory 1 1 wit, quickness, and determination, and a day or two after the verdict had been given the King said to Le Bel, his valet de chambre, " This Beaumarchais is a friend of yours, is he not? " "Yes, sire," replied Le Bel. "Is he a man who could perform a delicate mission with discretion, secrecy, and dispatch?" " Your Majesty can rely upon him implicitly,'' was the answer. A few days later the " Chevalier de Norac " (Beaumar- chais' baptismal name Caron, read backwards) landed in England, with plenary powers to treat with De Morande for the purchase of the MS. of the book. De Morande stuck out for his price, and Beaumarchais returned to France either to get the money or for further instructions. His second visit to England proved successful ; terms were arranged and De Morande received ;^8oo down, with an annuity of ;Ci6o a year, and reversion of part of this annuity to his wife. Three thousand copies of the work had been printed, and some had been already sent to Holland. Beaumarchais dashed off to Rotterdam and was in time to prevent the distribution of these copies. He then returned to England, and saw the MS. and all the copies of the book burned in a lime-kiln near London. Beaumarchais, who was nothing if not moral, severely reprimanded De Morande for his conduct to his wife, — "a respectable Englishwoman, whom he made very unhappy,"— and furthermore obtained for his new protege an appointment as police-spy, a vocation for which De Morande was eminently fitted and in which he is said to have done good service to the French Govern- ment. " He was an audacious poacher, and I have con- 1 2 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry verted him into an excellent game-keeper," Beaumarchais wrote to M. da Sartines, the Lieutenant of Police. A kind of friendship grew between the two men, for De Morande had a deep respect for the ability and shrewdness of Beaumarchais, who, on his side, being as hopeful as he was energetic, thought that De Morande might be brought to see the error of his ways, abjure libelling and live honestly. In a letter to De Morande written by Beaumarchais soon after his return to France, he says, "You have done your best. Monsieur, to prove to me that you willingly assume the feelings and conduct of an honest Frenchman; — your heart must have reproached you, long before I did, for having strayed from the right course. As I believe that you intend to continue in this praiseworthy resolution, I feel a pleasure in correspond- ing with you. What a dififerent destiny is ours ! By chance I am chosen to prevent the publication of a libellous book. I work day and night for six weeks, I expend 500 louis to prevent numberless misfortunes. You gain over the affair 100,000 francs and tranquillity, whilst I do not even know if I shall be paid my travelling expenses." The letter was hardly calculated to strengthen De Morande in the right way, and convince him that honesty was the best policy, but Beaumarchais had reason to be aggrieved, for on his return to France he found Louis XV dying, and of course Louis XVI and his Ministers would not pay hush money for Madame du Barry. ^ 'On the whole, however, Beaumarchais was not a loser by his journeys. Whilst in England he heard a good deal about the War of Independence, and he subsequently made a large sum of money Introductory 13 Whether Thevenot de Morande desisted in future from libels and slander, as M. Lomenie asserts in his Life of Beaumarchais, may reasonably be doubted. He returned to France, and the guillotine did not claim him (though Carlyle says it did) but he had a narrow escape, and wisely retired to his native town, where he died in 1799 or 1800. But if he wrote nothing more, he had already, before Beaumarchais called upon him, brought out the Gazeiier Cuirass^, which contained many abominable asser- tions about Madame du Barry. To select one instance at random, it is stated that Madame du Barry had founded a new Order at Court for men and women; — but women were not eligible unless they had lived with at least ten different men. As soon as the King was dead — for before that, as one of the writers naively remarks, "it would not have been advisable to enquire too closely into the life of by supplying arms, clothing, etc., to the American settlers. The success of the De Morande mission also caused him to be employed in suppressing the publication of a pamphlet concerning Queen Marie Antoinette, which a Jew, named Angelucci alias Hatkinson {sic), was about to bring out. His object accomplished, he returned to Paris, but heard that the wily Jew had made a. mental reservation as to the "rights of translation," and was on his way to Vienna with a copy he had saved from the general destruction, with a view to having the book translated into German and Italian, and published in those languages. How Beaumarchais rushed after him, overtook him in a wood, half killed the faithless Angelucci, and was himself nearly murdered by robbers, and how his life was saved by a gold box (containing an autograph letter of Louis XVI) which he wore on a ribbon round his neck, will be found related in that excellent work, Lomenie's Life of Beaumarchais. 14 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry Madame du Barry"— the presses of Paris, London, and Holland began to pour forth fictitious biographies. Two of these, published in the years I774— 1775> deserve a passing notice. They are the Anecdotes sur Madame la Comtesse Du Barri and Prdcis historique de la Vie de Madame la Comtesse Du Barry. The first of these is now generally attributed to Pidansat de Mairobert. The title page bears no place of publication, but only the name of the book, the date 1775, and two lines from the Second Satire of Horace, "Haec ubi supposuit dextro corpus mihi laevum, Ilia & Egeria est: do nomen quodlibet illi." —a piece of execrable bad taste which forms a fitting prelude to the contents of the work. The stories of the early life of Madame du Barry are utterly and entirely false, and those relating to her public life not often trust- worthy, though the writer says in the preface : " Moreover it must not be imagined that in collecting everything carefully, there has been brought together without selection a mass of fables and absurdities which are current con- cerning this celebrated courtesan. It will be seen that from her birth until her retirement authorities are adduced for all that is stated." Pidansat de Mairobert must have had very singular ideas as to what constituted an authority. A reprint of the book, in a larger form, but not containing any new matter, came out in 1776, and a copy fell into the hands of Madame Sara G. — (Goudard) who there- upon produced Remarques sur les Anecdotes de Madame la Comtesse Duharri. It professed to be "translated from the English" and bore on the title page, besides "&, Londres" and the date 1777, the singular quotation from Introductory 1 5 the j^neid, "Bella horrida bella!" — which was perhaps quite as appropriate as anything else would have been. Sara G. rates Mairobert soundly, but the conviction is borne in the reader's mind that, like Hal o' the Wynd, she is fighting for her own hand, and is more concerned in making a book which would share the popularity of the Anecdotes, than in shielding the reputation of Madame du Barry. She starts by relating how a "Milord" called upon her (she was living in England at the time), and finding her with a pen in her hand asked her what she was doing. She told him she was going to answer the Anecdotes, whereupon he replied, " If you are going to run counter to popular prejudices you will not have any readers till a hundred years have passed." Madame Sara Goudard did not take her friend's advice, but soon tired of following Mairobert through the endless windings of falsehood, and finally owned that she had not the courage to continue her remarks on the rest of the anecdotes of Madame Dubarri ; " those which follow are scurrilous, flimsy, and so filled with falsehoods that they do not excite my pen." Her judgment was sounder than her logic. The other book mentioned, the Pricis historique, bears evidence of being the work of a woman. The title page is dated 1774, and the writer states in the beginning that "now Madame du Barry is compelled to drag out the miserable remains of her life in a convent, we consider her as absolutely dead to the world, and consequently, having finished in regard to us, as well as in regard to herself, her brilliant career, she is, in short, at the mercy of everybody who chooses to write about her." The premises which lead to the inference that the 1 6 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry work is that of a woman, are : a good deal of reKgious feeling, no little spite of a feminine nature, and the addition of three years to Du Barry's age, for surprise is expressed that the King could have been fascinated by a woman who was twenty-five years old.* There are copious notes which are often instructive, and when they purport to be extracts from English newspapers are distinctly amusing. The following is a good specimen of " English as she was wrote" in the eighteenth century. "La Barry happening to be Choiseul his partner, said she was up by honnours, how can that be, answered he, I hSve not any, knows that, replied the Ladi; but i have the honnours without you" The Pre'cis can be used— sparingly, and with due cau- tion—in compiling a biography of Madame du Barry, and the writer deserves a word of grateful recognition for her remark that the author of the Gazetier Cuirass^ " does not appear too respectable an authority and prefers piquancy to probability. " Of the other fictitious Memoirs, Letters, etc., we need say little. The Lettres Originales are palpable forgeries. They also are believed to be the work of Pidansat de Mairo- bert. If so, he did not live to know the fate of his work, for early in 1779 — the year in which the letters were published — he committed suicide. Had he been as " tho- rough " in other matters as he was in his method of taking ' As a matter of fact Madame du Barry was twenty-five when she became the King's mistress, but this was not known to any of her biographers, and she passed for twenty-two. It was a lucky guess on the part of the author of the Pre'cis, who owns that she (or he) knows nothing of the first eighteen years of Du Barry's life. Introductory 1 7 his life his literary reputation would have stood higher. He was implicated in some politico-financial aflFair, and thought he would be disgraced, — for he held some official posts, was Secretaire des commandements to the Due de Chartres, Secretaire du Roi (nominally at least) and literary censor ! — so he opened his veins with a razor, whilst in a warm bath, and then blew his brains out with a pistol. From the post-Revolutionary period we may select two books for mention, — a Life by "M. de FavroUe" which appeared in 1806, and the Memoires de Madame la Comtesse du Barri,^" (6 vols., Paris, 1829-30). "M. de Favrolle" was the pseudonym adopted by Madame Guenard, a literary hack whose pen was seldom out of her hand and who was ready for work of any sort, — licentious novels, or moral stories for the edification of school-girls. It was said of her that she wrote for the "instruction of youth, and the amusement of the barracks," — the epigram might have been completed by the addition of "the confusion of scholars. " The Memoires are, according to M. Octave Uzanne, "the compilation of Lamothe-Langon, and with- out the least weight of authority. " Both books are un- trustworthy but that very defect makes them not altogether useless, as the historian who is writing on the period treated of is compelled to corroborate or reject their statements by reference to other authorities. M. Capefigue in his Reines de la Main Gauche published 1857, attempted the difficult task of proving that Du Barry was a sort of misunderstood angel. He rushed to the other extreme, and did nothing except prove that • ' Translated into English as " Memoirs of Madame du Barri, " 4 vols, London, 1830. 1 8 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry he had a hopelessly bad case, and could be quite as in- accurate as his predecessors.' A year or two later the real truth about Du Barry began to be known, thanks to the researches of M. Leroi. He was the librarian at Versailles, and had in his charge a number of MSS. relating to Du Barry. He was a patient, quiet worker of the Dryasdust school — the right type of man when a large accumulation of rubbish has to be sifted. The result of his labours was incorporated by the Brothers de Goncourt in Les Mattresses du Roi published in i860. The literary style of this book is— as might be expected — excellent, but though we get a better and more just appreciation of the character of Madame du Barry, we do not quite arrive at the truth, though we have made a long step in the right direction. There are still some inaccu- racies caused by a too ready acceptance of unfounded statements made by the anecdotists, and it may even be said that the charms of the literary style accentuate rather than diminish these faults. Another well-known literary man — M. Emile Gaboriau — also included the Du Barry in his book Les Cotillons cSlebres (Paris 1861, 2 vols. i2mo), but he was then a young man of twenty -five, and had not found out where his strength lay, and though he afterwards wrote some of the best detective stories in the world, he showed in this work much more of the novelist than of the detective. Some of the other books of the same decade, such as Cotillon III by M. George d'Heilly, were largely composed of " slabs " cut out of the work of the Brothers de Goncourt. ' He has been, not inaptly, compared to the bear in La Foritaine's fable, who, to kill a fly that had settled on his master's nose, dropped a heavy stone, and killed the man as well as the fly. Introductory 1 9 The best work on Madame du Barry appeared in 1883. It is by M. Charles Vatel, and is a history in three vo- lumes. M. Vatel lived at Versailles, and was a friend of M. Leroi. The two worked together on several subjects, but they had a "tiflf" over some literary question. This did not, however, prevent M. Leroi placing all the resources of the Versailles Library at the disposal of M. Vatel. The latter was a literary Dryasdust, and relentlessly and indefatigably hunted down every fact which could bear on the subject of his book. He has no literary style, but he has even a rarer gift, an untiring perseverance, an aptitude for analysing and reconciling contradictory statements, and a rare talent for detecting falsehoods. These qualities more than suffice to make the book an excellent one, and it is a pity that it should not be better known. Much of the obloquy — all that was possible with a due regard to truth — has been removed from the memory of Du Barry, and we may now (if our eyes are not still blinded by prejudice) see her as she really was. When the veil is raised we find, not a monster of iniquity, not the incarnation of all the worst vices of France when France was at its lowest ebb of morality, but merely a beautiful, light-headed, good-hearted, open-handed har- lot. We should no more blame her for being what she was, than we should reproach the grasshopper for not being as industrious as the ant. " She was une bonne fille — we must content ourselves with that expression for it is the only one which depicts Madame du Barry at one stroke.^" As another writer has said, " Truly she was the type of the bonne fille, foolish, careless, credulous even, * E. and J. DE GoN court : Les Mattresses de Louis XV. 20 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry but she never abused her power to cause mischief; all the faults which are imputed to her fall on the shoulders of the people who surrounded her. In her time, it is true, a terrible abuse was made of lettres de cachet, but we must lay the blame on the Due de la Vrilliere, whose mistress sold them publicly; for fifty louis you could imprison a man. The favourite, however, was not implicated in any of these infamies; many times even she used her influence to restore to liberty poor wretches who were unjustly detained.*" When compared with Madame de Pompadour, Madame du Barry indeed shows in a far better light than does her predecessor. An author who has studied the lives of both, says, "Was the Comtesse du Barry more immoral than the Marquise de Pompadour? I do not think so. Was she more injurious to France? I do not think so either. For myself I scarcely see any difference. I am inclined, how- ever, to consider Madame de Pompadour more guilty than Madame du Barry. The husband of one was far better than that of the other. M. Lenormand d'Etiolles had not like M. du Barry concluded, under the pretence of marriage, a shameful contract. He loved his wife, surrounded her with every comfort, paid her every attention and kind- ness, and did nothing to deserve the unjustifiable deser- tion and treason of which he was the victim. Du Barry on the other hand deserved his lot. Whatever may be said to the contrary, the Marquise was not more a lady than was the Comtesse. Madame de Pompadour was elegant, - but the Du Barry was not less so. Both learned to talk ' Emit.e Gaboriau : Les Cotillons celebres. Introductory z i the language of Versailles, and to wear a handsome toilet as gracefully as women of the highest rank of the no- bility. D'Aiguillon, the favourite of the Comtesse, was of as good a family as was Choiseul, the favourite of the Marquise. Both forced their relations on the aristocracy. If one metamorphosed her brother, Abel Poisson, into Marquis de Marigny, the other married Vicomte Adolphe du Barry, her nephew, to the daughter of the Marquis de Toumon who was connected with the great houses of Conde and Sou- bise. The Comtesse had certainly this one advantage over the Marquise that we cannot attribute to her the responsibility of any war, or the choice of any general. " Evil passions, hate and rancour, ambition and cupidity, love of rule, spirit of domination and pride, were infinitely more marked in the character of Pompadour than in that of Du Barry. The one was a woman of the financial world, intriguing, calculating, mistress" of herself, an egoist, haughty, and vindictive. The other was a daughter of the people, without virtue, but without malice, without elevated senti- ments, but incapable of mischief; having all the faults of the comtesan, with all her carelessness, prodigality, and playfulness. In the gallery of women of Versailles I would place Du Barry far above Pompadour, because the Com- tesse had, say her contemporaries, a quality which was wanting to the Marquise, and which condones many errors, whims, and vices, — goodness of heart. *^" This is not an isolated opinion; that of the Brothers de Goncourt, though more neatly and tersely put, is to the same effect. •• All Madame de Pompadour's life belongs to history. ' Imbert de St. Amand : Les dernieres anne'es de Louis XV 2 2 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry It is a life of business, intrigues, negotiations, a respon- sible part in politics, public exercise of power, relations alt all times with Ministers, Ambassadors, Secretaries of State, soldiers, financiers, lawyers ; the management of the interests of the nation and the will of the King; a burden on the destinies of France and Europe. The life of Madame du Barry will neither justify nor satisfy equal curiosity on the part of posterity. She took no part in the State, or in history. Take away one incident, her struggle with Choiseul, and she was only the best treated kept-woman in the kingdom." Madame de Pompadour may be exonerated from the charge of having lost Canada to the French,— the war which led to that was opened by England in the most flagrantly inexcusable manner, but she was gravely con- cerned in the events which led to the battle of Rosbach. It was hardly to be called a battle in the soldier's sense, for the fighting was over in a couple of hours, but in another way it was one of the greatest battles ever fought, for it taught the Germans that the French were not invin- cible. It may be said that the seed from which the present German Empire sprang was sown on the field of Rosbach. Pascal declared that if Cleopatra's nose had been an inch shorter the destiny of the world would have been altered; and perhaps if Frederick the Great had not growled out a coarse word about Madame de Pompadour, Alsace and Lorraine would never have been lost by the French. As a proof of the heartlessness of Madame de Pompadour it may be mentioned that she entrusted the command of an expedition to one of her personal enemies, in the hope that he might be discomfited, and was infinitely disgusted when he returned with something almost approaching honour. Introductory 23 Yet not only in the writings of the women who were jealous of her wondrous beauty, and of the men who were paid, or hoped to be paid, to vilify her, but also in the pages of grave historians there is a tendency to make the venial faults of Madame du Barry outweigh the heavy sins of Madame de Pompadour. Perhaps, as it is no sin for a man to labour in his vocation, they feel a lurking tenderness for the woman who "made history," and a supreme contempt for the woman who did not, though she had the chance, and was immoral into the bargain. The one, between two flirts of her fan, sent hundreds of brave men to destruction, but she did it in the most courtly and lady-like manner; the other only opened^ the Bastille doors to release the innocent, and saved a wretched child-mother from the gallows; — and it was really hardly worth the risk of stubbing a good goose-quill to record incidents of that nature — besides which the woman was vulgar as well as indecent. Is the doctrine that " clean- liness is next to godliness " so unimpugnable that even its converse holds good, and we must be taught that uncleanness is worse than ungodliness? Greed, envy, malice, ambition, callousness to all interests but her own, and half a score of other sordid vices, go for nothing in De Pompadour, for she was well bred, and actually blushed, or very nearly so, if anyone made use of a coarse epithet in her hearing; but Du Barry was vulgar, and vulgarity is ridiculous, and, as the Due de Guines said to his daughters, " Remember, my children, that vices are of no consequence, but ridicule kills." Not in this spirit should the history of Madame du Barry, or of any mortal, virtuous or improper, be written. In these pages there will be no attempt to make her out 24 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry a saint — she was very far from that — but if her life was a " sorrow for angels, " let us attempt to show that it was not "one more devil 's-triumph." She was a woman — a bad woman, because her fault was the only one good women cannot pardon: want of chastity ! — a good woman, because within that fair breast beat a heart that was tender, compassionate, forgiving. The court lady who started up with an exclamation of " Fi, I'horreur ! " because the King's mistress sat by her side, had, not improbably, witnessed unmoved, Damiens torn to pieces by horses, but Du Barry's gentle blue eyes had never gazed on any suffering they did not long to relieve. From her tiny "Cupid's bow" mouth there dropped the most obscene phrases, but never a word that could give a wound ; it never whispered into the King's ear a desire for revenge. She chose Vice, but she never had the chance of becoming virtuous. There is, says M. de Gon- court, in the Greek Anthology an epitaph on a young girl, in which the hope is expressed that the earth will lie light upon her corpse, for she, when alive, was so light upon the earth, and he adds that no sentiment could better befit the grave of the beautiful, good-hearted, careless, unfortunate courtesan, Jeanne Becu, Comtesse du Barry. CHAPTER II BIRTH — GENEALOGY — SCHOOL-DAYS On the 19th August, 1743) an old priest sat in the vestry of the little church of Vaucouleurs, a village or small town of France, now in the Department of the Meuse. Near him stood a man and a woman, who were, as might be seen from their dress, respectable peasants, or small shop-keepers. The woman carried in her arms a very young infant. The child had just been baptised, and the old priest, who was writing in a big book, was entering in the parish register the name of the infant, and the date of its birth and baptism. When he had finished he read aloud what he had written. It ran as follows: "Jeanne, natural daughter of Anne Becu, sometimes called Quantigny, was bom 19th August, 1743, and was baptised the same day, the sponsors being Joseph Demange, and Jeanne Birabin. L. Galon, Vicar of Vaucouleurs." The sponsors wrote their names beneath the entry; the man in bold and distinct characters, the woman in an illegible scrawl. From the slope of the letters it would appear that Jeanne Birabin wrote without using her left hand, and we may surmise that she was carrying the baby on her left arm, and this interfered with her pen- manship, for her name occurs elsewhere in the register, 26 The Life and Times of Midame du Barry and the signatures to the other entries are much better written. This formality being completed, Jeanne Birabin carried her god-child back to her mother, Joseph Demange went about his usual vocation, and both were very far from imagining that the little nameless bastard for whom they had stood as sponsors, would some day be one of the most powerful personages in Europe, the favourite of the King of France, and, if she cared to be, the arbitress of the fate of Ministries, and, perhaps, of nations; — that when she dined, a nobleman, wearing the Order of St. Louis, would hand her her napkin ; when she drove out, the widow of a Marshal of France would occupy the front seat;^ that, if she expressed an opinion in politics, couriers would ride night and day to report her, words; that the daughter of an Empress would be enjoined by her proud mother to show as much respect and considera- tion as possible for the Royal Mistress; and that two of the daughters of Louis XV would try to get the Pope to annul the marriage of the favourite, in order that their father might espouse her. If Joseph Demange and Jeanne Birabin bothered their heads at all about little Jeanne Becu it was to wonder who was her father. His name is not mentioned in the ' Madame la Marechale de Mirepoix was paid the handsome salary of A4000 a year for acting as chaperon to Madame la Comtesse du Barry. The old lady was not very proud of her position, and on one occasion endeavoured to persuade her niece, Madame de Bussy, that the money was given her in compensation for some losses she had suffered, "but not, I assure you," she added, "for anything I may have done for Madame du Barry." "I should think not," replied her niece, "or, if so, you are very badly paid," Birth — Genealogy— rSchooUdays 27 certificate of birth, and it was unknown to everybody except perhaps Anne Becu, who appears to have guarded the secret well, for the mystery as to the paternity of Madame du Barry remains unsolved to the present day. In all old French encyclopaedicis and biographical dictionaries, and even in some recent English ones, Madame du Barry's real name is given as Marie Jeanne Gomard de Vauber- nier, and an exciseman named Vaubernier is mentioned as her reputed father. The most diligent research has failed to discover any trace of the existence of a person named Vaubernier at Vaucouleurs, and this is not to be wondered at, as we now know that the entire name, with the exception of the "Jeanne," was borrowed by Madame du Barry, or invented for her. The person to whom tradition points as the father of Madame du Barry was a Picpus monk or brother, named Jean Jacques Gomard. These existed in Vaucouleurs at that time a small com- munity consisting of eight brothers of the Third Order of Franciscans, generally called Picpus monks, because the chief monastery of the order was situated at Picpus, a village to the north-east of Paris. The local legend, or tradition, declares that Anne Becu, who was a sempstress, went to work at this convent, and was seduced by one of the monks, Jean Jacques Gomard, whose religious name was Frere Ange. It may be urged that Franciscan monks were not very likely to require the services of a sempstress, and, even if so, would not have chosen a remarkably handsome woman, as Anne Becu is said to have been. The Tertiaries, or members of the Third Order of St. Francis, were not, however, strictly speaking, monks. They were " non-conventual members, who conti- nued to live in society without the obligation of celibacy, 28 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry and, in general, were only bound by the spirit, and not the letter, of the rule." If Frere Ange was the father of Jeanne Becu we can understand why she first adopted the name of I'Ange or Lange, and afterwards that of Gomard, and perhaps also why the cure of Vaucouleurs, anxious to avoid scandal to religion, did not insert the father's name in the certificate. Unfortunately all the documents relating to the brother- hood perished in the Revolution, and there seems little probability that we shall ever know with certainty who was the father of Madame du Barry. The story about her mother being seduced is not plausible. Anne Becu must have been nearly thirty at the time of the alleged seduc-* tion, for she was more than thirty when Jeanne was bom, and hardly likely to be deceived by the first friar who tried his blandishments upon her, "When History makes a drama it does it very well," M. Sardou has said, but on the other hand History often destroys many pretty pic- tures of fancy. Just as we are prepared to sympathize with Anne Becu as one who loved not wisely but too well, and who became the victim of some monkish or military Lothario;— whilst we depict her as Hving in seclu- sion and weeping bitter tears over her beautiful, golden- haired child. History points with inexorable finger to another page of the parish register, where — alas, for human frailty— we read under the date of 14th February, 1747, a record of the birth of "Claude, natural son of Anne Becu." Luckily for historians, Claude never became distinguished in any way, and so we are spared the trouble of seeking among Anne Becu's numerous lovers for the name of his supposed father. The genealogy of Madame du Barry cannot be traced, on Birth — Genealogy — School-days 29 the mother's side, beyond her grandfather. He was named Fabien Becu, and about 1690 was in business in Paris, either as a locksmith, or, more probably, as a rotisseur, or roasting cook, an avocation which has now become almost extinct. He, like several others of his family, was a remarkably handsome man. The Dame de Cantigny, Comtesse de Montdidier, fell in love with him, and mar- ried him. She bore him one daughter, and then died, leaving her affairs in a very involved condition, and Fa- bien Becu found himself once more obliged to work for his living. He became cook in the service of the beau- tiful Comtesse de Ludre, one of the mistresses of Louis XIV, who had been exiled from the Court, and was then living near Vaucouleurs. In a few years' time he married Jeanne Husson, a young woman who, like himself, was or had been in the service of the Comtesse de Ludre. By her he had seven children, three sons and four daugh- ters. Charles, the eldest son, entered the service of Sta- nislas, King of Poland, either as a footman or a valet. He assumed the name of Cantigny, or Quantigny, though he had no possible right to the name of his step-mother. Anne Becu also must have used the name, or she would not figure as "dite Quantigny" on the birth certificate just quoted. Anne was born, we learn from the Vau- couleurs register, on i6th April, 1713, her sponsors being Antoine Carmouche and Anne Gaspur, who are vaguely described as "a young man and young woman." With the exception of Anne, all the family held menial positions. Her father had been a cook, her brothers were all in service, — two of them in Paris, one in the employ of the Due de Gramont, and the other in the household of the Duchesse d'Antin, — and her elder sister, who, from 30 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry her beauty, was known as ?a belle Hdene, was lady's maid to Madame Bignon, the wife of Armand Jerome Bignon, a member of the Academy, and Keeper of the King's Library.' Of the other two sisters nothing is known. Anne was ostensibly a sempstress, but as we know that she was a handsome woman and lived in a rather large and comfortable house, we are inclined to believe that she had more lucrative and less reputable ways of mak- ing a living than by dress-making, and this supposition is strengthened by the fact that she had at least two ille- gitimate children. Possibly the birth of little Claude in 1747 had some- thing to do with the determination of Anne Becu to move to Paris. Morals were lax enough at the Court and in the city, but in a little country town gossips would talk not too charitably about a woman who had two "love children," and it may easily be surmised that Vaucouleurs could no longer be a pleasant place of residence for Anne Becu. To Paris accordingly Anne Becu brought her chil- dren some time between 1747 and 1749, and before she had been very long in the capital, she married on 19th ' This latter post was hereditary in the family of the Bignons, and was held by the uncle and the son of Armand J4r6me. In 1 7 70 when the Dauphin (afterwards Louis XVI) was married to Marie Antoinette, Armand Jerome Bignon was pre'vSt des marchandes, and it was owing to his carelessness that the terrible stampede occurred on the occasion of the firework display on the Place Royale, when three hundred persons lost their lives. The Parisians hardly expected that Bignon would be punished, but they were disgusted to see him in his box at the Opera, three nights after the accident, and some wit made an anagram on his name, Ibi non rem, damna gero, (I do no good, I do harm). Birth — Genealogy — School-days 3 1 July, 1749, a man named Nicolas Ran9on, who is described on the marriage certificate as a "domestic.'' How the newly married couple lived we have no means of knowing. It is said that Anne became a cook, and, twenty years afterwards, when Madame du Barry was at the height of her power, sarcastic allusions were made by the courtiers to her mother's supposed calling. On one occasion, when the favourite was playing vingt-et-un (her favourite game) she " overdrew," and exclaimed laughingly as she threw down the cards, " I'm cooked" (Je sm's friti). " Madam," said a courtier, " far be it from me to contradict you. You really ought to know best." Little Jeanne, when about six or seven years old, appears about that time (1749) to have attracted the attention of a rich old financier and army contractor, M. Billard- Dumouceaux. How he became acquainted with the Becus is unknown. Thevenot de Morande, Pidansat de Mairo- bert, and the host of scribblers who wrote pretended lives or memoirs of Madame du Barry, and who invented what- ever was necessary to make their facts fit, assert that he was the god-father of Jeanne. They relate how he was present at Vaucouleurs when the wife or mistress of Vau- bernier was confined, how he stood godfather to the child, paid for all the rejoicings, and gave a handsome present to the father, who was one of his subordinates. The story reads so plausibly that we might almost believe it, if recent research had not shown that the name of the parrain of Jeanne Becu was Joseph Demange, and that Vaubernier was a myth. There seems, however, reason to believe that M. Billard-Dumouceaux knew something of Anne Becu before she left Vaucouleurs. Perhaps he had been one of her admirers, or perhaps he had been fascinated 33 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry by the grace and beauty of Jeanne, and had constituted himself a kind of informal guardian to the child. Mon- tigny, a writer whose accuracy is not lightly to be impugned, says, "M. Billard-Dumouceaux never lost sight of his charming ward. She always spoke to me of him with expressions of gratitude which do honour to both parties.^" M. Billard-Dumouceaux was rich, kind-hearted, and a friend of the arts. He was also an amateur artist. " He drew excellently in pastels, and never travelled without a box of pencils," says one who boasted of knowing him well.' This will perhaps account for the strange fact that in the inventory of the Chateau de Louveciennes, the re- sidence of the favourite, mention is made of two portraits of Madame du Barry when a child. It is certain that, whether Anne Becu was a cook or not, she was not in a position to pay an artist to take her daughter's portrait. It is not impossible that Dumouceaux may have seen the child at the house of one of his friends where Anne was employed as cook, and struck by the rare beauty of Jeanne — for she was already known as " the little angel" — had received her into his house. The friends who came to the house of the rich financier took notice of the child. One of them, the Abbe Arnaud, boasted in after years that he had nursed upon his knees a little girl who afterwards became Madame du Barry.* He was a wit (who was not in those days ?) and said when he was told that Marmontel looked dull and bored, "that is because he hears himself speak." He was far from imag- ining that the child he dandled on his knee would one ' Les lllustres ■victimes vengies, p. 98, ° Vie de lui-meme par Grosley. ° Cham fort: Caracteres et anecdotes. Birth — Genealogy — School-days 3 3 day open the doors of the Academy for him. In the meantime he had an opportunity of doing something for her, and thinking that it was quite time she began to be educated, he procured for her admission to the Convent of Sainte Aure. This convent had been founded by the cure of Saint- Etienne du Mont, as an asylum for young girls of his parish whom poverty had led into dissipation, but a few years previously it had been changed to an establishment for " the education of youth, where they are instructed in Christian piety and in arts suitable to women." The convent was under the control of the nuns of the order of Saint Augustine, who, according to a guide to the churches of Paris of the period, ^ endeavoured to make it "an asylum open to all young people bom of honest parents who may find themselves in circumstances in which they incur risk of ruin. How many there are who en- dowed with external beauty (so often fatal to virtue) are reduced to want ! Where will they find an angel to free them, to preserve them from the jaws of the lion always ready to seize some prey." The nuns numbered fifty -three, and the pupils about forty. These latter paid two hundred and fifty to three hundred francs a year and extras. Occasionally ladies, who wished to do penance, would retire to the convent for a few weeks or months. The pupils rose at . 5.0 a.m., and heard mass at 7.0 in the private chapel of the convent. Dinner was at ii.o a.m. (the food was plain but sufficient), and at 9.0 p.m. all retired to the dormitories. The costume was severely simple. On the head a black woollen hood, with a band ' Regulations of the nuns of St. Aure, quoted by the De Goncourts. 3 34 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry of coarse cloth tight across the forehead, chemise and veil, unstarched; a frock of Aumale serge, white and plain; yellow calf shoes fastened with cords, of the same. Playfulness, joking, raillery, affectation, and even laughter were forbidden and punished.'" The nuns devoted the greater part of their time to instructing their pupils in religious duties, reading, writing, spelling, music, needle- work of all kinds (particularly embroidery,) and house- keeping. To this nunnery Jeanne Becu was sent with "six towels and two pairs, of sheets," when she was about seven or eight years old, and as we. hear no more of her until she was fifteen, it has been conjectured that she was at school all the time. If so, it was probably M. Billard- Dumouceaux who paid the bills, but in this case, as in so many others, all the documents were destroyed in the Revolution, and we are reduced to conjectures. The authors of some of the apocryphal books about Madame du Barry, — Pidansat de Mairobert, Restif de la Bretonne and others of the same class who were indebted to their imaginations for their facts— state that she was expelled from the convent for having smuggled in some improper books. As there is not the slightest ground for such a charge we may acquit her, but we may infer that her school-days were not happy, that she was often punished, and had in after-life no pleasant recollections of the days she spent among the sisters. It seems almost certain that in the time of her prosperity she did nothing for the nuns,, but on the other hand they seem to have done next to nothing for her whilst she was under their charge. ' ReBulations of the nvins of St. Aure, quoted by the Goncourts. Birth — Genealogy — School-days 35 During the eight years she spent in the convent she acquired but little knowledge, and if she could write fairly well could certainly not spell. In some of her letters there are as many as twenty-three faults in ortho- graphy in nine lines, and even the all-important verb etre had difficulties for her which she never mastered. She often wrote il et and Us son, and ignored the existence of the final j in the plural of nouns. But her spelling if defective was quite equal to that of her contemporaries. Even Madame de Pompadour, who was intended from an early age to be the King's mistress, and was taught every accomplishment that could fit her for the post, could never distinguish rightly between the possessive pronoim se and the demonstrative pronoun ce, and some of the great ladies of the Court in their reproaches to the light-o'-love cavaliers who had deserted them for some fresher or fairer face, are stated to have used the expres- sion: Vous ne mdm^ plu — a phonetic rendering of Vous ne m'aimez plus. In justice to Madame du Barry it must also be said that if her spelling was faulty, her literary style was clear, that she read many of the best authors, and was one of the very few French people who have been able to appreciate Shakespeare, — though, as she did not know English, she was forced to read him in a trans- lation. The Convent of Saint Aure, however, left some impression on the mind and character of Madame du Barry. She had been taught household management, and, even when she was scattering broadcast the public money at .a ter- rible rate, she was careful to enter in her housekeeping book all her receipts and expenditure, and she took an inventory of all her property. She wrote to her steward 36 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry Denis Morin, that he was on no account to forget to make jam of all the fruit grown upon her estate. Whatever were her faults it cannot be said that she was irreligious. She gave profusely to churches and charities, and when she was sent to the Abbaye du Pont aux Dames her conduct was so exemplary that the Abbess, Madame de Fontenille, who had been strongly prejudiced against her, became quite friendly towards her, so much so that the ene- mies of the now fallen favourite accused her of a hypocritical simulation of devotion. In 1792 she gave shelter, at the risk of her own life, to several priests. Finally when Louis XV was seized with his last illness, Madame du Barry sent a large sum to the cure of St. Etienne du Mont in order that special prayers should be made to St. Gene- vieve for the King's recovery. A few days later a friend said to the cure, " Your prayers do not seem to have been of much avail." To which the pnest answered with a quiet smile, "On the contrary, the Saint has done all that could be wished. Is not the King dead?" CHAPTER III LOVE AFFAIRS By the year 1758 Jeanne Becu (or Marie Gomard de Vaubemier as Mairobert & Co. prefer to call her) was of nubile age, and of course it would only be a natural consequence of her innate depravity — or their own— that she should have a lover. One of them — it really does not matter which — accordingly invented a story which the others have copied faithfully. The girl, they say, was apprenticed to a milliner named Labille, about 1760. Amongst many other adventures, she there met with a hair-dresser named Lamet, who used to come to Labille's shop to see his two sisters who were employed there. He met Mademoiselle Lange (the name by which the future Ma- dame du Barry was then known) and offered to teach her hair-dressing. She accepted, and after very few lessons he proposed to her that she should become his mistress. She eagerly accepted the proposal, left Labille's and at once installed herself in Lamet's rooms. Her natural extrava- gance showed itself thus early. In fewer than three months she had expended the three thousand francs the hair- dresser had saved, and he was finally forced to fly to England, leaving Mademoiselle Lange to lament his loss, and to earn her living in a manner which may be guessed. 37 38 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry By the industrious research of the late M. Charles Vatel, the only writer whose statements concerning Madame du Barry can be accepted with absolute faith, it has been discovered that a young man named Lametz, who was a hair-dresser, did cross the path of Jeanne Becu, but in 1758 not in 1760. On i8th April, 1759, Anne Becu, accom- panied by her daughter, appeared before the Sieur Char- pentier, commissary of police of the quarter, to make a complaint against the Widow Lametz, dress-maker, living in the Rue Neuve des Petits-Champs, opposite the offices of the Compagnie des Indes. At the Hotel of the Compagnie des Indes lived a Dame Peugevin, who had, for maid, Helene Becu, the sister of Anne and aunt of Jeanne. They used often to go and see their relative, and they met there a young hair-dresser named Lametz, who came to coiffer Dame Peugevin. No doubt the young man admired Jeanne, and when Madame Ran9on proposed that he should teach her daughter hair-dressing he readily expressed his willingness to do so. In December, 1758, he first began the lessons, and they lasted about five months. At last his mother began to notice his frequent absences, and on making inquiries found out that he spent much of his time in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Etienne, where the Rangons then lived. The daughter of a servant did not appear to her, a desirable match for her son, and she at once went round, in a terrible passion, to the abode of the Ran9ons. She found Anne Ran9on and her husband at home, and the irate bourgeoise scolded them in no measured terms. She accused them of taking her son from her; called Madame Ran^on an old procuress, and said her daughter was no better than she should be. Jeanne arrived home in the Love Affairs 39 middle of this storm, and though attacked personally, did not reply to the virago but retired to her room. The next day Madame Ran9on and her daughter went to the commissary of police to lodge a formal complaint against Madame Lametz for slander, and to demand protec- tion against any future attacks on her part. Rangon does not appear to have taken any part in the quarrel beyond giving his wife authority to prosecute Madame Lametz. He is described by Grosley, who declares that he knew him, as "a quiet, shy man, deeply marked with the small-pox," and perhaps he did not wish to be mixed up in his wife's quarrels. No record has yet been found of any further proceedings in the case, and we do not know whether any damages were recovered for the slander, or whether Charpentier contented himself with sending for Madame Lametz and advising her to keep a more civil tongue in her head in future. M. Vatel thinks, with some reason, that Madame Ran9on and her daughter could hardly have been leading abandoned lives at that time or they would not have dared to go before the commissary of police; or, if they had done so, he would quickly have sent them away again, instead of drawing up a long prods-verbal of the affair. On the other hand, if the matter was but a mere squabble between a dress-maker and a cook, and never got beyond the commissary's office, how did the scandal-mongers who wrote the Anecdotes and Memoirs come to hear of it, and why did they fix upon the hair-dresser Lamet as being the first protector of Madame Lange? The explanation may perhaps be found in the fact that when the Due de Choiseul saw that it was war to the knife between him and Madame du Barry, he not only employed literary bravos 40 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry to traduce her character as much as possible, but also applied to the lieutenant of police for any information about her, and it is not unlikely that the record of this affair was dug out by some of the police officials. It appears from this document that Jeanne used her step- father's name, Ran^on, at this time. M. Vatel thinks that there can be no truth in the story of Jeanne having ruined the young barber, because in the list of bankruptcies at the Hotel de Ville — which luckily was not destroyed in the Commune — the name of Lametz does not occur. Of course if Lametz had a shop and business of his own he would have been declared a bankrupt when he fled to Eng- land, but there is nothing to prove that he was in business for himself, indeed the inference is rather that he was not. The next definite information which we have about Jeanne Becu is that she was lady's maid, or companion, to Madame de la Garde, the widow of &fermier general. Ac- cording to the Anecdotists, she obtained this position through the good offices of a certain Abbe Gomard, a paternal uncle, who had made the acquaintance of his sister-in-law and niece under curious circumstances. Anne Ran9on and her daughter had been arrested for "soliciting," when the Abbe who chanced to be passing saved them from the police by means of a judicious bribe. He was astonished to find that the two women— apparent strangers, whom he had rescued out of sheer goodness of heart— were the wife and daughter of his deceased brother. He henceforth interested himself in their welfare, and it was by his means that a situation was found for Jeanne with old Madame de la Garde, to whom he was chaplain. We may dismiss as fictitious, the tale that Madame de la Garde had, living with her, her two sons, Love Affairs 41 both young men; that the boys both became enamoured of the pretty lady's maid, and quarrelled about her ; and that this caused a scandal which ended in Jeanne, her mother, and her supposed uncle being all turned out of the house. Madame de la Garde certainly had two sons, and though we do not know when they were bom, we know that they were both married on the same day, 3rd June, 1751, at the Church of St. Roch, the eldest, Nicolas de Delay de la Garde, to Mademoiselle de Ligniville, Comtesse du Saint Empire, and the younger, Francois Pierre de Delay de la Garde, to Mademoiselle Duval d'Epinay. Nicolas was a secretary of the King's finances, and intendant of the estate of the Dauphiness, and Frangois Pierre was Presi- dent of the Grand Council, and held several minor posts at Court. That either, or both, brothers made love to Mademoiselle Jeanne is not at all improbable, but they were not two schoolboys fighting for the favours of a soubrette, but middle-aged men both holding responsible positions, and both already married eight or nine years. Moreover they did not live with their mother, but each had his own house, Nicolas living in the Place Louis le Grand (now Place Vendome) and Frangois Pierre in the Rue Neuve du Luxembourg. In these stories it is difficult to tell whether Pidansat, Thevenot, and the others are lying purposely and malici- ously, or whether they simply err out of ignorance. The conclusion to which the student of history will probably arrive is that when Madame du Barry herself is in question, they would not tell the truth if they could, and that in regard to other persons, they could not tell the truth if they would. The only definite rule which seemed to guide their pens was always to believe the worst of everybody. 42 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry and if two versions of a tale were open to choose from, to select that which would show the subject of the history in the worst possible light. None of these writers ever troubled to verify a statement, and the few facts one does come across in their books are usually ascribed to the wrong person. Thus, for instance, Pidansat says that Madame de la Garde "was guilty of all sorts of absurdities and extravagances; she was accused of odious vices and shameful habits." As a matter of fiact the old lady died in 1769 in full possession of all her faculties, and seems to have been rather a strait-laced person for the times in which she lived. It was her daughter-in-law the com- tesse du Saint Esprit, the wife of Nicolas de la Garde who went out of her mind and committed absurdities and extravagances, and was finally interdite (2^ February, 1767) on account of "mental alienation, misconduct and dissi- pation." Jeanne Becu was not long a lady's maid, and soon left the De la Garde household, though there is no author- ity for supposing that she left in disgrace. Some time in 1760 or 1 76 1 she was in the employ of a Sieur Labille, a milliner, in the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs. His shop, it would appear from an advertisement, was to the east of the Rue de Richelieu, and near where the Bank of France now stands. She was at this time in her eighteenth year, and must have been in the full zenith of girlish beauty. It would have needed considerable strength of moral character to have withstood the temptations to which a pretty girl would be exposed in such a place, and poor Jeanne Becu was without any moral stamina. If she had hitherto preserved her virtue, and it is doubtful whether she had, it was not likely to hold out Love Affairs 43 long before the constant assaults of the " delightful do-nothings and handsome lords"-" who frequented Labille's shop under pretence of buying lace ruffles and cravats. The example, and possibly the teaching, of her mother would only serve to convince Jeanne that there was no advantage in being chaste, but she no doubt resolved to' make a better market for herself than her mother had done. That she had a lover or a dozen lovers is tolerably certain, and it is not unlikely that she skilfully played them ofif one against another. She may have argued as did her contem- porary, the pretty and witty actress, Sophie Amould, who when her manager expostulated with her for having a fresh lover every day, excused herself on the ground that it gave them so much pleasure and cost her so very little trouble. It is not worth while to ascertain who were the lovers of " Mademoiselle Lange. " We may dismiss as apocryphal the story of the young painter who lived over Labille's shop and who one day found pinned to his door a capital portrait of himself. He wrote underneath the drawing that he should like to make the acquaintance of the caricaturist, and she replied in the same manner that if he would leave his door open the next morning she would come and breakfast with him. He prepared a good breakfast, opened his door, and, at the time appointed, in walked Mademoiselle Lange. He naturally surmised that a young woman who would invite herself to breakfast in a bachelor's room would not be too particular, and, as was said of the hero of a certain Scotch ballad, " he had the good taste to be wanting in respect,'' but was promptly checked by " la petite Lange,'' who informed him that if he would ' MM. E. and J. DE GON COURT : Madame du Barry. 44 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry draw up a paper promising to pay her so many hundred francs a month, she was ready to become his mistress, but until that document was signed he must treat her with respect. As he could not afford the sum named he could not avail himself of the offer and Mademoiselle Lange's visits ceased. The author of the anecdotes has— as is usual with him — here outstepped the bounds of probability. The gilded youths who frequented Labille's had keen eyes for a pretty face, and it was not very likely that beauty like that of Mademoiselle Lange would pass unnoticed, and that she would be obliged to offer herself to an impecunious artist. More- ' over, some of the lovers the anecdotists ascribe to her were rich, and there is no reason to imagine they would not be liberal. The principal person with whom her name was associated at this time was Radix de Ste Foix, a^r- mier general and navy contractor, ^ and who seems to have been the only one of Madame du Barry's lovers of whom Louis XV had ever heard, for, soon after the favourite made her appearance at Court, the King in talking about her to the Due d'Ayen asked, " Is it true, as they say, that I have succeeded to Sainte Foix ? " "Sire," replied the sarcastic courtier, "Your Majesty succeeded Sainte Foix, as you succeeded Pharamond," — implying that in both cases there had been a good many others in between. But the heaviest and most injurious charge which was ever brought by the anecdote-mongers against Madame du Barry — an accusation that was never levelled except from the safe distance of London — was, that after she left ' He is not to be confounded with Saint-Foix, the dramatist, and the hero of so many duels, who was bom in 1698. Love Affairs 45 Labille's she was a woman of the town, and even for some time an inmate of the " disorderly house " kept by Madame Gourdan, the most notorious procuress of the day. This lie — for so M. Ch. Vatel proves it to be — was a veritable gold mine to the blackmailers and brought many thousands of francs into their pockets. If the charge had been met and faced it would have been difficult for the detractors of the favourite to have proved their statement, but they might have found out, or invented something else, and Madame du Barry and the King were, perhaps, well advised in buying the silence of Thevenot de Morande and other writers of that clciss. Yet, in spite of these assertions, there is every reason to believe that, however bad Madame du Barry may have been, she had never descended quite as low as her enemies made out; for in the lists of loose women kept by the police no name that resembles any of those by which she was known is to be found. Yet at that time the police ne hadinait avec I'amour-venale, and noncompliance with the regulations meant — if detected — transportation, and transportation was only another word for death. To the objection that the list is not complete it may be an- swered that it contains 30,000 names, and the probability of one so notorious as Mademoiselle Lange being left out of the list appears very small. In the pretended Life and Letters of Madame Gourdan— a book which is believed, and with every show of probability, to have been written by Thevenot de Morande— there is a letter supposed to be written by the woman Gourdan, in which she describes how she allured the petite Lange to her house and induced her to become a pensionnaire. The letter could not be reproduced here as it is disgust- 46 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry ingly licentious, and carries on its face a striking proof that it is a forgery, for it is written in exactly the strain in which a man who was a libertine would write, but not at all in the mann'er which an old procuress would be likely to use. According to this abominable letter the girl was found at the brothel by M. Billard de Dumou- ceau, who threatened the old woman, for having ruined his god-child, to have the house closed, and kept his word. If so he must have nursed his wrath for about fourteen years, for it was in 1776 that the woman Gourdan was sentenced, her house closed, and she had to ride through the streets of Paris mounted on an ass, with her face to the tail.^ At that time Louis XV had been dead two years and Madame du Barry was in disgrace. Bauchamont says that the judge who tried the case was so amused with Gourdan's ledger, which contained a list of all her pen- sionnaires, that he took the book home to peruse at his leisure, and M. Vatel thinks that if Madame du Barry's name had appeared there it would have been made known. Madame Sara Goudard states that Gourdan always denied that Du Barry had been an inmate of her house, and when questioned by a gentleman on the subject, replied, " No, sir, I am not so stupid as to blab {m'afficher) in that way. What is true though is that when there was a question as to whether Madame du Barry should be received at Court, a stranger came to. me and offered me a large sum if I would publicly attest that Du Barry had been one of my pensionnaires .... I would not consent to ' The case had, however, dragged on for eight years. The cause of it was that the wife of the bailiff of Douai was found in Gour- dan's house with her lover. See Bauchamont's Memoirs. Love Affairs 47 publish such a lie. ' " Too much weight must not be given to Sara Goudard, however, as she was herself an adventuress and had been the mistress of Ferdinand of Naples, and a fellow feeling might have made her kind enough to excuse or palliate Madame du Barry's faults, but though not a pat- tern of respectability, her evidence is more trustworthy than that of Thevenot and Pidansat, and, on the whole, we gladly come to the conclusion that the charge against Madame du Barry is "not proven," and that it cannot be shown that she was ever an inmate of a house of ill-fame. But it must not be supposed that Jeanne Becu led a virtuous life during these three years (1760 — 1763). We have no record of her amours, for History did not stoop to record the love affairs of a fair and flighty little mil- liner, being unable to foresee that the Uttle milliner would some day be one of the most important persons in France. It is not very likely that she stayed long at Labille's. In all likelihood she flitted from one rich lover to another, and if she was ever mattresse en litre it could only have been for a short time, or else we should find some mention of her in the hundreds of chronicles of the small talk and scandal of the time. Doubtless she frequented, in company with her " protector " for the time being, the haunts of the demi-monde, and was frequently to be found in those private gaming dens which then abounded in Paris. Some of these gambling dens, kept by real, or pretended, members of the aristocracy — broken down Comtesses and Marquises — made a show of being exclusive, and only admitted within their portals punters ' Sara Goudard : Hemarques sur les Anecdotes de Madame du Barry, page I2, 48 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry who belonged to " good society. " One of the most notorious of these houses was that kept by Madame (or Marquise) Duquesnoy, in the Rue de Bourbon.^ Duquesnoy had two professions, both equally honourable, and augmented the receipts of her cagnotte by commission received for introducing her young lady visitors to admirers. The name of Lange was far too common for the kind of society she would meet at Duquesnoy's, and Jeanne added another to the already long list of cognomens, and invented, or had invented for her, the high-sounding patronymic of Beauvamier,— a name which is now not without value to us as showing whence she derived the name she was ulti- mately known by, and which is still given her in ency- clopaedias and dictionaries of biography. At the house of the Marquise de Duquesnoy, or at some similar haunt of blacklegs and demireps, the not too chaste Marguerite met her Mephistopheles, the tempter who was to introduce her to " the heights of harlotry and rascaldom" — the Comte Jean Baptiste du Barry. He was at that time about forty years of age, for he was twenty years older than Jeanne " Beauvamier " as we must now call her. He was of a good family, and his father, Antoine du Barry, was a gallant soldier who had fought in the wars of Louis XIV, and had taken part in the battles of Hochstedt, Lille, Malplaquet, and Denain.' Antoine du Barry left three sons, of whom Jean Baptiste was the ' Now Rue du Louvre, ° The Du Barrys claimed relationship with the house of Barry- more. The arms of both families were the same. The Du Barrys were an old and hitherto respectable family. Pidansat's statement that Comte (!) du Barry was the son of the watchman of a vineyard is on a par with the rest of his book. Love Affairs 49 eldest, and three or four daughters. The family estates, or what there were left of them, were at Levignac, near Toulouse, and there Comte Jean du Barry lived till his vices and the scandals he created caused him to come to Paris, in 1756. He was in hopes of securing a diplomatic appointment, and he succeeded in getting two Ministers to entrust him with foreign missions but executed both so badly that the Due de Choiseul refused to employ him again. By dint of endless importunity he managed to secure — possibly from the Due de Duras, an easy-going man who was said never to refuse anything to anybody — a contract for the supply of provisions to the island of Corsica, and this contract he leased out, or sold. His life was devoted to debauchery, and in the six or seven years he had been in Paris he had managed to acquire the nickname of the Roue— a. distinction not easily earned in those days. Gambling then was looked upon rather as a gentlemanly accomplishment than as a vice, and as a matter of course Jean du Barry was a confirmed gambler. It would not seem unjust to him, considering his character, to infer that he turned the king more frequently than is consistent with ordinary luck, and more often threw " nicks " than "crabs." Mademoiselle Beauvarnier, he, no doubt, thought would make an excellent lure for the pigeons who were to be plucked. She, it may easily be believed, was by no means averse to become his mistress, for like Catiline he was alienum appetens, sui profusus, and had the reputation of being very liberal to women, who were all fond of him."^ He was said to cover them with gold and diamonds, which, considering his means, must have been a figure of speech. • La Police cUvoilie, Vol. I, page 231. 50 The Life and Times ef Madame du Barry It must have been towards the end of 1764 that Made- moiselle Beauvarriier was installed in Comte du Barry's house as his mistress. In the Police journal for that year there is -an entry under the date of 14th Decembei, that there was present at the Theatre des Italiens the previous night, " a young woman, nineteen years of age, tall, well made, elegant in appearance, and very pretty, said to be De- moiselle Beauvarnier, the mistress of Comte du Barry." The ballet played on that occasion was somewhat appro- priately " Ulysses in the Island of Circe." The entry serves partly to prove that Mademoiselle Beauvarnier was not " known to the police," or this description of her would have been quite unnecessary. It is noticeable too that her name appears here as Beauvarnier, but soon afterwards it under- went another and final change. Jean du Barry does not appear to have liked the name of Beauvarnier, so he changed the relative positions of the b and the v and transformed it into Vaubarnier. She afterwards prefixed to it Gomard — the name of the Abbe who claimed to be her uncle— and was known, and is even unto this day described in many historical works, as Marie Jeanne Gomard de Vaubarnier. In later years she also invented an ancestor to bear the name, and in several legal docu- ments is described as "the daughter of Gomard de Vau- barnier, employed in the King's service," which has caused the erroneous statement, to be found in all English and German works of reference, that she was the daughter of one Vaubarnier, a clerk in the Excise or Customs de- partment. Of her life during the four years or more that she was Du Barry's mistress we have few particulars. Pidansat and his fellows make out that she was miserable, that Jean du Love Affairs 51 Barry often locked her in a room, ill-treated her, and abused her, and that at least on one occasion she was going to throw herself out of the window, Jean du Barry- was a heartless scoundrel and an unprincipled rogue ; he had seduced several girls, and had even gone so far as to give one of his victims, Therese Banto, a paper, which is still extant, promising to marry her on the death of his wife, but he was not likely to ill-treat a woman, especially a woman who was useful to him. He required a pretty and clever accomplice, all smiles and cajolery, whose winning ways would make a poor pigeon think that being plucked was a quite enjoyable process. A morose, silent, red-eyed woman would have been of no use in furthering his plans. Her behaviour to him, when she was at the height of her power, proves at least that she bore him no animosity, but on' the contrary she showed gratitude to him for his share in promoting her fortunes, followed his counsels, and satisfied his rapacious demands without a murmur. Nor is there any ground for assuming that she was unfaithful to her " protector. " Scandal has attributed to her half a dozen lovers, amongst whom were Sainte Foix, an old admirer, now Chief Clerk in the Foreign Office, M. d'Arcambal, and Comte de Fitz James, " a charming young man, " who was none the better for having the blood of James II in his veins, but who at least showed better taste in the matter of women than his royal relative. If there was any intrigue between Mademoiselle Vaubamier and any, or all of these adorers, it was certainly with the knowledge and tacit consent of Jean du Barry. What little we do hear of Jeanne Vaubamier during this period would show that she was happy and contented. She drove about in a " chariot, " and was always accom- 52 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry panied by two children, "who were certainly not her own," says the chronicler, "but who were very well- behaved according to the evidence of the tradesmen with whom she dealt." They were not Jean du Barry's children either, for he had only one son, a boy of about fifteen. It may be mentioned en passant that Madame du Barry was always very fond of children, though she never had any of her own, and it is a slight but not unimportant testimony in her favour that children and dogs, who are proverbially said never to flatter, always "took to her.'' She was also not without friends, and if exception may be taken to their character it should be recollected that few virtuous women were likely to care to make the acquaintance of the mistress of a notorious roue. One of her friends, the Comtesse La Rena, lived at the Hotel Perou, Rue Jacob. She is described in the Journal of the Lieutenant of Police * "as a married woman living apart ' The Lieutenant of Police at this time was M. de Sartines, a very able man, who had brought the police of Paris to a high state of efficiency. Many stories are told about the wonderful skill displayed by his detectives. The Vienna Police once wrote to M. de Sartines, asking him to arrest a certain swindler who had left Vienna, and was believed to be in Paris. De Sartines wrote back that the man had not left Vienna but was living there in a certain house in a certain street; he also described the man's dress, and mentioned the hours at which he usually left home and returned. The Vienna PoUce went to the place indicated and found the man they wanted. Another story is that one of the chief magistrates of Lyons made a bet with M. de Sartines that he (the magistrate) would come to Paris and remain several days without the lieutenant of police knowing anything about it. He allowed some months to elapse, then left Lyons secretly, and came to Paris rapidly and quietly. When near the capital he sent away his post-chaise, Love Affairs 53 from her husband, and having an income of about twenty-, five thousand francs a year, derived from gallantries, principally from Milord Marche, who had conceived a violent passion for her, and had lived seven years with her in England. At Paris she is intimately acquainted with Mademoiselle Beauvarnier, the mistress of the Sieur du Barry." The Milord Marche mentioned in this paragraph, -was William Douglas, third earl of March, and afterwards fourth Duke of Queensberry. Middle-aged Londoners, may have heard their fathers speak of " that polished, sin-worn fragment of the Court, " who was popularly known as "Old Q," for he did not die until Christmas 18 10. Lord Hertford, writing to Horace Walpole, says that Lord March had " a genteel passion " for a lady here (Paris), but it was not of a compromising nature for the lady was married; and in a letter written to George Selwyn in December 1766, Lord March states that he has received a letter from La Jondina' who says that she has never enjoyed a winter in Paris so much, for that M. du Barry has taken her to several balls. Jeanne Vaubarnier must often have met Lord March at the Hotel de Perou, and the acquaintance between them lasted many years. In 1791 — when she was in England about the robbery of her jewels— Horace Walpole saw Madame du Barry at Queensberry House, and it is affirmed disguised himself as c workman, entered Paris early in the morning, and took lodgings in a poor part of the town. In an hoar or two he received an invitation to breakfast with M. de Sartines. It seems impossible to believe that Jeanne Vaubarnier, if she had been notoriously vicious, could long have escaped the notice of such a vrell-organized police. ' The surname of the Comtesse La Rena. 54 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry that the "Old even green Duke" {sic) as M. Charles Vatel terms " Old Q " took her to Windsor and introduced her to the King. M. Vatel thinks that if Jeanne Vau- bamier had been eis coarse and vulgar as her detractors assert, she would never have enjoyed the friendship of the Comtesse La Rena, nor would she have been admitted to the intimacy of Lord March, " one of the most refined gentlemen of his age! — a king of fashion, with a passion for the elegancies of life, and contempt for everything that was not in the very best taste." Whatever might have been the case with the Comtesse, Lord March would probably have pardoned anything in a pretty woman, — whilst, in the matter of language, Raikes says that " he swoie like ten thousand troopers," and he had not the reputation of being too particular in other respects. Another friend of Mademoiselle Vaubamier's was the De* moiselle Legrand, a pretty young woman who affected literary society, and whose house was frequented by Crebillon fih, CoUe, Favier, Guibert,^ and other wits. Dumouriez describes her as the friend and companion of the future Madame du Barry, and quotes a remark she made that " if she did not have the fortune of Du Barry it was because she was too witty for Versailles." In the company of these ladies Mademoiselle Vaubarnier seems to have spent most I of her afternoons. In the evenings she presided at the Comte du Barry's table and made herself agreeable to his guests. According to Senac de Meilhan it was con- sidered good form by the young men about town " to have supped, at least, with her." The amusement must have been more pleasant than profitable^ and Jean du Barry ^ La Vie du General Dumouriez, Vol. I, page 170. Love Affairs 55 must have congratulated himself upon the success of his lure This life continued till the spring of 1768, when a great event which shaped the destiny of Jeanne Vaubamier happened. How the King first heard of her charms is not very clear. The anecdotists assert that Jean du Barry went to Le Bel, the King's valet, who spent his life in pandering to his master's vices, and proposed that he should introduce Jeanne to the King. Le Bel saw her, and was fascinated by her beauty. He arranged a little supper party at which she was to be present with the Due de Richelieu and one or two other equally disreputable courtiers, whilst the King was to be in the next room, a small hole having been made in the wall in order that he might see and hear all that went on. Richelieu and the others plied her with champagne until she became utterly reckless, and the King was so enrap- tured by her charms — which under the influence of the champagne she displayed lavishly — and astonished at her language — which was utterly new to him — that he sent for the enchantress the next day (some say the same night) and remained under her thrall until the day of his death. M. Emile Gaboriau, who, before he knew where his real strength lay, dabbled in history, makes out that the King was present at the supper under the name of the Baron de Gonesse, but the novelist is too obviously evident in his work, and his book is more amusing than trustworthy. * In another account the supper still figures, and the King is an unseen spectator, but Sainte Foix takes the place of Richelieu. Such an arrangement, if it ever did take place, would have been consonant with the character and the aspira- ' Emile Gaboriau, ■ Z« Cotillons ceUhres. 56 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry tions of Jean du Barry. He was well acquainted with the King's character, and there is reason to believe had some years previously tried to provide Louis with a mistress— not from any disinterested motives. " I went one day, " says Madame de Hausset, in her interesting Memoirs, " to the comedy at Compiegne, and Madame (Pompadour) having put some questions to me about the piece, asked me if there were many people present, and if I saw there a very pretty girl. I replied that there was in a box near me a young person who was surrounded by all the young court- iers. She smiled and said, 'That was MademoiselleDorothee; she was at the King's supper to-night, and will be at the hunt to-morrow. You are astonished to see that I am so well informed, but I know still more. She was brought here by a Gascon whose name is Du Barre or Du Barri, and who is the greatest rascal there is in France. He founds his hopes upon the charms of Mademoiselle Dorothee, which he thinks the King will not be able to resist. She is really very pretty. I was able to examine her whilst she was in my garden where they brought her under pretext of taking a stroll. She is the daughter of a water-carrier of Strasburg, and her charming adorer asks, to begin with, to be made ambassador at Cologne.'" Mademoiselle Dorothea's aspirations were nipped in the bud — most likely by Madame de Pompadour — and Jean du Barry did not become ambassador. Unfortunately Madame de Hausset never dated her historieiles and we do not know in what year it was that Mademoiselle Dorothee's charms were exhibited to the King. But in 1768 Madame de Pompadour had been dead four years and Louis XV was not under the sway of the imperious mistress who, if she was willing to encourage him in transient amours, was careful to prevent Love Affairs 57 any younger and freshet rival from ousting her from her place. In justice to Jean du Barry, who has not so much to his credit that he can afford to lose any favourable testi- mony, it should be said that several writers whose evidence is unimpeachable, regard the story of the supper as a fable. Madame Sara Goudard — who is perhaps not an over trust- worthy witness— declares that the King glanced at Made- moiselle Vaubarnier in a crowd, and was deeply impressed, but he lost sight of her and ordered Le Bel to find, her again. The statement is confirmed by Montigny, who says, " Her radiant beauty struck Louis XV, and the monarch instructed Le Bel, his valet de chambre, to find out who she was. The event was not prepared. " In a letter which Jean du Barry wrote to M. de Malesherbes, the Minister of the Household of Louis XVI, he asks permission to visit Paris for the purpose of seeing " his doctor, his oculist, and his creditors ! " In order to secure this favour he enters into an explanation as to his share in the introduction of Mademoiselle Vaubarnier to the late King. His words are, " I ceded to Madame Ran9on and Mademoiselle Vaubarnier, her daughter, the interest I had in the provisioning of Corsica, which they enjoyed for several months. Fresh arrange- ments on the part of M. de Choiseul deprived them of this source of income, and they solicited the continuance of the contract. It was in the course of the several jour- neys they made to Versailles that Mademoiselle Vaubarnier attracted the attention of the King. Le Bel received his orders, and he — with whom neither she nor I was person- ally acquainted — arranged the matter with her alone.'' This letter was not made public till many years after, and therefore partly confirms the statements just quoted. 58 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry The Due de Choiseul also mentions, in his Memoirs, that Mademoiselle Vaubarnier called on him on some business (the Minister's offices were then at Versailles) but that as she was not very pretty, and appeared to be a provincial, he referred her to some subordinate. Anyone who obtained admission to the Chiteau of Versailles would have half a dozen opportunities a day of seeing the King, who, when he was stared at, stared back again, and if he saw a fair, fresh young face in the crowd, would order Le Bel to bring its owner to his room — a commission which that despicable old sleuth-hound of vice generally performed faithfully. A few words may here be given to refute an absurd statement made by the Due de Choiseul in his Memoirs, about Le Bel's death. A very few days after the Com- tesse du Barry became the recognised mistress of the King, Le Bel died, and the Due de Choiseul says there is some ground for believing that he was poisoned by Madame du Barry because he had endeavoured to dissuade the King from taking a mistress of such low birth. He may be pardoned for feeUng sore, for, no doubt he had been liberally rewarded for each fresh victim he had brought to the royal Moloch, and now his occupation — beastly and degrading, but extremely profitable — was gone. Naturally he would do his best to persuade the King to send Madame du Barry back to her simulacrum of a husband, or to her brother-in-law and " protector. " But it is impossible to believe that Madame du Barry poisoned him for this. If she had compassed the death of all who spoke against her she would have needed all the arsenic in Europe, and the Due de Choiseul would have been one of the first to meet with a violent death. As Le Bel had exceeded the allotted Love Affairs 59 span of life, and had almost completed his seventy-second year at the time of his death, Madame du Barry may be exonerated from this odious and absurd charge. In whatever manner the interview between the King and Mademoiselle Vaubarnier was arranged, when it did take place it fully justified the hopes of Jean du Barry v Louis XV was at once fascinated and his infatuation lasted till the end of his life. Whether he was subjugated by her personal charms or by her manners it would be impossible to say. One chronicler states that very shortly after Mademoiselle Vau- barnier paid her first visit to Versailles, the old Due de Richelieu asked the king "what he could see in this woman that he should fix upon her rather than any other? " "She is the only woman in France," replied the King, " who has found the secret of making me forget that I am a sexagenarian.^" The writer of the Precis appears to feel an acute sur- prise that the old Marechal de Richelieu was not sent to immediate execution for having asked such a question, and she (for we believe the book weis compiled by a woman) puts a very animal and sensual construction on the king's reply. The story seems rather apocyphal. If the Marechal de Richelieu had introduced Jeanne Becu to the king, as several of the anecdotists assert, why was he astonished ? and in any case there is a chronological diffi- culty to be surmounted. If he put this blunt, straight- forward question to the King in 1768, directly after the King first saw his mistress, Louis XV was then only fifty-eight years of age, and he was not the sort of man to call himself a sexagenarian before he had a right to the name. ' Precis historique^ p. 40. 6o The Life and Times of Madame du Barry On the other hand, if the question were put in 1770, Madame du Barry had then been the Royal mistress for nearly two years, and the query came rather late in the day. Most probably the two attributes of Madame du Barry which made the greatest impression on the king were her light-hearted nonchalance, and her utter want of respect for his rank. He was — as Madame de Maintenon said of Louis XIV, and Talleyrand said of Napoleon — an "unamusable" man. From his boyhood he had been sullen, silent, and moody; incapable of devising pleasures for himself, and finding no amusement in those which were devised for him. When he hunted it was time, not the stag, that he wanted to kill. Added to this he was regarded and treated as a demi-god. He moved amidst his courtiers, isolated, feared, and, during his latter years, despised. The Queen he rarely saw, nor was her company cal- culated to dispel ennui when he did visit her ; his daugh- ters scuttled out of his presence, like frightened hares, at the first convenient opportunity. He may be said to have spent his life in a search for sympathy, and the nearest approach to it that he ever found was a similarity of taste in vice. To the blasd, old King, saturated with adulation, and worn out by vice, a nature like that of Jeanne Becu seemed unaccountable. She was merry and happy, and though "she had been sold and resold since her infancy, she either ignored all that, or had forgotten it. She was born to please the world, and to love all mankind, and was the incarnation of joy.'" She cared no more for ' Michelet, History ,of France, Vol. XIX, p. 163. Love Affairs 6i Court-etiquette than she did for the good nuns who taught her, and she laughed as merrily, and even more unconstrain- edly, in the salons of Versailles as she had in the dormi- tory at the Convent of Sainte Aure, and cared no more for the King's frown than she did for a scolding from the Abbess. This unaffected fearlessness further strengthened the power she had over him. He wanted to feel that he could sometimes throw aside his state robes and be plain Louis de Bourbon, but kings can seldom come down from their pedestal, and when they do they are as dull, and perhaps as dangerous, as the statue of the Commandant. With Madame du Barry Louis XV could be natural, because she was natural, and he was imder no apprehension that he might lose his dignity, for in her eyes he had none to lose. Even after she acquired " Society manners " she preserved, in her private intercourse with the King, that easy famili- arity which so pleased him. Besides all these attractions her beauty was of a type to which he had not been accustomed. ""All the porftaits and documents agree in giving Du Barry the rarest fas- cinations of woman, the enchantments of an unrivalled grace. Her hair was fine, long, and silky, and of that blond cendre which, without the aid of powder, gives a sweetness and delicious harmony to the face, which was both bright and pensive. As a charming contrast, she had brown eyebrows, and long curved brown eyelashes, which set off the tender gleam of her blue eyes — eyes which only the pencil of a Greuze could depict. Both types of beauty were united in her face in a delightful manner, for the tender passion of the blonde was mingled with the ardent smile of the brunette. " Then there was a little Greek nose, finely chiselled. b2 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry and the bent bow of a tiny mouth. The complexion of her pure, oval face was like that of an infant. Her neck seemed the round neck of an antique statue lengthened by the Parmesan^ in order to balance more daintily on her rounded shoulders. Arm, hand, foot, and body were of adorable perfection, and besides all these charms she had victorious youth, the life and, as it were, the divinity of Hebe, and around her that air of voluptuous- ness, that atmosphere of intoxication, that perfume and light of the amorous goddess which caused Voltaire to Say of one of her portraits, 'the original was intended for the gods.' Like the divinities of fable all metamor- phoses suited her beauty, and if to-morrow she quitted the Court dress of Versailles for a hunting costume, if she assumed a man's habit with large revers trimmed with Honiton lace, which showed her bare neck, if she wore her hair flat, and two or three patches thrown here and there showed off her roguish dimples, she was the im- personation of Venus at the chase."" This description, though a good specimen of fine writing, is too overloaded with epithets to give a really good account of the beauty of Madame du Barry. Many of the expressions used are meaningless or absurd if examined critically, though they sound pretty and poetical to the general reader who takes them in his stride. As a com- panion, or contrast, to this we may take the pen picture of Madame du Barry, by one of the greatest masters of French prose, Mirabeau, who has drawn her in the Galerie des dames nationales, under the name of Elmira. ■ Antonio AUegri, usually called Correggio. ' E. ET J. DE GONCOURT : Les Maitresses du Roi. Love Affairs t>i " Elmira was endowed by nature with an assortment of all beauties, which are rarely found united in the same individual, from the superb locks, of the most beautiful shade, with which she was plentifully provided, to feet that were modelled by the hands of the Graces. An easy, graceful bearing, a well-shaped figure, and arms of perfect roundness, terminated by delicately shaped hands." A less ornate, but fairly graphic description of Madame du Barry is also to be found in the Memoirs of the Prince de Ligne. " She is tall, well-made, blonde a ravir, an easy air, fine eyes and eyebrows to match; an oval face with little moles upon the cheek which only render her more beautifiil, an aquiline nose, a laughing mouth, clear skin, and a bosom that disregarded fashion, and challenged other bosoms to a comparison they would have been well-advised to decline.*" One or two voices alone do not join in this general chorus of adulation. The Due de Choiseul thought her only a troublesome countrywoman, but it is possible that he penned that description after his sister had caused him to declare war to the knife against the Royal mis- tress. Horace Walpole, too, in one of his letters says that he should never have thought her pretty, but by his own account he had a very imperfect view of her, for he saw her in the Chapel Royal at Versailles, and he was in the gallery whilst she was in the nave, and removed from him by almost the entire length of the chapel. Some doubt exists as to the exact date at which Louis XV made the acquaintance of his mistress. The aijecdotists, who generally copy one another, place the ^ Quoted. in Le Due de Lauzun, by G. MAtJGRAS - 212. 64 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry first meeting about the middle of July 1768. It certainly must have been prior to the August of that year, for Le Bel died then, and according to the account they agree in giving, he played no inconsiderable part in the affair. If it occurred on July 15— the date usually given— Louis XV had been a widower exactly three weeks, as the Queen Marie Lecszinska, died on June 25. Virtually, however she had been dead to him for some years, and there is nothing extraordinary in a man so intensely selfish, and inordinately depraved as he was, taking a mistress a few days after the wife to whom he had been married forty-three years, had been laid in her grave. A fairly conclusive proof that the first meeting between the King and his future mistress occurred in July is furnished by the date of Mademoiselle Vaubarnier's marriage, which was September I. According to the story as related by Pidansat de Mairobert and others, Le Bel when he found that matters did not turn out as he had anticipated, and that the King's passion, far from being a transient one, was likely to prove permanent, repented his share in the transaction, fell at the King's feet, and declared that the new mistress was not a woman of quality, and was not even married! "So much the worse," cried the King. " Let a husband be found for her at once, so that I may not have the chance of making a fool of myself." If this story rested on any good authority it would prove that the King was already so enamoured of the new favourite, that he was afraid he might be tempted to make her his wife instead of his mistress, but it seems more likely that the story was invented to fit the facts. The reply, if ever made, must have convinced Le Bel that a new star Love Affairs 65 had risen, and that in all probability his services would never be needed again, and this blow may have hastened his death, which occurred in the course of the next month. Mademoiselle Vaubarnier returned to Paris to prepare for her marriage, and to listen to the wise counsels of her astute ex-protector and future brother-in-law, who on his part was preparing for the great struggle, for he knew full well that the news that the King had chosen a fresh mistress would be the signal for all the jealousy, hatred, and malice of the courtiers to break forth, and that it would need all his skill cind cunning to bring \a& protegee safe into the harbour of the King's favour. The stakes were worth playing for, and he won the game. asooft tbe Second ELEVATION Though This King were great, his greatness was no guard To bar heaven's shaft, but sin had his reward. Shakespeare. L CHAPTER I HIS MOST CHRISTIAN MAJESTY Few monarchs have ever succeeded better than Louis XV in losing the love of their people, for he frittered away, in the comparatively short period of some twenty years, all the prestige which belonged to the great-grandson of the great Monarch. Yet few princes ever succeeded to a throne under better auspices. The nation was heartily sick of the long Regency and all its vices, weakness, and political chicanery, and the accession of the golden-haired lad who was, says d'Argenson, "as beautiful as Eros," was hailed with a fervpur which was almost astonishing even in such an impressionable and excitable people as the French. The mother of the late Regent, the Due d'Orleans, said of her son, that, at his birth, the fairies had bestowed upon him every good gift, but that one spiteful fairy had decreed that he should never be able to make use of them. Of Louis XV the very opposite may be said. He had every opportunity of proving himself a great King, but wisdom, prudence, courage, virtue, and even happiness were denied him. ^e was even deprived of external assistance. Many weak or vicious princes have been able to call to their aid statesmen and soldiers whose good 69 70 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry qualities redeemed their master's faults either in the cabinet or in the field. To Louis XV this was denied; his Ministers were shallow, selfish, and unprincipled, and his Generals had little to show against the loss of Canada and almost all the French colonies both in the East- and West-Indies, and the crushing defeats of Minden and Rosbach, but a trifling and unexpected success at Minorca, and a dearly bought victory over " Butcher " Cumberland, who, as Carlyle says, "was beaten by everyone who ever tried." Even the vices by which Louis XV is best known were not of his own seeking. His name is almost synonymous with selfishness and lust, but how could he fail to be selfish when brought up under the care of such a past master in vice as Cardinal Fleury, and had a mis- tress "prescribed" for him as a kind of anodyne to pre- vent his energy developing in the unfavourable form of politics? Under the care of the shifty egoist Fleury, the young King grew into a sullen silent youth. The com- panions selected for the Royal school-boy — Epernon, La Tremouille, and de Gesvres, — were efieminate, sickly-minded youths who gave the young King a taste for cooking and embroidery, and perhaps taught him worse things still. The Due de Bourbon gave him a taste for field sports, but though Louis hunted all his life, he was never a sportsman, though he is said to have been present at the death of three thousand stags in seventeen years — an average of about one every other day including Sundays. When he was fifteen it was judged time that he should get married, and the selection of a wife for him was en- trusted to Madame de Prie, the mistress of the Due de Bourbon. The only two damsels of suitable age and position His Most Christian Majesty 71 ■were Mademoiselle de Vermandois and Maria Lecszinska. The first named was the daughter of the late Regent. Ma- dame de Prie called upon her in disguise, and Mademoiselle Vermandois, not knowing her interlocutor, spoke so dispara- gingly of the mistress of the Due de Bourbon, that Ma- dame de Prie left hurriedly, declaring, " She should never be Queen of France." Maria Lecszinska was the daughter of a "monarch retired from business," Stanislas, the last King of Poland, who after he was driven from the throne, had settled down at Weissembourg in Alsace. She was twenty-two years of age — seven years older than her affianced hus- band — and so poor that her hand had been already refused, on that account, by a colonel in the French army. When the envoy arrived with an offer of marriage from the King of France she and her father fell on their knees and thanked heaven — not for a good man's love, as the issue proved but too well. Every article of her trousseau had to be bought for her, even down to her gloves — with many grumblings on the part of old Fleury. The marriage took place at Fontainebleau, on Sep- tember 4, 1725. She w£is about as ill-fitted as she could have been to become the wife of Louis XV, and only the very limited selection at the disposal of Madame de Prie excused her choice. Maria Lecszinska would have made an excellent haus-fraii for a German baron, but was never meant to play the Queen at Versailles. She was pious, and never travelled without a skull which she called her gentil mignon, and she was intensely "proper"; and she was called upon to preside at a Court where immorality was exalted almost to a religion, and religion 72 The Life and Times of Madame dtt Barry was regarded as immorality. Ennui had seized upon Louis XV even long before he was married, and it was not likely to be dissipated by companionship with a young woman whose highest idea of enjoyment was dull conversation with decorous dowagers, and interminable games of cavagnole — a pastime very much resembling the game of lotto which good little girls sometimes play at now. Although she was dull and homely, Louis XV seems to have been sincerely attached to his wife. She bore him a number of children, and was, at first, such a good wife that he forgot she was a wet blanket, and is said to have thought her even pretty. This, though, is rather a moot point. Whenever the beauties of a Court lady were ex- tolled in his hearing, Louis was accustomed to ask, "Is she as pretty as the Queen?" but historians differ as to how the phrase was intended. Michelet says the words were used ironically, but the great majority of writers think the question was asked in good faith. The most probable hypothesis is that the King did not care which meaning was attached to his words, but that he enjoyed seeing the confusion of the unlucky courtier to whom the question was put, and who would be embarrassed to find a suitable answer. After they had been married ten years, the Queen— either tired of continual child-bearing, or acting on the advice of her confessor that she should war against the Justs of the flesh— began to refuse to see the King when he came to her rooms at night. The result might have been foreseen. Old Fleury saw his opportunity and profited by it. On one of these occasions when Louis returned to his room, annoyed by the Queen's refusal to see him, he found a masked lady awaiting him. He His Most Christian Majesty 73 bowed her out, but a few nights later she was there again. He was shy and nervous, but his valet "threw him into her arms,'' and Louis had taken the first step in that downward course which culminated in the Pare aux Cerfs. The principal persons who were entrusted with the task of foisting a mistress on the King, were Mademoiselle de Cha- rolais (a great grand-daughter of the celebrated Conde, and daughter of the Due de Bourbon) and the Marechal de Richelieu, They selected Madame de Mailly to fill the much coveted place. Madame de Mailly belonged to a good family — the De Nesles — who were very poor. She was married to her cousin, M. de Mailly, and they were said to "keep house on hunger and thirst.'' She was at this time a lean brunette, thirty years of age, her only beauty being her large dark eyes, which could light up with passion. She also affected a " sweet neglect " in her loosely flowing robes, which was as taking to the King as it was to the poet. The reasons which led to her selection were not her personal charms, but her thoughtless and unselfish character. She never asked for money — indeed Fleury kept the King very short — although she was so poor. Once when Louis made a playful assertion that she had taken bribes from suitors to press their claims^ she insisted on every person who had heard the accusation making a declaration that they did not believe it. Richelieu also led the King into the dissipation of supper parties, at which they all drank themselves under the table. At these suppers the King and the Prince de Dombes made omelettes which the guests were expected to eat with approval. The liaison with Madame de Mailly had lasted six years when her younger sister — Felicite de 74 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry Nesle— came to Court, and was also admitted to the King's favour. Louis felt some compunction about the two sisters, and in a iit of religious remorse, refused to take the Communion at Easter. The King's confessor, the Jesuit Lemeri, proposed that Louis should communicate en blanc, that is to say, eat an awconsecrated wafer, an abominable suggestion for which he was very properly exiled. A husband was found for Felicite de Nesle in the person of the Count de Vintimille, a nephew of the Archbishop of Paris. He was, as might be expected, a cynical profligate, utterly devoid of any sense of honour. He is reported to have said loudly as he, in his capacity of gentleman-in-waiting, handed the Kiug his chemise one night, "After all he only has two ugly women." Madame de Vintimille died of a fever, and the third sister, Madame de Laraguais took her place. Finally the King was attracted by the charms of the fourth sister, Madame de la Tournelle. She differed from the others in being really beautiful, whereas they were barely to be considered good-looking, and she also differed from them in character, being of a haughty and imperious disposition. She refused to become the Royal mistress unless she had the rank of a Duchess, and insisted on the dismissal from Court of her eldest sister Madame de Mailly. The first of these re- quests was easy enough and Madame de la Tournelle at once became the Duchesse de Chateauroux: the latter demand was not difficult for one of the selfish nature of the King. The Duchesse de Chateauroux was young and beautiful ; — Madame de Mailly had never been pretty and was perilously near forty, and he did not feel the slightest regret at getting rid of her. Madame de Laraguaiis, who appears only to have been a sort of supplementary mistress, was His Alost Christian Majesty 75 permitted by her imperious younger sister to remain. For two years (1742 to 1744) the Duchesse de Chateau- roux continued to rule her royal lover. To weaken her influence, Maupertuis, who was then Minister, persuaded the King, in the latter year, to join his army, but stipu- lated that "all women should be left behind." The King consented, and started off to "prosecute conquests in Flanders," but in a very little time he tired of camp life, the ineradicable ennui took possession of him again, and very shortly "he had his unblushing Ch^teauroux, with her band-boxes and rouge-pots at his side; so that, at every new station a wooden gallery must be run up between their lodgings. ^ " At Metz the King was taken dangerously ill with a fever, and as he " had religious faith — believed at least in a Devil," and was given over by his doctors, the clergy were sent for and refused to give him absolution so long as his mistresses were with him. The Bishop of Metz succeeded in wringing from Louis permission to dismiss Chiteauroux and Laraguais, and going into the ante- chamber, where they were waiting, said, " The King orders you, mesdames, to leave his house at once," and the royal concubines, "driven forth by sour shavelings," had to fly with "wet cheeks and flaming hearts." Sympathy for the King in his dangerous illness was expressed on all sides. "For many days," says Voltaire, "Paris took no heed of the appointed times for sleep, for waking, or for taking food. All prayed for him." He was cured by an enormous dose of emetic, administered by a quack doctor, and when he recovered asked won- deringly, " What have I done to be so loved ? " ' Carlyle: French Revolution, Book I. Chap. z. 76 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry As soon as he was well, he returned to Paris and — Chateauroux. One night in November, 1744, she was astonished to see him enter her house in the Rue du Bac, fall at her feet, and implore her to return to him. Indeed she was so astonished that for some minutes she was unable to speak, but when she did regain the use of her tongue she rated him soundly, and refused to see him again until all the persons concerned in driving her away were exiled or disgraced. Maupertuis, being ex- tremely useful to the King, she allowed to remain, on con- dition that he should bring her an abject written apology. Louis agreed to all the conditions, and the old Minister, who was determined to keep his place, called upon her with the apology she demanded. She snatched the paper from him, and cried, " Give it me — and then get out." The mental excitement caused by her unexpected dis- grace, and still more unexpected triumph, brought on an attack — probably of heart disease — and she died on Decem- ber I, after an illness of eleven days, in the arms of Madame de Mailly, the sister upon whose dismissal from Court she had once insisted. She was buried at the Church of St. Sulpice, and a body of soldiers under arms was pre- sent to prevent the populace from carrying away her body and burning it. Madame de Mailly spent the rest of her life in penance. She visited prisons, attended the sick, washed the feet of the poor, and denied herself everything but the bare necessaries of life in order that she might give her money to the poor. On one occasion when she entered the Church of St. Paul and St. Louis, some of the people who knew her cleared a passage for her, which caused a bystander to cry, "What a lot of trouble for a loose His Most Christian Majesty 77 woman." She meekly replied, "Sir, as you seem to know me, pray for me." When she died, in 1751, she was found to be wearing a hair shirt next her skin. Of the four sisters the only one for whom Louis really cared— if indeed he ever cared for anyone but himself — was Madame de Vintimille. After her death he is said to have remarked, "I shall never forget her till I am ninety — for I know I shall live to be that age." Yet in spite of this declaration it is doubtful if she remained as long in his memory as the haughty ChSteauroux. It was unquestionably of the latter he was thinking when, more than twenty years afterwards, during the period between the death of Madame de Pompadour (1764) and the accession of Madame du Barry (1768) he replied to the Marechal de Richelieu, who was urging him to take another favourite, " I will never have another mistress who is of a good family — they cost too much to get rid of." A few months after the death of the Duchesse de Chclteau- roux, Louis fell under the sway of Mademoiselle Poisson. This young woman had been carefully educated with a special view to the dishonourable post of King's mistress. She was supposed to be the daughter of a bankrupt speculator named Poisson, but a rich fermier general displayed an interest in her welfare from her very earliest years, expended large sums on her education, and finally married her to his nephew M. Lenormont d'EtioUes, from which it has been inferred that she was really his natural daughter. At any rate he was either a speculative phil- anthropist, or a philanthropic speculator, and little Made- moiselle Poisson was taught every accomplishment that was likely to aid her to catch, or keep, the King's favour. She 78 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry played, sang, drew, and danced "more gracefully than a respectable woman should," and was a fairly good amateur actress — though it was not on the boards that she acted most cleverly. She had an inherent aptitude for business, and to improve her mind, was allowed frequent oppor- tunities of intercourse with all the best wits of the day. Despite all the trouble that had been taken, there seemed a possibility that she would fail in her ambition, for though she was sedulously thrown in the King's way, he took no notice of her. At length she did attract his attention, and a liaison which he doubtless intended to be a temporary one, began. If such were his intention it was by no means hers, and one night she rushed into his apartments at Versailles, declared that she was afraid to return home — on account of the wrath of her injured husband — and implored shelter. Louis ordered a suite of rooms above his own, and communicating with them, to be prepared for her reception, and never succeeded in shaking her off again, and Madame de Pompadour — the name of an extinct family which the King bestowed upon her — hardly ever quitted Versailles until worn out in body and mind by the task of governing France single-handed, she died there (though that privilege was supposed to be reserved for Royalty) nineteen years later. Gradually Madame de Pompadour got all the strings of Government into her hands, and the King was one of the least important puppets she had to manage, though by far the most troublesome of them all. He allowed her to transact all the business of the realm, for he had a natural disinclination to perform any duty, for, as the Abbe Galiani said of him, " He had the worst trade in the world— that of a King— and he did it very much His Most Christian Majesty 79 against the grain." All that Louis asked from his mistress, in return for delegating his powers to her, was to be amused, but it must be owned that that was no light price to exact. If he came to see a ballet, on the preparation of which she had expended thousands of pounds and infinite trouble, he yawned and said, "I should have preferred a comedy," and she had the mortification of knowing that the formula would have been the same what- ever was the nature of the entertainment provided. She had never a very firm hold on his affections, and as time weakened such sway as she had, she pandered to his vices, and became a procuress of the worst type. To her account must be set down all the nameless horrors of the Pare aux Cerfs. Not being naturally of an amorous disposition, she dosed herself with aphrodisiacs, but their principal effect was to give her pimples on the nose, nor did the " chocolate with amber, and triple vanilla " she took bring back the lost affection of her Royal protector. " I love that man with all my soul," she said, "and he only looks upon me as a macreuse" — a species of wild duck thought by the French to be particularly cold-blooded. The difficulties of amusing the King and governing the Nation were too much for Madame de Pompadour. She never had a strong constitution, and in childhood had been troubled with spitting of blood. Before she had been two years at Versailles she was worn away to a skeleton, says one of her biographers, and weighed only a hundred and eleven pounds. ' Her ambitious soul in ' The old French livre was rather less than the half kilo but rather more than the English pound. A hundred and eleven livres would be equal to about a hundred and nineteen and a half English pounds — which though a light weight for a woman is not absurdly light 8o The Lt/e and Times of Madame du Barry "working out its way Fretted the pygmy-body to decay, And o'er inform'd the tenement of clay." Nevertheless she continued this life for nineteen years. She died April 15, 1764, of physical and mental exhaus- tion. A few minutes before her death the cure of Ver- sailles came to see her to administer spiritual consolation. When he was departing Madame de Pompadour said, "Wait one moment, Monsieur le Cure, and we will both leave together." The day of her funeral was wet and stormy. When the procession left Versailles amidst a pelting shower, Louis was looking out of the window, and drumming on the window-pane in sheer ennui. " Madame la Marquise has a bad day for her last journey," he remarked, and then he pulled out his watch and calculated at what time the procession would reach Paris. During the four years that followed the death of Madame de Pompadour, Louis XV had no maitresse en tifre, but his life was as irregular as it had ever been. His boon companions were the old Marechal de Richelieu and the Due d'Ayen, both cynical profligates who had studied vice as a fine art. Madame de Pompadour always hated Richelieu. She sent him to capture Minorca, and took care that he should have no besieging train, except scaling ladders that were several feet too short, but he disap- pointed her by returning victorious. He was therefore not likely to urge the King to take another mistress who might be as clever and ambitious as Pompadour, though he was prepared to support the claims of one who would play into his hands, and aid him in opposing the Due de Choiseul, the Minister. Choiseul seemed to think that his position was impreg- His Most Christian Majesty 8i nable, and that he was far too useful to the King to be lightly got rid of, for good Ministers were scarce and mis- tresses only too plentiful. He had already put down the pretensions of one lady who was striving for the post of maitresse en litre. This Wcis Madame d'Esparbes. She had very pretty hands, which the King delighted to fondle. Choiseul determined to nip the possible intrigue in the bud, and shortly afterwards, chancing to meet Madame d'Esparbes on the grand staircase, he took her chin in his hand, and looking her in the face said in a loud voice, and a bantering tone, " Well, little one, how is your business getting on ? " She had no repartee ready, and only blushed and looked ridiculous, and to look ridiculous at Versailles was moral annihilation. The inci- dent was of course duly reported to the King, who perhaps thought that he was being angled for, and not in the most adroit manner either. The same evening Madame d'Es- parbes received a lettre de cachet ordering her not to appear at Court again, but to betake herself to Montauban, where her father, the Marquis de Lussan, lived. It is difficult to account for the conduct of Louis in this affair except on the ground that he did not care for Madame d'Esparbes and was glad of an excuse to get rid of her, or else possibly he was unwilling to find himself the object of intrigues and counter-intrigues on the part of his Minister and his mistress. There were no other noteworthy inci- dents in the career of Louis from that time until he met Madame du Barry, and his life after that falls within the scope of this history. 82 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry Louis XV has been, described as an epitome of all the weaknesses of his time. He certainly did possess nearly every vice that was common to the period, and if there were a few of which he was not guilty, he replaced them by others which were peculiar to himself. His chief characteristic was an intense selfishness. This, of course, could not be called a general vice of the times, and was rather opposed in some respects to vices that were then very prevalent, such as the utter absence of conjugal honour. Selfishness could hardly be deemed an attribute of the time when it was considered " bad form " to have undisputed possession of one's own wife; nor is it com- patible with indifference. The Queen was both plain and pious, and Louis was therefore never called upon to show what his conduct in that respect might be, but he certainly guarded his mistresses jealously, and showed thereby that he was free from one of the worst taints of the period. To such a pitch had this want of honour in relation to the. conjugal affections reached, that it is related that country gentlemen who came to Court, were ridiculed if they showed any affection for their wives or any jealousy concerning them. "To forbid your wife having lovers," said a courtier to a country gentleman, " is a mere eccen- tricity, and you would be laughed at all over Versailles," and he hummed two lines of a song, If you don't know it, — it's nothing at £ill, If you do know it, — it's little more. " If your wife has a score of lovers, it means — for you— a score of charming women with whom you take your revenge." One of these philosophic husbands said to his His Most Christian Majesty 83 wife, when he found a young man in her bedroom under very suspicious circumstances, " Madam, how very imprudent on your part; — suppose you had been seen by anyone else! " Even more cynical indifference was displayed by an- other who told his young and flighty wife, that "he allowed everything — except princes and lackeys.'' The thin veneer of etiquette which covered this huge bulk of im- morality seems to the modem historian only to make it worse by showing that an outward decency could be pre- served in small matters though it was neglected in the most essential ones. From the irreligious feeling which was so common in his time, Louis XV was to a great extent free. He had a glimmering of conscience and — whenever he was dangerously ill — sent away his mistress for the time being, and deter- mined to lead a better life — till his strength returned. But he was devoid of atheism and "philosophedom" at a time when both were rampant, and when even young girls boasted of being devoid of all religious superstitions. It is related that when a certain young lady lay dying, a priest was sent for to administrate extreme unction, but he retired discomfited when she said to him almost with her last breath, " If I were well enough I might amuse myself with that trash, but just now I haven't the spirits. '^" With the men, this irreligion often proceeded from mere indolence or carelessness: they were so occupied with their debaucheries that they could not spare the time for other things. Of this sort was the Chevalier de Lorenzi. He called on one occasion on a lady, who at the end of the interview asked him to accompany her to Mass. ' M. Gaston Maugras, Le Due de Lauzun. 84 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry " What, do they still say it?" he asked, in unfeigned sur- prise. " I thought it had gone out of fashion." He ex- plained that, as he hardly ever rose till late in the after- noon, he never saw the churches open, and as it was fifteen years since he had heard Mass, he had imagined that no mundane institution was likely to last that time, and that the services had been discontinued. Others assumed an aflfectation of atheism, like the Mar- quis of Crequi-Canaples, to whose widow an old cure wrote, "I am very uneasy as to the salvation of his soul, but as the judgments of God are inscrutable, and the deceased had the honour to belong to your house," etc., etc. If Morality and Religion languished. Justice was in little better case. Anyone who made any pretensions to Court interest could obtain a sheaf of lettres de cachet with no more difficulty than a prosperous City gentleman now experiences in getting a cheque book from his banker. Old Marquis Mirabeau, "crabbed old friend of Man,'' employed no fewer than fifty-four of these useful orders of incarceration for members of his own family, and at one time had his wife and all his children (with one ex- ception) under lock and key, as he told someone who questioned him on the subject. "And," he added, seeing a look of horror on his interlocutor's face, "if you had the honour of belonging to my family you would be sent to join them." The mistress of the Due de la Vrilliere openly sold lettres de cachet at a fixed price, and did an extensive business. As a man could be sent to prison without any assigned, or assignable, reason, it logically followed there was no reason for taking him out again, and often he remained there till he died. One of the most flagrant instances of this arbitrary power of impri- His Most Christian Majesty 85 sonment was that of the unfortunate B r. He was a merchant of Lyons, and whilst on the road to Paris on business, overheard, at a little country inn, that.Damiens was to attempt to kill the king. On his arrival in Paris he wrote to the Lieutenant of Police informing him of this, and suggesting that the assassin should be found and arrested. The Lieutenant took no notice of the com- munication, and a few days later Damiens "scratched the King slightly under the fifth rib." B , having transacted his business, was at that time on his way back to Lyons, but the Lieutenant of Police had him pursued, brought back to Paris, and put in the Bastille, where he remained for eighteen years, till he was released by M. de Malesherbes in the early part of the reign of Louis XVI. The only reason for his detention was the fear that he might mention the letter he had writteii, and the Lieutenant of Police, having proved remiss in his duty, might have been cashiered or otherwise punished.* As for the common people, who were not worth put- ting in prison, the gallows was good enough for them, and to many of them it came as a happy release from a life of toil and starvation. Of all the sins of Louis XV, the greatest is that he speculated heavily in com and made a profit out of the starvation of his people. Even he, case-hardened in heartlessness as he was, must have winced at that heavy blow from a blunt axe contained in the petition presented to him by the Parliament of Rouen. The Parliament was anxious to bring an action at law against a monopolist who had made a successful " comer " in wheat and reaped a large profit from the poor of Rouen. ' See Note A at end of Volume. 86 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry The law officers of Paris, shrewdly guessing that part of the profits went into the King's private purse, refused to allow any action to be taken, whereupon the Rouen Par- liament petitioned the King for leave to prosecute the offender, and naively inserted at the end of the docu- ment—fearing lest their loyalty should be suspected— "God forbid. Sire, that we should intend you." The vices of Louis are easy enough to discern, for he took no pains to conceal them, but his virtues escape the most minute research, and the student is compelled to own that the character of Louis XV is completely summed up in Hamlet's description of his uncle. "Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain." Deceit was an integral part of his nature; he practised it in his home life, and even took the trouble to send special emissaries to foreign Courts to establish secret re- lations with the different rulers. He gave orders to his Ministers and Ambassadors to pursue one line of policy, and secretly wrote to the Kings, or Empresses, to arrange a diametrically opposite line of conduct, and he seems to have done this for no earthly reason save to trouble and perplex the few servants who were faithful to the interests of France. The Comte de Broglie was sent to Vienna and Dresden with orders to oppose the designs of Russia, and at the same time the Chevalier Douglas was sent to St. Petersburg with orders to promise the Empress Elizabeth the support of the King of France in all her plans. In private life his dissimulation was the same. A cour- tier would be invited to the King's supper, and chat affably with the King, and half an hour afterwards would be con- veyed to the Bastille, or receive a lettre de cachet ordering him never to appear at the Court again. At the end of His Most Christian Majesty 87 the last interview he had with Madame de Mailly he came to the door of his cabinet and said in a loud voice that all the Courtiers might hear, " Adieu then, my dear Com- tesse, till Tuesday next; — you will be sure not to keep me waiting," though he never intended to see her again, for her sister, the vain and haughty ChSteauroux, had refused to become his mistress until Madame de Mailly was driven from the Court, and the King had iristantly yielded to the demand. Morally and physically he was a craven, and dreaded a "scene" with a discarded mistress as much as he did a musket-bullet. To talk of Madame du Barry "corrupting" such a nature as his is utter non- sense, he was hopelessly and unutterably depraved and vicious when Jeanne Becu's little foolish head was con- cocting plans to tease the good nuns of the Convent of St. Aure. And if she did no harm to the King she did none to the Court either. Miss Julia Kavanagh states that, " In order to win a few favours, and pay their court to the monarch, Richelieu, and other old courtiers, entered, as they said themselves, on the ways of perdition, and relinquished that elegant phraseology for which they had been remarkable so long, in order to adopt the language which Madame du Barry had picked up amongst aban- doned women and chevaliers d'industrie, the companions of her youth.*" Old Richelieu had advanced a few stages along the way to perdition long before he ever heard of Madame du Barry, and if Miss Kavanagh had ever chanced to hear the " Conqueror of Minorca" when he had been jilted by one of his many mistresses, or after he had lost a few ^ WoTnan in France in the \%tk Century^ Vol I, p. 303, 88 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry thousand crowns at lansquenet, she would have conceded that any change in his " elegant phraseology" must be for the better. We shall at some length, in its proper place, examine the truth of this charge against Madame du Barry, but even granting it proved, it would be but fair to acknow- ledge that if she imported into Versailles the language and manners of abandoned women and chevaliers d'industrie, she must also have imported some of the better qualities of those classes, for as there are certain useful plants which will grow on a dunghill, there are certain virtues which may flourish in bordels and tripots, and yet be strange enough at Versailles. The few and ununportant good actions which marked the closing years of the reign of Louis XV, were entirely due to Madame du Barry, though it must be owned that when the King did, at her solici- tation, right an injustice, or temper the severity of a con- demnation, he was not actuated by any feelings of justice or mercy, but found his gratification in the happiness that beamed from the laughing blue eyes, and the smile that played round the enticing dimples of his fair and kind- hearted mistress. CHAPTER II THAT CONVENIENT CREATURE, A HUSBAND CoMTE Jean du Barry, sumamed the Roui, and who might with equal truth have been named the Ruse, was not the sort of man to let an opportunity slip, and at once set to work to strengthen the position of his mistress. The first thing to be done was to procure her a husband, for it was evident that she could not reside at Versailles as Mademoiselle Vaubamier, especially as she had figured in the Police Journal, where she was sarcastically described as the "milch cow of Comte Jean du Barry," under that name- There were several good reasons why she should have a (nominal) husband, and we need not be driven back on the apocryphal story of the King requiring her to be married "lest he should make a fool of himself." It was a sort of unwritten law that the King's mistress should be, at least in name, a married woman, and even if the King had been inclined to waive the point, it was not desirable, from Jean du Barry's point of view, that she should fall into the hands of some needy and un- scrupulous courtier who would give her his name, and, though he could not enjoy her charms, could enjoy the proceeds of them. Besides, the Court was about to move to Compiegne, where, on account of the more limited go The Life and Times of Madame du Barry accommodation, very few of the nobles could follow it. To have given a suite of rooms in this small palace to a pretty young woman of obscure birth, would have caused endless heart-burnings, bickering, and scandal, and Louis XV hated scandal,— not from any feeling of shame, for he was proof against that, but on account of the trouble and worry it gave him. Having determined that a husband was necessary for his ex-mistress, the next thing Jean du Barry had to do was to settle who the husband was to be. He was, un- fortunately for him, married already, though he was separated from his wife, and had a son nearly fifteen years old. In those days the law was not to be lightly trifled with, and had a short way with criminals and misdemeanants, bigamists included, which was simply to hang them off- hand. To entrust Mademoiselle Vaubarnier to a stranger was undesirable, for he must by the very nature of the case, be a scamp, and there was a danger that he would intercept all the Royal favours, and leave nothing for Comte Jean, who would have no remedy at law, and who would stand a very good chance of being hanged, or at least locked up for life, if he attempted to claim his " rights, " since he could not well do so without bringing in the King's name. Luckily for Comte Jean, he had a brother, Guillaume, who was not married. Guillaume resided at Toulouse, and called himself an officer of the Marines — the only body of men likely to believe the statement. He was an esurient rascal, with all the will to be as great a scoundrel as his brother, but lacking the capability, and obliged to be content with the meagre income derived from the family "estates" (half a score hovels), eked out perhaps That Convenient Creature, a Husband 91 by the occasional proceeds of the plucking of a provincial pigeon. Guillaume du Barry was informed by a letter from his brother that he must come to Paris at once on a matter of urgent business, and having a high respect for his brother's genius, he at once set out from Toulouse. As soon as he arrived in Paris, the nature of the proposed arrangement was made known to him. He was to marry Mademoi- selle Vaubarnier, leave her at the church door, and never see her again, and he might rely upon it that his services would be well paid. Jean du Barry, in the letter which he wrote to M. de Malesherbes many years afterwards, states, " Before conducting Mademoiselle Vaubarnier to Compiegne, where the King then was, Le Bel wished her to appear as the wife of my brother, and to this arrangement I lent myself, out of blind and respectful obedience to the King." In all likelihood, Le Bel only stipulated that the young woman must be married, and it was Jean's objection to let such a good opportunity go out of the family which led to the selection of his brother as the bridegroom of his ex-mistress. At all events Guillaume seems to have snatched eagerly at the chance, and a contract of marriage — which is still extant — was duly drawn up and signed by the parties -concerned. The date it bears is July 23, 1768, from which it must be inferred either that the King's first acquaintance with Mademoiselle Vaubarnier must have been anterior to July 15, or that Jean du Barry had— of his own accord, or acting on the advice of his friend the Marechal de Richelieu, 'who was a very good judge of what the King would like— sent for his brother before Mademoiselle Vaubarnier had attracted the attention of Louis. 92 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry The contract bears marks of the inventive talent of Jean du Barry. The parties to the deed are described so grandiloquently that they must have had a difficulty in recognising themselves under their exalted titles. Jeanne Becu appears as Jeanne Gomard de Vaubamier, a minor — she was within a few days of completing her twenty-fifth year — the daughter of Anne Becu and a certain Vaubarnier, who is described as being occupied in the King's business . Comte Guillaume is a high and mighty lord command- ing a detachment of the King's Marines, and the Roue is Comte Barry Ceres, Governor of Levignac, etc., etc. (Le- vignac, says M. Vatel, is a tiny hamlet consisting of nine cottages). The body of the document is on a par with the preamble. The future wife is chargeable with the con- duct of the household and all expenses connected with food, rent, servants' wages, table linen, care of equipments, keep of horses, education of children (!), etc., towards which expenses the husband is to contribute six thousand livres. The contracting parties must have smiled at this and the notary's wig have shaken with suppressed laughter, for that high and mighty lord Gviillaume du Barry had never possessed six thousand livres or anything approaching that sum, and the only item in the contract for which he could have paid was the " education of the children " — a clause the notary had either left in by force of habit, or Jean du Barry had inserted in sheer cynicism. Mademoiselle Vaubarnier's private property is valued at thirty thousand livres — mainly in the form of diamonds, which precious stones she possessed to the value of sixteen thousand livres; her English and Valenciennes lace is valued at six thousand livres, and thirty silk robes, twenty-four corsets and other feminine gear and apparel at five thousand livres. All That Convenient Creature, a Husband 93 this money, the contract adds, she has made by her " earnings and economies ! "—a phrase that must have al- most made her blush. For some reason— perhaps, M. Vatel thinks, on account of the death of Le Bel on August 17 — the marriage was deferred until September i, when it took place at the Church of St. Laurent, at the unprecedentedly early hour of 5.0 a.m. — perhaps with a view to avoid attention, or to enable Comte Guillaume to start the same day for Toulouse. If the contract had been a tissue of falsehoods, the mar- riage certificate was even worse. The bride was described as the daughter of Jean Jacques Gomard de Vaubamier and Anne Becu, otherwise known as Quantiny, and her age given as twenty-two, thus making her out to be three years younger than she was, the legitimate child of a known father, instead of the illegitimate child of an un- known father. In order to explain the absence of Jean Jacques de Vaubamier (whom it would have been diffi- cult to produce in the flesh at any time) from the marriage ceremony, he was stated to have died at Vaucouleurs on September 14, 1749, in the presence of his father-in- law Fabien Becu,— who had died in 1745! The signa- tures of the ofiicials to these certificates were also forged, as is conclusively proved by the fact that the attestation to the signature of the parish priest is that of a magistrate who had retired from his post some years before, and the signature of the priest is not the least like his real writ- ing. Yet it is on this certificate that the information con- veyed, even to the present day, in all English and Ger- man cyclopaedias and other works of reference is founded. Jean du Barry, it should be remarked, had risked his neck 94 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry again by the forgery of these certificates, for the punish- ment for forging a public document was hanging, and though this severe penalty was rarely exacted, it doubt- lessly would have bedn in this instance where the inten- tion was to deceive the King. Madame du Barry and her sham husband parted at the church door. He returned to Toulouse, and shortly had his solitude cheered by the opportune gift of ^4000 a year, whilst she went back, for some short time at least, to her brother-in-law's house, prior to taking her departure to Compiegne or Versailles. Whilst she was still staying at Jean du Barry's house a curious incident is said to have befallen her, but there is no better authority for the story than Pidansat de Mairobert. "An adventure," he says, "which she had with the Comte de Coigni in the winter before her presentation, was not very amusing for her. This officer had returned from Corsica, and was very anxious to renew acquaintance with the beau sexe of whose company he had been de- prived in that island, for the women there are ugly, coarse; and disgusting, ^ and hardly had he arrived in Paris than he called upon Mademoiselle Lange, whose late history was unknown to him, and to most others for that matter. She was at first flattered by the attentions of this lord, and received him with that grace and sprightliness which were usual with her, which emboldened him to take some slight liberties. The Comtesse, whose relations with the King being still secret did not permit her to entitle herself the mistress of Louis XV, contented herself by telling the Comte that she was married. 'Pidansat had evidently evolved his opinion of the Corsicau vio- men from his inner consciousness. That Convenient Creature, a Husband 95 "'Married?' he cried. 'And to whom?' " ' To Cornte du Barry, whose brother you have just seen,' she answered. " ' You are laughing at me, my dear,' said the Comte. 'What does that matter — it is only one more to deceive as you have deceived so many others.' " The Comte became more pressing, and the Comtesse becoming indignant, assumed a dignified air, and informed him that, for very important reasons, she could never see him again, but that she pardoned his impertinence on account of the liaison which had formerly existed between them, but which must henceforward cease for valid causes, which he would soon hear publicly. With these words she rang for the servants, and bowed him out with a dignity that astonished him. " Having learned soon afterwards what a blunder he had committed, he wrote to the favourite a very respectful letter in which he begged her to attribute his conduct to his ignorance. It has never been remarked that she showed any animosity to him afterwards." The last remark gives us unintentionally an insight into the character of Pidansat and his congeners, for those literary Ishmaels lived so continually with their hand against every man and every man's hand against them, that resentment with them was almost a second nature, and they could not understand its absence in others. Rancour and enmity were, however, foreign to the nature of Jeanne du Barry, and even in the great quarrel in which she was shortly to be involved she entered the lists unwillingly, and seemed half sorry that she triumphed eventually. The King's Prime Minister was at that time, and had 96 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry been for some years past, the Due de Choiseul. More cor- rectly speaking he was the Ministry, for he combined in his own person the functions of several Ministers and Officials, and besides having sole control of Foreign Affairs, the Army, and the Navy, was Postmaster General, Colonel and Gener- al of the Swiss Guard — a post worth a hundred thousand francs a year, and usually given to Princes of the Blood— and he also held a few minor posts. For these services he drew from the State a yearly sum which has been estimated at from seven hundred thousand to a million francs a year. He had come to regard himself not only as the most efficient man for his various posts but as being indispensable to the King. His talents do not seem to have been of a very high order, and if his own Memoirs are to be trusted, he was deficient in one of the first attributes of a diplomatist, and did not know how to control a sarcastic tongue. Horace Walpole says that his want of tact was astonishing, for that the Comtesse du Barry, soon after arrival at Court, having complained to the King that she was spoken of disre- spectfully at the Minister's table, the Due de Choiseul on hearing from some " damned good-natured friend " that such a complaint had been made, replied stiffly, " Madame du Barry is mistaken. We never talk of catins at my table." A more flagrant instance of this want of tact is related in Choiseul's Memoirs, for he narrates there that being offended with the Dauphin, the son of Louis XV, for having shown some document to the King, which the Minister thought ought to have passed through his hands first, he said to that Prince, " I may some day have the misfortune to be your subject, but I will never be your servant." It is but fair to state, however, that in the opinion of some of the best French historians, Choiseul's That Convenient Creature, a Husband 97 sarcasm was the "wit of the staircase," and that these bitter remarks were not what he really did say, but what he thought afterwards he might have said, and that he reported to his friends — who of course duly repeated them — incidents which never occurred, or at least invented repartees he had never uttered. The story about Madame du Barry was most likely an invention of this kind, for it is tolerably certain that Walpole did not himself hear the Minister use the words ascribed to him, but had them second-hand from Madame du DefFand, who was the bosom friend and confidant of the Choiseuls, and with whom Walpole kept up a sort of Platonico-literary cor- respondence. Choiseul, though not by any means a moral man, and willing enough to encourage Louis in vice, was by no means anxious that the King should take a fresh mistress. If she were an ambitious woman with a capacity for business, like Madame de Pompadour, she would take all the State matters into her own hands and he would become of no importance, whilst on the other side, if she were merely a light-hearted, feather-headed wanton, she would become the tool of anyone who chose to gain her interest, and to forestall them and win her over to himself would be a tacit confession of his own instability. Besides these purely personal motives for his objection to see a fresh favourite established at Court there was another. He had a sister, the Duchesse de Gramont, to whom he was much attached — so deeply indeed that rumours were afloat that the affection was of a criminal nature, a theory so revolting that, though it obtained some credence at the depraved Court of Versailles, we prefer to ignore it here. The Duchesse was anxious, it is said, 7 98 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry to become the King's mistress, but had not succeeded in making any impression on Louis, who much disliked being angled for, and was but slightly impressed by her personal charms. But if she could not win the King's affection she was determined no one else should if she could help it — unless indeed it was one of her friends, Madame de Beauvau, or Madame de Boufflers — and she stirred up in her brother a still stronger feeling of opposition to the Royal mistress. In the case of Madame du Barry this animosity was further increased by the fact that she was of low birth, and from the moment of her arrival at Court, or even before, she was made to feel the unpleasantness of her position. That she was not crushed by her powerful enemies is mainly due to the fact that the Due de Choiseul chose the wrong weapon. It would have been very easy for him, considering the advantages his position gave him, to have proved to the King, by official documents, her humble origin, and though that would not perhaps have weakened the King's admiration for her, it would have prevented her having the position of maitresse en titre and taking her place at Court. A copy of the certificate of her birth, procured from Vaucouleurs, and compared with the marriage certificate would have revealed the true nature of the latter document, and if Madame du Barry had escaped the consequences of the forgeries contained in that paper she would certainly have lost her friend and adviser Comte Jean. But, for some reason, Choiseul did not employ these very obvious means of quashing the claims of Jeanne du Barry, but preferred spargere voces, and employed an army of ballad-makers and hungry scribes to attack the Royal favourite in prose and verse. That Convenient Creature, a Husband gg A few paragraphs in the Police Journal were the pre- cursors of the storm of abuse which was to rattle round Jeanne du Barry's head. These paragraphs did nothing more than show who was the prime mover in the opposition to Madame du Barry, for it mattered nothing to M. de Sartines who was the King's mistress, and he was far too cautious to run the risk of incurring the enmity of the new favourite. If, therefore, he opened the columns of his paper to remarks about her, or gave his official sanction to squibs, comic songs, and farces in which the favourite was none too gently treated, it was evident that he was acting under superior orders, and no particular amount of sagacity was needed to guess from whom those orders were likely to have emanated. The most popular of all the songs written by Choiseul's orders was La Bourbonnaise. Grimm says there was no comer of Paris in which it was not sung, and from Paris it spread to all parts of France. The words are stupid and the exigencies of the tune require many of the lines to be repeated, which must have had the double effect of tiring the singer and boring the hearer. Another version in which the dulness was relieved by obscenity quickly followed, and other productions of the same sort soon abounded, but if they were intended to make the King disgusted with his new mistress they failed lamentably in their effect, for Louis, not satisfied with the frequent visits which his charmer made to him from Paris, ordered rooms to be prepared for her at Versailles. CHAPTER III PRESENTED AT COURT Amongst the many interesting MSS. in the Bibliothequ Nationale is one by a certain Monsieur Hardy, containing a record of the latter years of the reign of Louis XV The diary has never been printed, and is the more valu- able on that account, as when we meet in any book a statement which is also contained in Hardy, we know that the author could not have borrowed from Hardy, and if the date of publication shows that Hardy did not borrow from him, it follows that we have the authority of two independent observers for the same incident. Hardy relates that being on the evening of February i, 1769, at dinner with a priest, a friend of his, another priest who was present invited them to charge their glasses and drink to "the presentation." Hardy not un- derstanding what was meant by that, asked the meaning of the phrase, and was told, " It is the presentation which took place yesterday, or will take place to-day, that of the modern Esther who is to throw down Haman, and deliver the Jews from oppression." Further enquiry on the part of Hardy elicited the information that Esther was Madame du Barry, whose presentation to the King was expected to have taken place, or to be about to take Presented at Court loi place, and Haman was the Due de Choiseul, whose antipathy to "the Jews,'' or clerical party, was well-known. But M. Hardy's enthusiastic clerical acquaintance was a trifle hasty in his conjectures; for reasons which will presently be explained, the presentation of Madame du Barry to the King did not take place till April 22. Madame du Barry had definitively taken up her quarters at Versailles in December 1768, or January 1769. Mairobert quotes from a Gazette under date of December 12, 1768, "It is looked upon as a settled thing that Madame la Comtesse Dubarry will not be presented. The pretty face of this young bride has attracted the attention of all the courtiers, and the King appeared to wish to increase the number of the beauties of his Court. Some bad reports, however, reached Mesdames (the daughters of Louis XV) as to the origin and the early years of this new Comtesse, which compelled them to beg the King not to allow her to appear before them. H.M. was obliged to give way to these representations, but has sought how to compensate Madame du Barry for this mortification by all sorts of benefits and kindnesses. She lives at Versailles in the apartment of Sieur Le Bel, the chief valet de chambre (who introduced her to the King). This ineflfectual attempt (to get introduced) has caused a good deal of rumour at the Court, and it is believed that the jealousy of some ladies, who had designs themselves, and who feared with reason they would be eclipsed by the charming debutante, have contributed in no small degree to the general indignation against her. The Ministers even have taken sides in this affair which has assumed a great im- portance for them." To anyone accustomed to read between the lines it is I02 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry evident that Choiseul prompted this article but that the person who wrote it perceived a divided duty, and made a praiseworthy endeavour to "sit on the fence," and not commit himself until he saw which side was going to win. We learn, however, from this paragraph that Madame du Barry was estabhshed at Versailles early in December 1768, and had apparently been there sufficiently long for the question of her presentation to the King to be raised, discussed, and— Choiseul and his scribes would have us believe — finally abandoned. The Gazette just quoted states that she inhabited the rooms of Le Bel (to whom the writer alludes as if he were still alive), but if so that could only have been a temporary arrangement. In January 1769, Madame du Barry had a suite of apartments given her, and was no longer obliged to inhabit the rooms of a deceased valet. The new apartment was that of the Princess Adelaide, one of the King's daughters, who removed to the rooms left vacant by the death of the Dauphiness. As soon as she was regularly installed, the question of her presentation to the King was raised — or revived, if we believe the Gazette. The ceremony was one which was almost vital to a courtier. It was the passport to the more exalted realms of Flunkeydom. It conferred every privilege for which the unpresented were thought likely to yearn, but which many millions contrived to do without very well. A person who had not been presented, might not be admitted to the Royal suppers, nor follow the King's carriage in any of his migrations from one palace to an- other, and, most particularly, might not reside in the palace. Comte Jean du Barry was, of course, extremely anxious that his sister-in-law should be presented, and so also Presented at Court 103 were old Richelieu and de Maupeou, but the person who was most desirous that the ceremony should take place was the King himself. But even he felt that there were serious difficulties to be overcome, unless all the rules of etiquette were to be laid aside. The person pre- sented had to furnish proofs of good descent, and Jeanne du Barry did not know who her father was, and her mother's family was not of the best. The King is reported to have proposed to obviate this difficulty by buying for his mistress, for the sum of seven hundred thousand livres, the principality of Lus en Bigarre, and letting her pass herself off as a foreign princess, in which case she would not have to pro- duce any proofs. We know that this plan was never carried out and that Madame du Barry was not presented as a foreign princess, but how the difficulty concerning "the proofs " was overcome we have no means of ascertaining. No such proofs have ever been found, but whether the King did without them, or whether they were furnished and after- wards abstracted from the " King's cabinet" cannot be said. But if the King was desirous of seeing his mistress have a recognized position at Court, there was a strong party led by Choiseul opposed to her. The Minister contrived to win over to his side the daughters of Louis, per- suading them that their father ought not to take a mistress so soon after the death of their mother, who had been^ dead rather more than six months. The opposition of the Princesses meant little more than a timid protest to the King, and a snub to the mistress when she was presented to them, but the Minister, foreseeing that Jeanne du Barry — whose influence over the King became stronger every day — would be a formidable weapon in the hands of his enemies, was resolutely opposed to the presentation. 104 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry talked of resigning if it took place, and perhaps would have done so if he had not been deeply in debt in spite of his enormous salary. He was inexorable, although the King wrote to him, " She is very pretty — I am satisfied— that ought to suffice." Choiseul writes in his Memoirs, "I certainly believe, even with the bad opinion I have of the King, that he would never have dared to carry out such an indecent proceeding, if he had not been encouraged by the Mare- chal de Richelieu, who, unfortunately for the Court and France, was ^rst gentleman-in-waiting that year. " The Minister's methods of preventing this indecent proceeding were not too decent themselves. He looked about for some one who should supplant Madame du Barry in the King's graces, and hit upon a Madame Millin, the wife of a Paris doctor, a young and pretty woman who was devoted to Choiseul, and willing enough to become the King's mistress if she had the chance. This attempt to supplant the Du Barry failed lamentably, and it seems strange that the Due de Choiseul should have lent himself to such an "indecent proceeding," but it appears conclusively proved that he did. Hardy who wrote in Paris, and whose Diary never left his pos- session, makes mention of the incident, and his account is confirmed by De Belleval, who was then stationed at Versailles ^ and who adds that he has seen the young woman, who though very pretty is not to be compared to the favourite. The name of Millin de la Courvault, "professor of medical matters," is also to be found in the Almanach Royal for the year 1769. The lampoons, songs, etc., about Madame du Barry ' Souvenirs d'un chevau-Uger, p. 118. Presented at Court 105 increased in number and intensity. Plays were made about her smd acted at the booths at the fairs round Paris, and at least one novelette was written on her life. It is entitled Vie de la Bourbonnaise, by MM. Hener- linque, clerk in the Post Office, and Alexandre, musician, and is a highly moral little book — where it is not start- lingly obscene. It ends with the stale aphorism " displayed " in all the dignity of " small caps," that " Virtue in want is preferable to Opulence in Vice." This little book is extremely rjire, and there is no copy of it in the Bibliotheque Nationale, but there is a copy in the Arsenal Library, and a comparison of this little story (which professes to be fiction) with the Anecdotes of Pidansat de Mairobert (which pretend to be fact) will show many curious points of resemblance between the two which cannot be the result of accident, and which afford an additional proof of the value which is to be attached to that veracious history. This abuse was too coarse to show the Princesses, whom Choiseul wished to make his allies, and he therefore — according to the Anecdotes — obtained from one of his literary men some verses which were more " ingenious and delicate, and consequently more cruel and treacherous." The satire may have been ingenious, but it was so very delicate that Madame du Barry may have been excused for missing the irony contained in the verses, and accepting them as complimentary. The first veise runs: "Lisette ta beauts sfeduit Et chaime tout le monde £n vain la Duchesse en rougit Et la Princesse en gronde Chacun sait que V4nus naquit De r^cume de I'onde." io6 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry Which may be roughly translated as: "Lisette, you adorn The world where you reign. Though the Duchess show scorn, And the Princess complain, We know Venus was bom Of the foam of the main. " The verses have been attributed to the Due de Niver- nois and to the Chevalier de Boufflers, but according to M. de Paulmy, whose evidence is likely to be the best, they are by the Abbe de Lattaignan, Canon of Rheims. It appears to have been felt that the verses were too much like Balaam's curse, and another partisan of Choi- seul — most probably the Chevalier de Lisle — followed them with a biting epigram on the modem Venus: "Two Venuses men say there be And to govern the world is their lot. One was born of the foam of the sea, And one of the scum of the pot." In spite of all these sarcasms Madame du Barry's presentation to the Court would have taken place as early as January, 1769, but for a difficulty in finding a "sponsor" for her. By Court etiquette she was to be introduced by a lady who had herself the entree at Court, but no one appeared willing to undertake the task. The Baronne de Montmorency was willing to do it for a consideration, but perhaps the sum she asked was excessive, for the nego- tiations fell through, and another lady came forward, but finding that the Princesses turned their backs upon her the next time she went to Court, she begged to be ex- Presented at Court 107 cused from acting as marratne. Jean du Barry at last found a Comtesse du Beam, a lady of very good family, but poor, who was willing to act as sponsor. The cere- mony was, however, again postponed on account of an accident to the King whilst hunting. He fell from his horse on his right arm, which soon swelled to such an extent that on his arrival at the palace (where he was carried on a mattress laid on two ladders), it was found requisite to cut i away the sleeve of his coat. There was a slight dislocation of the shoulder. The accident was rather a severe one, considering the age of the King, though the Due de Choiseul in his Memoirs makes out it was a mere trifle, and that Louis behaved "with a weakness that would have been ridiculous in a girl often years old." Further delays were caused by the Comtesse de Beam, who "jibbed" at the last moment, and pleaded a sprained ankle, and also by the preparations for the marriage of the Due de Chartres. At last the ceremony really came off on Saturday, April 22. Madame du Barry appears to have acquitted herself well. One report states that "she was very well received by Mesdames — even with marked kindness; all the spectators admired the dignity of her bearing and the ease of her attitudes. The part of a Court lady is not easy to play the first time, but Madame du Barry acted as though she had been long used to it." Ladies used to take lessons from Vestris, the celebrated dancer, that they might leam how to bow gracefully, and might acquire the " circular kick " needed to get the long train out of the way of the debutante's feet as she retired backwards. Perhaps the frequent delays which had taken place had enabled Madame du Barry to master these difficulties thoroughly. Even io8 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry Madame de Genlis, who was not likely to speak favour- ably of the King's mistress (being, one may suspect, one of the unsuccessful competitors for the post) can find no fault with the manner in which Madame du Barry came through the ordeal, though she is careful to tell us that her face looked passde, her complexion was spoiled by freckles, and that her behaviour showed "revolting effron- tery." Madame de Genlis is obliged to concede, however, that the new favourite had fair hair of a charming colour, pretty teeth, and a pleasant face, and was dressed, on ■ this occasion, magnificently and in good taste. On the following day (Sunday) she was present at Mass in the Chapel Royal, was again splendidly dressed, and covered with diamonds, and occupied the seat of the late Marquise de Pompadour. The diamonds are accounted for by the fact that the evening before the presentation a jeweller, by the King's command, brought from Paris diamonds to the amount of a hundred thousand francs for Madame du Barry. Jeanne Becu has now attained the slippery eminence of the King's favour. She is now a " queen of the left hand," the last France has ever known, and most probably ever will know. We have now to watch her in her short-lived prosperity till, in five years time, her hopes are suddenly shattered like Alnaschar's basket of glass. Then a long period of retirement, which was perhaps a heavy punish- ment to one who had enjoyed the power and affluence of the King's favour, or perhaps was a welcome rest and relief from all the chicanery, intrigues, plots and counter- plots, jealousies, meannesses, and hatreds of Court life. Then trials, losses, the accusation brought by a base ungrateful wretch she had reared for her own destruction, Presented at Court 109 and then the condemnation — the passionate appeals for that mercy she had often obtained for others and now begged for herself in vain — and then the remorseless guillotine-knife shears from its shoulders the fair head that the last great King of France had loved so well. CHAPTER IV ERRANDS OF MERCY Though Louis XV was said " to do nothing " on the days on which he did not hunt, he had to make a pretence of being busy, and find employment for the numerous officials who constituted his extensive household. To do this, or possibly to get rid for a time of the chronic ennui which oppressed him, he visited in turn all the royal residences round Paris, namely Choisy, Compiegne, Saint Hubert, and Fontainebleau. Soon after the pre- sentation there had been a short stay at Marly, but the visit had not been successful, for the ladies were jealous of the new mistress, and the gentlemen also begged to be excused from attendance, the consequence being that there were not enough courtiers to fill the gambling tables, and the stakes were so small that no one was ruined— a state of things which had never been previously known at Marly. At Choisy the entertainments were usually theatrical. No performances had taken place since 1765, on account of the death of the Dauphin in that year, but they were resumed ia 1769. A great number of ladies came to Choisy on this occasion, some of them being already won over by the " sweetness of manner and modesty " of Madame du Barry. This was not invariably the case, however, for Errands of Mercy 1 1 1 the Princesse de Guemene started up with the exclama- tion of " Fi, rhorreur, " when the favourite sat next to her. Indirectly this was a reflection on the King, who requested the Princesse to retire into the country and stay there. The "virtuous daughters" of Louis XV had also "heroi- cally refused their hands " to the new mistress, but as she, according to the same authority, ^ " was of such limited intellect that she did not notice it," the "heroism" was rather wasted. " The presence of this new divinity " also prevented these same virtuous Princesses from coming to Choisy this year, but as — except for the last four — Louis had never been without a mistress during some thirty years, the Princesses must have been debarred from participation in many of the changes of residence of their august father. Pidansat de Mairobert implies, in his usual untruthful manner, that advantage was taken of this absence of the Princesses, and that the pieces acted before the King — which of course were selected by Madame du Barry — were of the most indecent kind. On investigation this, like most other statements of Pidansat's, turns out to be utterly incorrect. The pieces performed were by Comeille, Racine, Voltaire, Crebillon, Moliere, etc., and the only new play produced was a comedy (with music) entitled Ah'x and Alexis, which was rather more proper than the morals of the time would have led one to expect, and not in the least calculated to lighten the ennui of Louis XV. But if Madame du Barry did not have the selection of the plays performed before the King, she was shortly called upon to play a part herself and acquitted herself so well * Precis historique de la vie de Madame du Barry, 112 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry that she repeated the performance with success on two or three other occasions. The part was that of an interceder for those who were punished unjustly or too severely, and she always prevailed upon the King to show clemency. This was by no means a usual habit with him. Like all intensely selfish people, he was very hard-hearted, or as he said of himself, he "wept very little," but on the other hand he liked to be important or to be thought important, and would have pardoned almost any offender for whom a pretty woman had pleaded sufEciently hard. Unfortunately for the victims of the severely repressive laws of those days, they had never found an advocate with the King; Maria Lecszinska had no influence with Louis, and at the best of times would have pleaded but coldly. Madame de Mailly was supersensitive, and avoided interference in business of any sort, lest it should be thought she acted from interested motives; Madame de Vintimille was too thoughtless, and ChSteauroux too proud, ever to trouble about a few criminals ; and Madame de Pompadour put many people in prison, but never let anyone out, though frequent appeals were made to her, and though she could have acted without the King, — as indeed she did in more important matters. Madame du Barry was of a very different nature. Slie was a daughter of the people, had seen poverty and suf- fering, and her heart was naturally tender. She had only been established a few weeks as maitresse en litre, when an opportunity occurred for testing her influence, and' she succeeded in saving the life of a poor girl, and without invoking the King's aid. The following is the account of the incident as related in the Anecdotes. Errands of Mercy 113 A young girl, belonging to a place called Leancourt, was seduced by the cure of the parish (who died soon after- wards) and became pregnant. Either through shame, or out of regard for the memory of her pastor, she omitted to make the declaration required by the Ordonnances, and after an illness, occasioned no doubt by grief and mental distress, she was delivered of a still-born child. This came to the ears of the authorities, and as she had not complied with the law, she was charged with infanticide and sentenced to be hanged. The sentence was con- firmed by the Parliament, and the prisoner sent back to her native place to be executed. One of the Black Musketeers, a M. de Mondeville, chanced to hear the story at a country-house where he was staying. He was touched with compassion for the poor girl, and having drawn up a statement of the case which was signed by the other guests, he rode off at once to Marly, and although he knew nothing of Madame du Barry, he went straight to her and related the tale. She not only received him affably but wrote at once the fol- lowing letter to the Chancellor — a letter which gives an emphatic denial to the supposition that she was incapable of anything of the kind, and which proves how great is the simple eloquence of the heart. "Monsieur le Chancelier, " I know nothing of your laws, but they are unjust and barbarous, and contrary to policy, reason and humanity, if they kill a poor girl for having been delivered of a still-born child without having declared it. According to the enclosed petition the suppliant is in this position; it appears that she is only condemned for being ignorant of 114 The Life and Times (^Madame du Barry the law, or not having, through a very natural modesty, conformed to it. I leave the examination of this affair to your sense of justice, but this unfortunate being de- serves some indulgence. I ask therefore for a mitigation of the punishment. Your own good feeling will suggest to you the rest. " I have the honour to be, &c., &c." M. de Mondeville took this letter to the Chancellor who ordered a respite until he had examined the case, and then pardoned the girl. All Paris applauded this good action which was equally honourable for the Mus- keteer, the Countess, and the Chancellor. "^ Pidansat de Mairobert has rather exaggerated the story, and ha^ added some picturesque details, and suppressed others. M. Vatel, whose patience is invaluable in a search of this sort, discovered, from an old register at the Conciergerie, which luckily escaped destruction in 1871, that the girl's name was Appoline Gregeois, and that she was condemned for having concealed her pregnancy, and also for having stolen coiffures and linen, from Louis Le- roux, a baker at Gisors, and sixty-six francs from the cure of St. Martin's at Chaumont. The endictment and the de- cree of the Parliament of Paris record these particulars, and the register of pardons shows that on June 20 the Procureur G^nSral ordered a respite, and that on June 28 the sentence was commuted to three years' imprison- ment. The seduction by the cure, his death, and the illness of the girl are inventions of Mairobert's or derived from some authority not now accessible, and he adroitly passes ' Anecdotes, p. 107. Errands of Mercy 1 1 5 -over the thefts. It is not easy to determine whether "the supposition that Madame du Barry was incapable •of anything of the kind," applies to the letter or to the action. Certainly Madame du Barry would have found a difficulty in expressing herself so tersely and forcibly, -and however good her heart was, it would not have fur- nished her with such neat expressions of indignation. This aflfair appears to have been adjusted without the intervention of the King, or if his signature was obtained, it was as a matter of form, but the next case in which Ma- -dame du Barry's intercession was employed was a very serious one, for it was no less than armed opposition to the officers of the law, which in those days was construed into rebellion, or treason, against the King. In Champagne, between Montarges and Joigny, there stood an old chiteau, named Pare Vieil, the residence of the Comte and Comtesse de Louesme. For some gener- ations back the family had been in decadence and the Count, who had succeeded his father in 1766 found him- self hopelessly involved in debt. Law-proceedings fol- Jowed, and finally a creditor named Dorcy charged two liuissiers to put in an execution. Resistance appears to have been anticipated, for the bailiffs took with them -two detachments of gendarmes, and they surrounded the •chtteau at 3.0 a.m. (or 4.0 a.m., for accounts differ, and the point is an important one) on the morning of July I, 1768. Like most old chateaux Pare Vieil was surrounded by a moat. The drawbridge had long since broken down, and the moat was crossed by means of beams of wood which the garrison pulled up every night. The huissiers and their troops summoned the Comte and his household ii6 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry to surrender, and then, having managed to cross the moat, commenced to break down the doors. The Comte and Comtesse fired at the assailants, and the engagement became general. At last the representatives of the law were beaten off, and retreated, leaving two of their nimi- ber dead on the field— Jolivet, one of the huissiers, and a soldier of the mare'chaussde. After this exploit the Comte and Comtesse de Loiiesme made no attempt to fly, but strengthened their defences, placed sentinels, and awaited events. In two days quite an army appeared under the walls of the chateau. It consisted of the marechauss^e, or gendarmes of all the neighbouring towns, and a goodly sprinkling of pejisants who had been called upon to support the authorities. The siege began, but one of the first shots fired by the besieg- ers killed Godard, the family coachman, an old retainer of the De Loiiesme family, and the garrison thereupon surrendered. All the inhabitants of the chateau — nine in number— were taken prisoners, and marched off to Montarges. Incidents of this kind had been common enough during the preceding reign, and were not unknown in the time of Louis XV. In 1775 the Marquis de Pleumartin killed with a pistol shot the commandant of' a detachment of the marichausse'e under similar circumstances. He was condemned to be beheaded, but to spare his family the ignominy of a public execution he was strangled in the prison. By order of the King, the Comte and Comtesse de Loiiesme were brought to Paris to be tried by the Parliament, their offence being rebellion against the King's authority. Perhaps the Parliament had more important business in hand, but a whole year elapsed ere the De Lotjesmes were brought to trial. Errands of Mercy 1 1 7 Counsel had not much scope in the defence of their clients in those days, and M. d'Aligrand, who appeared for the Comte, could raise no better plea than that the attack was irregular and illegal, the sun not having risen. The trial lasted the greater part of one day, and the Comte and Comtesse were condemned to be beheaded. The widow and children of Jolivet, the dead huissier, were also to receive compensation. Execution swiftly followed condemnation in those days, and it was no unusual thing for a man to be sentenced in the morning and executed at noon. ^ This was sup- posed to be done to spare the condemned the additional torture of a long delay, but it had the corresponding dis- advantage that if any error was committed, it could not be set right till the Day of Judgment. Thus for instance, on November i, 1746, the Procureur g^n&al s&rA a "placet" ordering the release of one Guillaume Cor, but received the reply that Guillaume Cor had already been released — by means of the gallows — from a world in which judicial errors were too frequent. No time was therefore to be lost in appealing, and it was common for the relatives of the accused to beseech the King's mercy before the sentence was uttered. The Comtesse de Moyon, the daughter of the De Loiiesmes, fell at the King's feet and besought the lives of her parents, but Louis remained inflexible, and replied that the law must take its course. Chancellor Maupeou, though related to the condemned, declared that their offence was one which the King could not overlook, and refused to hear any ' The French have now gone to the other extreme, and several months often elapse between the date of the sentence and that of the execution. ii8 The Life and Times af Madame du Barry arguments in their behalf. The day was wearing to a- close and the Comte and Comtesse were to be executed at daybreak the next morning. Madame de Moyon was- acquainted with the Comtesse de Beam, the old lady who had acted as "sponsor" to Madame du Barry on her presentation. The Comtesse de Beam was begged to ask Madame du Barry to intercede with the King, and in a few minutes the favourite was made acquainted with the details of the case. She went at once to the King, threw herself on her knees at his feet, and declared that she would not rise until the King granted her request. The tears and supplications of a daughter had had no effect on Louis, but he was not proof against the appealing look on the Madonna like * face of his beautiful mistress, and raising her from the ground, he cried, "Madame, I am delighted that the first favour you obtain from me should be an act of mercy. " A.11 that was gained from the King was a respite, but a fresh intercession by Madame du Barry led to the sentence being commuted to imprisonment for life, and the Comte and Comtesse de Loiiesme were confined in the castle of Saumur "at the expense of their relatives.'' Nine years later they were released from prison, but banished from France. Their property was sold for sixty-two thousand five hundred francs, (September, 1778) and Louis XVI, who was then on the Throne, was kind enough, or weak enough, to allow them a small pension for the remainder of their lives. The important share which Madame du Barry had in this transaction won for her golden opinions from all ' " To the pure and modest beauty of a Madonna, Du Barry united the language and manners of a common courtesan." JnUA KaVAN- AGH: Woman in France in the \ith Century. Errands of Mercy 1 1 9 sorts of people, and many of the great ladies of the Court ; who had hitherto regarded her with hatred or aversion, became more kindly disposed towards her ; though perhaps it would not be cynical to imagine that they were less attracted by her kindness and compassion than by the undoubted proof she had given of her complete dominion over the weak and doting old King. Even Pidansat says that " No one — unless he had personal motives for hatred — could fail to like her, she was so honest, affable, and gentle. She had the virtue — especially rare in her sex — of never speaking ill of anyone, and never uttered com- plaints or reproaches, which a very natural feeling of revenge might suggest, against those who envied her, and those who had not only published abroad the not very creditable stories of her life, but had embroidered them with basenesses and enormities.'' As Pidansat de Mairobert had no personal motive for hating Madame du Barry, he seems to have dissembled his love very thoroughly, and not to have greatly troubled himself to strive after that virtue of never speaking ill of persons, which his superiority of sex should have enabled him to acquire so easily. As for the last lines, it would be difficult to believe they ever proceeded from his pen, if a Great Master had not already shown us in " Barry Lyndon " that a man may become so steeped in his own weakness and vices, that he not only becomes oblivious of their real nature but eventually regards them as virtues. Perhaps, however, Pidansat only wished to show Madame du Barry that he sold honey as well as vinegar, and that he could— for a consideration — extol her virtues quite as easily as he could string together "the not too creditable anecdotes " of her Ufe. CHAPTER V A SHAM FIGHT AND A REAL QUARREL About the middle of July the Court moved to Compiegne, that residence being generally next in order to be visited, and whilst there the King presented the Chateau of Louveciennes to Madame du Barry (July 24, 1769). This estate originally belonged to the Marquis de Beringhen, but Louis XIV cast a longing eye on it, and in the year 1700 proposed to buy it, or rather to exchange it against an estate he had at Chatellerie-de-Tournan, in Brie. The Marquis de Beringhen accepted, "with the respect and submission due to the King's orders," and the two estates having been appraised and found to be nearly equal in value, the transaction was concluded, and Louve- ciennes became an appanage of the Crown. There does not seem to have been any house on the estate at the time, and the first thing that Louis XIV did was to erect a large hydraulic pump intended to supply the Chateau of Versailles with water from the Seiae, and build a small house for the resident engineer, who was to look after the machine. The engineer — a Baron Arnold Deville — retired a few years later, and presvun- ably the working of the machine was understood by that time, for no successor was appointed, but the house was ^ A Sham Fight and a Real Quarrel 121 enlarged, and presented, for life, to Mademoiselle de Clermont. On her death, in 1741, the Queen, Maria Lecszinska, asked for it, but the King replied with his usual selfishness, that he intended to use it himself whenever he visited Marly, "because he found the petits cabinets at Marly too small and too stuffy," but he afterwards gave'Louveciennes to the Comtesse de Toulouse, though she had not asked for it. The Comtesse de Toulouse was a great favourite with Louis XV, and had been useful in his amours with Ma- dame de Mailly, Madame de Vintimille, and Madame de Chateauroux. Possibly Louis wished to avail himself of her services, on some future occasion, and determined there- fore to have her near him. On the death of the Com- tesse de Toulouse, September 30, 1 766, the estate passed to her only son, the Due de Penthievre, for his lifetime. His son, the Prince de Lamballe, was married four months later, January 31, 1767, to Maria Theresa Louisa, of Savoy, Princesse de Carignan, the beautiful and unfortunate lady, the friend of Marie Antoinette, who met with such a tragic fate in the Revolution. A year after his marriage the Prince de Lamballe, then hardly twenty-two years old, died — "a victim of debauchery," the contemporary journals and pamphlets say, but it is not unlikely he died of some hereditary disease, as aU his five brothers and sisters died at about the same age. After his death the Due de Penthievre, taking a dislike to a house connected with associations that were so sad for him, gave back the property to the King. ^ Louve- 'In the Memoirs of the Princess de Lamballe (which were really written by " FavroUe," otherwise Madame Gufemard) it is stated that he sold the property, but this, of course, is incorrect as he never had' more than a life interest. 122 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry ciennes had been empty about two years at the time when Louis presented it as a token of friendliness or good-will to Madame du Barry, for the "term of her natural life," for, being State property, it was not in his power to dispose of it absolutely. A want of the knowledge of this fact has caused a great number of erroneous statements about the cost of Louve- ciennes, and Louis was accused of spending large sums of the public money on his mistress, the sums apparently increasing in geometrical progression. Pidansat de Mai- robert started by guessing a million francs. Dulaure, who includes the expenses of Madame du Barry during her stay there, makes an estimate of six millions, Prud'homme outbids him and says ten millions, and some writers of the present day talk about many times that amount. As a matter of fact the total amount expended in repairing the house, adding accommodation for the household, baths, etc., laying out the garden, making an orangery, etc., amounted to only ^6531, and that was not an "extra" but was paid out of Madame du Barry's civil list. She afterwards expended large sums in improving the property, and it was doubtless then that the highly coloured re- ports about the amounts wasted arose. After all the money lavished so freely the Chateau was not a com- fortable residence. It was not commodious enough for the King and his numerous suite, and the unceasing clang of the pump, just below the house, must have been far from pleasant. Madame Le Brun records that when she stayed at Louveciennes the "lamentable noise" an- noyed her greatly. Before this month (July) finished there were signs of the great struggle that was to ensue later on between A Sham Fight and a Real Quarrel 123 the Minister and the Mistress, and which was to end — in the words of Carlyle — with "dismissal of his last sub- stantial man, but pacification of his scarlet- woman." Into the nature of that quarrel, and what share Madame du Barry had in it, it will be our task to examine later on; in the present instance at least the Due de Choiseul had right and decency on his side. A " pleasure camp " had been estabUshed at Verberie, near Compiegne, in order to give the Dauphin and his brothers some initiation into military affairs. The troops consisted of forty- two battalions of infantry, a regiment of cavalry and an artillery corps with forty guns, all under the command of Baron de Wurmser, Lieutenant General, and Chief Inspector of the German Infantry. The manoeuvres extended over three days, and were witnessed by the King, his three grand-children, Mesdames de France (the three daughters of Louis XV) and — Madame du Barry. General Dumouriez has recorded in his Memoirs that at the review which terminated these manoeuvres he saw " with sorrow the old King of France, on foot, with dofied hat, in sight of his army at the side of a magnificent phaeton, doing homage to the — Du Barry." The Due de Choiseul was dissatisfied and vexed at the growing popularity of Madame du Barry, and seems to have vented his anger on some of the offi- cers with reference to their behaviour towards the King's mistress. The King who was jealous of any attempt to interfere with his power, and felt that these animad- versions touched him indirectly, wrote to the Minister as follows, " As I have promised to tell you all that occurs to me concerning you, I now acquit myself of that task. It is 124 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry said that you scolded Wunnser, I do not know about what, but that you let slip a good round f— .^ "It is said that you reprimanded the Chevalier de la Tour du Pin because Madame du Barry dined in the camp, and a great number of the officers dined at her house the day of the review. "You also reprimanded M. Foulon for some cause. "You promised me that I should not hear any more from you about her. "I speak to you in confidence and friendship. You may be inveighed against in public — that is always the fate of Ministers, especially when they oppose the friends of the Master— but for all that the Master is very satisfied with their work, and with yours in particular." From the expression " You promised me that I should not hear any more from you about her," it is evident that Louis had already complained about the attacks made on his mistress, and that Choiseul had promised that the songs, lampoons, etc., should cease. The reply of the Due de Choiseul is long and apolo- getic. He begins by stating that His Majesty must know " in the bottom of his soul" that he (Choiseul) is the object of all the malignity and hatred of those who surround Madame du Barry. The King will know how much credit to give to persons who are " seventy years old and even more." As for the young ones they are merely pitiable, and " think they are doing something wonderful in censuring and braving your Minister.'' Descending to the ' Initial letter of a common and coarse expression which the King thought "unfit for publication,'' but which he must often have heard from old Richelieu, and — if the story be true — on one celebrated occasion from Madame du Barry. A Sham Fight and a Real Quarrel 125 particular charges, the Due denies having rated Wurmser or used improper language, and adds "he is here and can speak the truth." As for what happened in connection with the regiment De Beauce, there is no truth in it, though there is more appearance of truth. He did not reprimand the Chevalier de la Tour du Pin, and never spoke to him about either giving or accepting a dinner, "I am. Sire," he says, "a thousand leagues above such petty ti;ifles. The day that Your Majesty witnessed the manceuvres of the forty-two battalions, I was told that the Beauce Regiment had saluted and given the same honours to Madame du Barry as to you; — I did not say a word to my informant. In the evening at my house the same thing was repeated, but I appeared to pay no attention. The following day I told M. de Rochambeau that it had been reported to me that the Beauce Regiment had saluted other carriages besides those of the Royal Family whilst Your Majesty was in front of the line; that that was not right, and I charged him to inform M. de la Tour du Pin that he should not render salutes to any- one else when the King was in camp." The Minister then points out that De la Tour du Pin has been promoted, and his regiment has had granted all the requests made (leaves of absence, etc., we may conclude), which proves there was no ill-hiunour on his (the Due's) part. The unfortunate M. Foulon — he who said, or was reported to have said, that if the people had no bread they might eat grass, and who, years hence, was to be the first victim of the Lanterne — is treated none too well in Choiseul's letter, for the Minister says about him, " As for Foulon I do not remember to have scolded him. I distrust him because I never believed him to be honest. 126 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry He is what is called an intriguer with unbounded ambi- tion, but is very far from having the capacity needful for the places to which he aspires. I never spoke but once to him of Madame du Barry, and that was three weeks ago, concerning a man, named Nallet, whom Madame du Barry had recommended to me. Since I have been at Compiegne I have only seen Foulon twice, and then in public, and did not speak to him, and if he says that under any circumstances whatever, since I have known him, I have reprimanded him concerning Madame du Barry — M. Foulon is an impudent liar." In spite of the apologetic tone of the letter, there runs through it a half-disdainful tone in those passages which concern Madame du Barry, and this is more evident when it is known that Foulon aspired to be Superintendent of Finance and had made overtures to the King's mistress to aid him in procuring the post. The reasons for the enmity of the Due de Choiseul have already been glanced at, and if war had not been openly declared it was because it takes two parties to make a quarrel, and Madame du Barry was deterred from taking any action, partly by her own good-nature, and partly by the counsels of her chief friend and adviser. Comte Jean du Barry, though (for reasons which are suflaciently obvious) he could not appear at Court, was far too astute to lose his influence over his fair sister-in-law. He had unlimited faith in her powers of fascination, but not much belief in her capacity for business. She, on the other hand, recognized that it was entirely due to his schemes that she had attained her position, and presum- ably had a high opinion of his talents, and he had no difficulty in persuading her that his experience and cunning A Sham Fight and a Real Quarrel 127 would be of great use to her in the difficult game she had to play. Though the King never came to Paris, all the royal residences were within a few miles of the capital, though in different directions, and it was easy for Jean du Barry from his central position to be in constant compiunication with his ex-mistress. To facilitate this arrangement he placed with her, as companion, his sister Mademoiselle du Barry, who is said, in the Anecdotes, to have been ugly and deformed, but almost, if not quite, as clever as her brother, and therefore eminently fitted to look after the family interests, and protect the King's favourite from the machinations of her enemies, and her good nature from being imposed upon by friends. Jean du Barry was kept well informed of the proceedings of the Due de Choiseul, and, though he knew that a struggle was almost inevitable, he first tried every means to preserve peace, for he saw what profit to himself there would be if the Minister and the Mistress could be brought to work together. An example of how he strove to attain this is given in the Memoirs of Lauzun. "During the stay at Compiegne M. du Barry made an appointment with me to meet him in the forest, and I awaited him there the following morning. He complained to me of the bitterness that the Due de Choiseul showed to Madame du Barry and to him, said that she was willing to do justice to such a great minister, and ardently desired to live on good terms with him, and hoped that he would not force her to become his enemy; that she had more influence with the King than Madame de Pom- padour had ever had, and that she would be very vexed if he obliged her to use it to his harm. He desired me to relate this conversation to the Due de Choiseul, and 128 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry to make to him all sorts of protestations of attachment. "I executed the commission. " The Due de Choiseul received it with all the haughtiness of a Minister who is harassed by women, but who believes he has nothing to fear. He declared that there was war to the knife between him and the King's mistress,, and Madame de Gramont made some very insulting remarks, in which she did not spare even the King." De Lauzun was the nephew of the Due de Choiseul, his mother being the sister of the Due's wife. He was in a singular position with regard to the two ladies con- cerned, for he had met Mademoiselle Vaubarnier, prior to her introduction to the King, and if he had not been her lover, it was not because Jean du Barry had not afforded him the opportunity; and he relates also that when he was "a good-looking lad of fourteen, the Duchesse de Gramont took a great liking to me, with the intention, I believe, of quietly making me a little lover she could have all to herself without any inconvenience." Possibly the recollection of this, coupled with the fact that he weis now appearing as an ambassador from Madame du Barry, did not tend to conciliate the proud and hot-tempered Duchesse. At any rate the embassy failed, and Choiseul — perhaps to prove his contempt for the King's mistress and her friends, and his belief in the impregnability of his position — soon afterwards started on a long journey to Metz, Nancy, Chanteloup, and Deux Fonts, leaving his enemies a clear field. If the military manoeuvres at Compiegne aggravated the long standing animosity the Minister bore to the Mistress, they also procured for Madame du Barry a fresh enemy. Dumouriez, the young soldier who was so shocked to see A Sham Fight and a Real Quarrel 129 the King of France standing bareheaded by the side of the carriage of the Du Barry, had, like De Lauzun, known Mademoiselle Vaubarnier in the old days, and had met her at the house of one of her demi-mondaine friends. He states in his Journal that, " the Du Barry knowing that I was in the camp and had not come to worship her, as all the other Frenchmen did, reproached me, and although not very vindictive, afterwards willingly helped to put me in the Bastille.'' Surely it would have been very reasonable on the part of Madame du Barry not to wish to see any of the persons she had known in former times, but at any rate she had no more to do with putting Dumouriez in the Bastille than she had with the transit of Venus which she had beheld a few nights previously. Louis XV, as has been previously stated, to give himself a fictitious impor- tance in the eyes of European potentates, was accustomed to send secret agents to the various Courts with orders to follow a policy usually diametrically opposed to that laid down for the accredited Ambassador from France- It not unfrequently happened therefore that these se- cret agents were regarded by the Ambassadors — who of course did not know their position — as spies, or traitors, or at the best as adventurers, and in the reports to the Foreign Minister no doubt the Ambassadors often stated that their task had been rendered more difficult by the unaccountable actions of Comte This, or Chevalier That — naming the King's secret agent. As a natural result, the King's agent no sooner returned to France than the Min- ister pounced upon him and sent him to prison, and as Louis had not the courage to defend his emissaries and an explanation would have destroyed the elaborately idi- otic scheme of his private correspondence, the unfortunate 9 I30 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry agent remained in prison till it was worth somebody's while to let him out again. This was precisely what had happened in the case of Dumouriez. He was one of the King's secret agents, and had been raising troops at Hamburg to assist Gustavus III of Sweden, who had just made a coup d'etat, and was threatened with civil war in consequence. Dumouriez and two others, named Segur and Favier, were arrested on a charge of treason. Full particulars of the affair will be found in Boutaric's Correspondance secrete de Louis XV, but there is not, from first to last, any mention of Ma- dame du Barry's name. To imagine that he was locked up because he refused to worship the Du Barry evinces a fatuous self-conceit on the part of Dumouriez if he was not aware of the real cause of his incarceration, or something much worse if he was aware of it. There were in Paris, and at Versailles, many men who refused to bow the knee to the new goddess, and who wrote scurrilous songs about her as well, but she did not put any of those men in prison, though she had a double motive for doing so. It should be re- marked too that Dumouriez was not arrested till long after the Compiegne review, and was not released until August 2, 1774, or nearly four months after the death of the King and the downfall of the Favourite. If any per- sons had been imprisoned by her orders they would have been set at liberty the day she lost her power. CHAPTER VI A PORTRAIT DRAWN BY A SOLDIER'S HAND From Compiegne the Court moved to Fontainebleau. A sort of tradition or superstition existed among the courtiers, and those of the public who were interested in Court doings, that this particular change of residence was always followed by extraordinary political events. This occasion formed no exception to the rule, for on September 24 the Due M. Chaulnes, Captain-Lieutenant of the Light Cavalry of the Household Troops, died. The post he held was not only a lucrative but an important one, as its possessor had frequent opportunities of private interviews with the King, and it was therefore coveted by the Vicomte de Choiseul, the nephew of the Prime Minister, and the Due d'Aiguillon, the nephew of the Marechal de Richelieu. Much to the surprise of the courtiers the latter was successful, and it was said that the King's mistress, who had no reason to love the Choiseul clan, had used all her influence for D'Aiguillon. The Due de Choiseul began to perceive that in a contest between the "alcove" and the "back-stairs" the latter is not always certain to win, and no doubt he felt mortified, for the check he had met with was a double one. Not only had he been unsuc- cessful in getting his candidate nominated, but the person 131 132 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry who had gained was the man whom he most feared. That the proud and haughty Minister was disquieted is proved by the fact that he called to see Madame du Barry and had an interview with her that lasted more than three hours. Madame du Deffand, who was a warm partisan of Choiseul, says in one of her letters to Walpole, " the interview was a false step on his part, and has produced no good effect." It was hardly to be expected that he would consent to "climb down" at once after he had enjoyed undisputed power so long. His sister, the Duchesse de Gramont, was on a visit to Holland at this time; had she been at Fontainebleau it is very likely that the Due de Choiseul would not have been permitted to make any attempts at reconciliation. During the stay at Fontainebleau the King and his mistress paid a visit to the pavilion that \h& fermier general Bouret had constructed in the forest of Senart, in com- memoration of a visit which the King had paid him some years before. Like many of the fermiers, he was a man of immense wealth though he had half ruined himself in erecting and embellishing this pavilion which he further improved every year. His motives for so doing were not altogether disinterested, for he had hoped that Madame de Pompadour would take a liking to the pavilion and that the King would purchase it for her, but her death temporarily destroyed his hopes which, however, revived again on the accession of Madame du Barry. Knowing how the King craved for amusement Bouret always took care to have a fresh surprise each year for his Master. The Royal visit was paid on September 28. The weather was splendid, the hunting was capital, (two stags were killed) and the banquet prepared by Bouret A Portrait Drawn by a Soldier's Hand 133 was sumptuous. At the end of the repast the host showed the surprise he had prepared for the King. It was a statue of Venus— a copy of the one which Coustou, one of the best French sculptors of the time, had executed for the King of Prussia — but the head was changed and made into a likeness of Madame du Barry. Both the King and his mistress were much pleased with this com- pliment. What became of this statue is unknown. If still in existence it would have considerable interest, and corresponding value, especially if it were an original work of Coustou, or if he had modelled the head. The only other incident which marked the stay at Fontainebleau was of a less agreeable nature. The Due de Sarraguais obtained from Madame Gourdan, the notorious procuress, one of her pensionnaires, took lodgings in the town of Fontainebleau for this young person, and intro- duced her to all his friends as " Madame la Comtesse de Tonneau" — Tonneau being synonymous with Baril, which is pronounced the same as Barry. The joke was of the "Cyclopean order" and if the Due's friends were enter- tained thereby, we may envy the ease with which they were amused. As M. Vatel remarks, one might have expected something better from a man who had been in love with Sophie Amould, the witty and accomplished actress. If the Due de Sarraguais had perpetrated a similar practical joke at the expense of Madame de Pom- padour he would have fared worse than the unfortunate Chevalier de Resseguier, who for having made some verses on the King's mistress was condemned, without trial, to twenty years' imprisonment followed by banishment. According to Dumouriez, Madame du Barry must at this moment have been considering for the last three months 134 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry the advisability of sending him (Dumouriez) to the Bas- tille for refusing to "worship" her, an offence apparently worse than the clumsy insult of the Due de Larraguais, for in the latter case this "not very vindictive woman" contented herself by intimating to the oflfender that it would be advisable for him to visit England for a few weeks, This could hardly be considered a punishment at all, for if England be a prison — to quote the words of Rosencrantz — " then is the world one." The principal sufferer by the Due's pleasantry was "la Gourdan." That estimable dealer in human flesh was accustomed to take a number of her " white slaves, " down to Fontainebleau each year for the convenience of those customers who found a journey to Paris inconveniently long. The old procuress was innocent of any participar tion in the Due's little joke, but it is impossible to feel any sympathy for her, all the same. The police received orders to drive all the "unfortunate females" out of the town. If Madame du Barry had anything to do with this step it can hardly be made a reproach to her — but it is more likely that the measure originated with Louis XV who cordially hated vice — in other people. When the Court left Fontainebleau is not stated, and is of no great consequence, but it was back at Versailles early in December, when Madame du Barry had again to implore the King's clemency for an offender. As usual she gained her point and saved a poor fellow from execu- tion, making the fourth life she had saved in fewer than eight months — no light set-off against unchastity, frivolity, and extravagance, which are the worst crimes laid to her account. The story is so charmingly told in De Belleval's Souve- A Portrait Drawn by a Soldier's Hand 135 nirs d'un cheiiau-leger that we cannot do better than translate the passage, which also incidentally contains one of the best pen-portraits of Madame du Barry that we have. 7 December, 1769. " A young man of Aumale, named Carpentier, enlisted on account of some family quarrel, about a year ago, and served in the regiment de Mestre de Camp General, which was in garrison at Provins. His conduct was satis- factory, but one fine day he was seized with homesick- ness, so he declares, and deserted, and — which was more grave still — with his uniform and horse, which he intended to send back, he said, after he had gone two or three posts. The officers of the regiment, which was then under the command of the Chevalier d'Abense, Camp Master commanding, tried poor Carpentier, who only replied with tears, and condemned him to death. "I received at Versailles a letter from M. d'Abense relat- ing the afl!air, stating that the poor wretch implored my aid, saying that I should not forsake him if I knew his sad fate; — that for disciplinary reasons the officers had been obliged to condemn him, but that they all pitied poor Carpentier; and finally that M. d'Abense had granted a respite in order to give me the time to do what I could. I soon made up my mind what to do, and ran off to the Due d'Aiguillon, to whom I usually had recourse. At the first words I uttered, he cried, 'It is not I who can obtain that from the King, but the Com- tesse du Barry. Come back presently with your petition, and I will take you to her; that is the surest means of obtaining pardon for your protege.' At the hour stated I presented myself at the Due d'Aiguillon's house, in full 136 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry uniform, and he, faithful to his promise, was waiting for me, and went straight to the favourite like one for whom the doors are always open. " I had already often seen the Countess, but from afar; sufficiently well to allow me to judge of her renowned beauty in the ensemble, but not well enough to study the details of it. She was carelessly sitting, or rather it may be said lying on a large fauteuil, and wore a dress with garlands of roses on a white ground, which I can see even now as I write, fifteen years afterwards. "Madame du Barry was one of the prettiest women at Court, where there were so many, and certainly the most bewitching, on account of the perfections of her person. Her hair, which she often wore without powder, was fair, and a most beautiful colour, and she had such a profusion of it that she did not know what to do with it. Her blue eyes, widely open, had a kindly and frank expression, and she fixed them upon those to whom she spoke, and seemed to follow in their faces the effect of her words. She had a tiny nose, a very small mouth, and a com- plexion of dazzling whiteness. She instantly fciscinated every one, and that happened to me, for I was so im- pressed that I almost forgot my petition in the delight of gazing at her. I was then about twenty-five years old. She quickly noticed my confusion, as did also the Due d'Alguillon, who neatly turned it ofi" with one of those compliments he knows so well how to make. I then presented my petition, adding some explanations, and dwelling forcibly on the necessity there was for haste, and the hopes we placed in her of saving the life of tfie un- fortunate Carpentier. " ' I promise to speak to the King, sir,' she replied to A Portrait Drawn by a Soldier's Hand 137 me, 'and I hope that His Majesty will not refuse me this favour. The Due knows well that his friends are my friends, and I thank him for not forgetting that,' she added, turning towards him with a charming smile. She then questioned me about my family, and how long I had served, and dismissed us, telling me that I should soon have news from her. She gave her hand to the Due d'Aiguillon, who kissed it, saying, 'That is for the Captain-Lieutenant — is there nothing for the company ? ' which made her laugh, and she bestowed upon me the same favour, of which I quickly took advantage. " The next day, when I was on guard, a lackey, in the well-known livery of the Comtesse, and who had been to our hotel to ask for me, came, and said that his mistress expected me at six o'clock. At the hour named, I presented myself at the door of her apartment and was ushered in. There were a great number of persons, and the King was also there, standing with his back against the chimney-piece. On perceiving me Madame du Barry said to His Majesty, 'Sire, here is my light-horsemjin, who comes to thank your Majesty.' "'Thank, in the first place, Madame la Comtesse,' said Louis XV to me, ' and tell your protege that if I pardon him, he must, by attention to my service, cause the fault of which he has been guilty to be forgotten.' I do not well know what I replied to the King, but the Due d'Aiguillon, who was present, assured me that I said all that was necessary, and that the King was satisfied with me, and very much pleased that Madame du Barry had been chosen to ask for Carpentier's pardon. The same evening the good news was sent off to Provins, where the poor fellow was expecting his death. He afterwards made 138 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry a good soldier and became an example to the regiment. "Madame du Barry was good-natured, and loved to oblige others;— of which this story is a proof the more to add to the others. No one can deny that, not even her worst enemies, and she was very different in that respect from Madame de Pompadour, who never forgot an insult, and did not know what it Wcis to forgive one. Madame du Barry never bore ill-will, and was the first to laugh at all the songs which were made about her. I was astonished — as she had not been brought up to it — to see how quickly she had caught the tone and manners of the ladies of the Court. She often lets fall some risky phrases, such as they are not accustomed to hear at Versailles, but she knows her book, and never allows herself complete freedom of speech but when with the King, who is amused at the novelty of the thing. " The story, which I told my comrades, of the goodness of the Comtesse, was received with loud applause, and Vicomte du Barry, our cornet, heard nothing but compli- ments and praises of his young aunt. We always believe that he related these to her, for she ever after showed a marked preference for the light horse, above all the troops of the household brigade. For my part, I was always afterwards treated with kindness, and I often met her at the house of the Duchesse d'Aiguillon, to whom she was greatly attached on account of her husband. I never visited her rooms but twice afterwards, and that was to look for M. d'Aiguillon on business connected with the regiment, when I had not found him at his house and the matter was urgent. But the place of a plain soldier was not in the midst of all the courtiers who thronged her apartment to pay their court to her, or to meet His A Portrait Drawn by a Soldier's Hand 139 Majesty there. She felt that and had the delicacy (though she treated me very kindly when I met her) to never ask me why I did not come to see her — as a good many women would have done. It was a different thing at the Due d'Aiguillon's, as he was our commander, and the ' red-coats ' were often seen there ; or at the Marechale de Mirepoix's, where I went pretty frequently. ' Ah ! there is my light horseman,' was the phrase which the Comtesse never failed to use when she saw me, and then she would ask if there was anything she could do for me. As I invariably replied there was not, she said at last, ' He always answers " no " ; when there are so many others who would answer " yes. " My dear Due, are they all like that in your company?' "'Assuredly not,' replied the Due d'Aiguillon, and the laughter which followed seemed as though it would never cease." It would be difiBcult for even the most practised novelist to improve upon this scene. The actors are all natural because the young soldier did not attempt (as a young literary man would have done) to make them natural. The confusion and bashfulness of De Belleval; the old courtier coming to his friend's relief with a timely com- pliment; Du Barry lying with studied negligence in her arm-chair, pleased — as every pretty woman would be — to see the effect of her marvellous beauty; the old King moodily leaning against the chimney-piece; are all perfect sketches. Noticeable, too, are the words used by the King, " Thank, in the first place (d'abord), Madame la Comtesse." Louis was pleased with De Belleval for having had the happy thought to present the request through Madame du Barry, 140 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry though the idea really originated with the Due d'Aiguil- lon. The King — never very merciful— was particularly severe on desertion, and seldom pardoned a soldier who was guilty of that offence. A curious custom prevailed that if a deserter was arrested and, on his way to prison, chanced to meet the King, he was pardoned. Louis, when quite a young man, did once meet a deserter in this manner, and pardoned him. A few days later a soldier, who had deserted, but had not been arrested, begged the Comtesse de Toulouse to implore his pardon of the King. She pleaded for him, but finding she could not succeed, endeavoured to gain her point by a stratagem. The man was arrested in such a manner that he and his escort met the King on his road to the hunt. The deserter asked for the customary pardon, but the King, who saw through the trick, appeared embarrassed, and ordered the escort to take their prisoner to gaol. It was pointed out to the King that the man, who had been in hiding, had suffered himself to be arrested in the hope of obtaining the Royal pardon, and therefore it would not be right to take advantage of his surrender. "His Majesty thereupon ordered that the prison doors should be opened to him, which was done; but he did not receive a pardon." What became of this particular deserter is not stated, but it is most likely that he was re-arrested and shot. The anecdote shows, however, that Louis XV was not apt to overlook desertion, though it is true that in the case of Carpentier all the officers who constituted the court-martial had recommended the prisoner to mercy, and the President had even asked De Belleval to procure the man's pardon, if possible. Madame du Barry appears not only to have willingly A Portrait Drawn by a Soldier's Hand 141 aided in doing a good action, but to have done it grace- fully. There is not a trace in her language of the vulgarity and coarseness which many writers ascribe to the favourite. On the contrary De Belleval is astonished to find how quickly she has picked up the- manners of the Court, and he adds — though presumably on hearsay evidence — that she reserved her vulgarity for when she was alone with the King. Certainly there is no vulgarity in her language or conduct, as recorded in this incident, and De Belleval says that in her after conduct towards him she displayed a tact and delicacy that would have been found wanting in many a high-bom lady. A plain soldier, De Belleval thought, had no business among the courtiers who crowded the salons of Madame du Barry to pay their court to the favourite, or to approach the King, who was an almost daily visitor there. He therefore abstained from further visits, and Madame du Barry not only appreciated his motives, but considerately forbore from pressing him with invitations which he would have had a difficulty in refusing. Yet Dumouriez would ask us to believe that she sent him to the Bastille for the very same conduct which she thought sensible in De Belleval, — a curious proof of what a difference the mental standpoint makes in the manner iu which two men will regard a similar occurrence. CHAPTER VI MARIE ANTOINETTE AND MADAME DU BARRY The year 1770 opened (says Pidansat de Mairobert) with an incident which "did great credit to the new mistress." Here is the story as he relates it. "The first of January Madame du Barry entered the King's room in high spirits, and told him that she had come to ask for her New Year's gift, — namely the loges of Nantes, worth about forty thousand francs a year, and which had formerly belonged to the Duchesse de Larraguais; she added that it was for her dear friend the Marechale de Mirepoix. The King smiled and replied, 'Madam, I am sorry not to be able to grant you this favour; it is already disposed of.' The fair Countess began to pout, and replied, 'Very well! that makes the fourth favour that I have asked and you have refused me. The devil take me if I ever ask for anything again.' — ' You are grum- bling too soon,' replied His Majesty. 'You begin the year very badly.' — 'And you begin it much worse,' retorted the favourite, more angry still. 'Your reproach will not make me change my mind,' said her august lover, gazing at her tenderly. 'It only confirms me in my resolution. It is very good of you to be so warmly interested for your friend, but once more I tell you there is nothing to 142 Marie Antoinette and Madame du Barry 143 be done ; this present is promised, and would you like to know to whom, Madam? It is for you; it is the gift I have reserved for you,' and at the same time he kissed her. Madame du Barry made haste to inform everyone of the King's gift, and the gallant and witty manner in which it had been bestowed. The courtiers extolled her conduct, which, if not over-respectful, showed the frank, open, generous nature of the Comtesse." The story is true in the main, but it did not happen quite so dramatically as Pidansat makes out. In the first place it may be as well to explain what the loges of Nantes were. On the counterscarp of the fortification of that town many shops, houses, booths and sheds were erected, and it was the rent of these struc- tures which was called les loges. Only a year before, the King had bestowed this lucrative property on the Duchesse de Brancas de Larraguais, but she died before she had received more than a few months' rent, and it was perhaps on that account that the gift to Madame du Barry was conditional on her pa)ring thirty thousand francs to the heirs of the late Duchesse. When Madame du Barry came to Court she required a duenna, or "sheep-dog," — some old lady well-acquainted with the multifarious details of the routine and etiquette of Court life. The Marechale de Mirepoix obtained this post, and received, it is said, a hundred thousand francs a year for her services, but the old lady strongly objected to this sum being called a "salary,"— it was a gift from her dear friend the Comtesse du Barry. It is to be feared that this casuistical distinction was not due to any moral ob- jection to be considered the paid servant of a courtesan, but rather to the fact that the Marechale was a confirmed 144 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry mendicant and was always begging the King, to pay her debts, and by regarding the handsome sum she received from Madame du Barry as a "wind-fall" she avoided the necessity of including it in her income on the frequent occasions on which she sent a tabulated statement of her assets and liabilities to Louis XV. One of these begging letters in still extant, and deserves to be quoted briefly. The Marechale de Mirepoix begins by stating that her entire fortune consists of A pension of 12,000 francs. Another of 8,000 A yearly gratification of 12,000 „ A salary as " dame du palais" of ... . 6,000 „ And, for entire patrimony, rents from Lorraine amounting to 24,000 „ 62,000 francs or nearly £1 2500, which, when money went nearly three times as far as it does now, might not be considered a bad income. She goes on to state that her indispensable expenses amount every year to eighty thousand francs, with the result that there is an annual deficit of eighteen thousand francs, which, as she naively remarks, occasions a consider- able disorder in her affairs. Hence it follows — for reasons which Mr. Micawber would have been happy to explain to her — that she is constantly liable to writs, executions, and "all sorts of humiliations," of which, like a good many other people, she " ardently desires to get rid," in order that she may " obtain that tranquillity, which she has long desired in vain, more particularly as she is anxious to consecrate the remainder of her days to doing every- thing that may be agreeable to His Majesty." She unself- ishly proposes to give a lien on her estates in return for Marie Antoinette and Madame du Barry 145 a pension of forty thousand francs, which, with her other pensions and salaries, will make a total of seventy-eight thousand francs. This application is dated March, 1770. At the foot is written, "By Command of the King. Order to pay 20,000 francs." Less than three months previously, on January 15, in the same year, there had been another petition from her, couched as follows, "His Majesty has been kind enough to grant the Marechale de Mirepoix a special gratification of twelve thousand livres for each of the years 1766, 1767, and 1768. The necessities which caused this favour of the King still existing, Madame la Marechale de Mirepoix begs the King to grant her the saxiiQ gratification for the year 1769." On this also is written, " By the King's command. Order for 12,000 livres." Louis XV felt that he had done enough for this insa- tiable old lady, and therefore determined to present this valuable property to his mistress, though he might doubt- less have found with very little trouble a more deserving recipient of his bounty, for the income derived from the loges of Nantes would have saved from want and misery the widow of some brave officer, and would not have sufficed to pay a month's jewellery bill of Madame du Barry. We must dismiss as fictitious, however, Pidansat's account of Madame du Barry bouncing into the King's room on the morning of New Year's Day, asking for this im- portant privilege for her friend, and pouting like a spoiled child because she did not get it. No doubt Madame du Barry did ask the gift for her friend, and it is absolutely certain she obtained it herself, for the brevet is still in existence, and as it is dated December 23, 1769, it rather 10 146 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry spoils the dramatic effect of the "Anecdote," though Pidansat has in this case, perhaps involuntarily, come much nearer the truth than is usual with him. During the first two months of 1770 there appears to have been an armed peace between De Choiseul and Madame du Barry. She was not likely to move unless attacked, and he was busy strengthening his position, and arranging the marriage of one of the most celebrated and unfortunate couples known to history. On May 16, 1770, Louis Auguste, Dauphin of France, grandson of Louis XV, was married in the chapel at Versailles to Marie Antoinette of Lorraine, Archduchess of Austria, daughter of Maria Theresa. The marriage was the work of the Due de Choiseul; in one of the letters of Maria Theresa to her daughter she recommends her never to forget that, and Marie Antoinette never did. Many of the Memoir writers seem to think that the inimical feeling displayed by the Dauphiness towards the Royal Mistress was due to the fact that, out of gratitude to Choiseul, she regarded his enemies as her enemies. Some of the other writers, however, maintain that Marie Antoinette found Madame du Barry " charm- ing and adorable," and one — who is far from being trust- worthy, however — asserts that the Dauphiness, duly mindful of the instructions of her mother, went so far as to kiss the favourite. "• Maria Theresa certainly, both in letters to her daughter and to the Austrian Ambassador, recommended " holding a candle to the devil," but the Archduchess practically ignored the advice. It is very possible that, at first, a ' Capefigue, Reines de la Main gauche, p. 98. Marie Antoinette and Madame du Barry 147 virtuous, young girl, too happy and too beautiful to be jealous, might have been attracted by the resplendent beauty of the fair Comtesse, but that feeling did not last long. Marie Antoinette, who was less than fifteen when she was married, was so innocent that she asked one of the courtiers, shortly after her arrival at Versailles, " What position Madame du Barry occupied, and what were her! duties ? " The courtier rather taken aback by the question, replied that "she amused the King." " Then I swear I will take her place! " cried the young Archduchess, at which, we may fancy, the courtier discreetly coughed. Later on she learned the nature of Madame du Barry's functions, and then treated the favourite with that scorn and contempt which a virtuous woman, who has been well brought up, should always evince for a fallen sister — conduct which sometimes induces a man to think that the more delicate perception of women has enabled them to detect a literal error in the First Epistle of Peter, and that it is Chastity, not Charity, which "shall cover the multitude of sins." The universal prevalence of this feeling, which has endured from the days of Diana downwards, renders it unnecessary to imagine that Madame du Barry aroused the wrath of the Dauphiness by making spiteful observations about her. That Du Barry was jealous of the superior beauty of Marie Antoinette seems very improbable. Sympathy for the sad fate of the unfortunate Queen — and which, strange to say, is never expended upon Madame du Barry who met precisely the same death — has caused several generations of men to see in her face a surpassing loveliness, but a man who could divest himself of this exoteric influence and unimpassionedly compare the portraits of both women, I/) 8 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry might not impossibly find the mistress the lovelier of the two. But, even granting the question to be doubtful, it must be remembered that in 1770 Jeanne du Barry was twenty-six, and consequently in the full perfection of her beauty (which physiologists assert is not attained before twenty-five), whilst Marie Antoinette had not completed her fifteenth year, and that is usually considered an " ugly age" for a girl. There were several reasons why the Princess should cordially dislike the favourite, but the feeling was not reciprocated to any extent, though Du Barry did show a short-lived indignation at some of the acts of Marie Antoinette. Nettled by the scorn of the Princess it is not improbable that Madame du Barry may have made use of some caustic remarks, but, if so, they never went farther than the King's ears, and as he, though liking to make mischief as a general rule, would have passed a bad quarter of an hour with his mistress if he had betrayed her confidence, he is pretty certain not to have repeated her abusive language. The statements in several well-known histories about Madame du Barry ridiculing the Dauphin and Dauphiness, have been evolved by the writers out of their inner consciousness, or are repetitions of stories told by partisans of the Choiseul faction.' ' She (Madame du Barry) renders the Dauphin ridiculous in the King's eyes. She has especially made impudent attacks on the Dauphiness. She, who has trodden under foot every decency of her sex, or perhaps never knew any, relates with bitterness every trifling ofience of this young Princess against the laws of etiquette. Lacretelle, Sistoire de France pendant le iSeme siecle, Liv. XIV. 4. 346. Marie Antoinette and Madame du Barry 149 The National Archives at Vienna contain the letters •which passed between Maria Theresa and her daughter, and also the instructions given to the Austrian Ambassador at Versailles, Comte Mercy d'Argenteau, and his reports on the conduct of the young Princess. The Empress dwells constantly on the necessity for being on good terms with the Mistress, and her daughter as resolutely refuses to speak at all to Madame du Barry, whilst it may easily be imagined that the position of the Ambassador is far from being a comfortable one. In the first letter of Marie Antoinette to her mother in which Madame du Barry is mentioned (dated July g, 1770), she says, " The King does me a thousand kindnesses, and I love him tenderly, but it is pitiable to see his infatuation for Madame du Barry, who is the most foolish and imperti-- nent creature imaginable. She played every evening whilst we were at Marly, and on two or three occasions I found myself by her side, but she did not speak to me, and I did not intend to speak unless I was obliged." Only three days later Marie Antoinette again writes, " I forgot to tell you that I wrote yesterday for the first time to the King. I was very frightened, knowing that Madame du Barry reads everything. But you may be quite sure, my very dear mother, that I shall commit no fault either for her or against her." The Ambassador in reply to a letter from the Empress (saying that there are rumours in Vienna that the Princess had ofiended the Mistress and that the King had taken umbrage in consequence) assures Maria Theresa that the Dauphiness had behaved discreetly, and that he will keep a sharp eye on her actions, the better to do which he has bribed one of her maids and two of her footmen or ushers 150 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry to tell him everything that goes on in Marie Antoinette's apartment. This last seems hardly a dignified proceeding on the part of an Ambassador, and goes far to justify Madame Elizabeth's description of him as " an old rascal, more apt to deceive the Empress than to enlighten her.'' Madame Elizabeth was, however, prejudiced against him because she was no doubt aware that he had informed Maria Theresa, that " the daughters of Louis XV use the Dauphiness as a cat's paw, and excite her to an enmity against Madame du Barry which they dare not show themselves." The Princesses Rag, Snip, and Pig — as their affectionate father termed them — also knew, most likely, that Comte Mercy d'Argenteau had had a long interview with Madame du Barry with the object of inducing her to believe that the Dauphiness did not really regard her with "an eye of aversion" but acted at the instigation of " Mesdames her aunts." We are so prone to picture to ourselves Marie Antoi- nette as she was in her last days, that we experience a difficulty in imagining that she was ever anything else. Painters have depicted, hundreds of times, the ill-starred Queen regarding her murderers with a calm, lofty, noble scorn, her pale, handsome face stamped with the beauty of the deepest sorrow borne with resignation; and the recollection of one of these presentments comes into our mind at the mere mention of her name. But sympathy for her fate must not blind us to the fact that she herself was distinctly imsympathetic. She had not the secret of winning men's hearts. In spite of Burke's impassioned prose, it was never likely that ten thousand swords would leap from their scabbards to avenge a look that threatened her with insult, for she lacked that subtle magnetism which sways Marie Antoinette and Madame du Barry 151 men's minds and makes them willing to die for the person who possesses it. Marie Antoinette had, when young, rather a sarcastic and mocking tongue, and the dangerous habit of showing too plainly her likes and dislikes. A score of proofs of this could be found in the notes of contemporary writers ; we will content ourselves with quoting one only of these observers, M. de Belleval, whose straightforward, honest account of men, women, and doings renders his little book as useful to the student of history as it is entertaining to the general reader. He says, "The Dauphiness detested the favourite, as did also the Dauphin, and neither of them lost an occasion of showing it. But in our company of light horse, and amongst a great number of other people, this Princess was not greatly loved ; she had the misfortune of not being able to govern her tongue, and the habit of making fun of everybody. She had said, amongst other things, that she did not like those 'red-coats' you met everywhere at Versailles, meaning by that the maison rouge, that is to say the ' gendarmes, ' the musketeers, and the light horse, and this remark became known throughout the companies and prepossessed the men against her. We were, more- over, attached to Monsieur d'Aiguillon who treated us very kindly. The Dauphin and Dauphiness hated him, and we supported our captain-lieutenant. We were then, for the most part, Barriens, as was said then, to signify those who were of the party of Madame du Barry against the Due de Choiseul, who was stiff, haughty, and too much of the great lord, qualities which spoiled this great statesman and deep politician. His sister, the Duchesse de Gramont, who was as disagreeable as possible, and as mischievous as the devil, did him the greatest possible 152 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry harm, and there were people who did not belong to his party, because they disliked her. The beauty of Madame du Barry, and the radiancy of her youth choked her, and she was annoyed at not being able to preserve her place near His Majesty. She aflFected to treat the King's mistress with profound disdain, but the devil lost nothing by that." Although she had been married only a few weeks, poor Marie Antoinette had, it will be seen, already made her- self unpopular with at least three companies of the household troops. As for the Dauphin's detestation of the favourite, Comte Mercy d'Argenteau gives a curious account of how it arose. We quote a portion of a letter written to the Empress Maria Theresa on July 14, 1770. " This Prince (the Dauphin) had for some time past evinced a great desire to be invited to the suppers at Saint Hubert, where the King made frequent hunting parties. The Due de Saint Megrin, son of M. de la Vauguyon, was directed by his father to make known the Dauphin's wishes to Madame du Barry, and she did not fail to inform the King, who gave his consent, so that, from that day, the Dauphin took part in all the excur- sions and remained to supper, and consequently was to some degree initiated into those parties of pleasure where the favourite plays the chief part, and where decency is not always scrupulously observed. However, there resulted from this arrangement an effect quite dif- ferent from that which had been anticipated ; for Mesdames de France alarmed at the danger into which the Dauphin was running, let him know what the favourite was, and informed him of the most striking incidents of her life, and the disturbances that her presence at Court occasioned. This information made such a strong impression on the Marie Antoinette and Madame du Barry 153 Dauphin that since that time he has shown frequent signs of disgust for the Comtesse du Barry, who certainly will never again be viewed favourably by the Prince." With all due respect to Comte Mercy d'Argenteau it seems hardly possible to believe this account. To ask us to imagine that the Dauphin had lived two years under the same roof as Madame du Barry without knowing that she was his grandfather's mistress is making rather too heavy a call on our credulity, especially when viewed in conjunction with the fact that his child-wife was made fuUy aware of the favourite's position a few days after she arrived in France. It is the most astounding testimonial to the purity of the moral atmosphere of Versailles; but one cannot help wondering why the old King, who had taken such pains that his grandson should be utterly ignorant of all evil, should suddenly have admitted him to himting suppers where " decency was not always scrupu- lously observed." The dislike of Marie Antoinette for the favourite was accentuated by an incident which occurred almost on the very day on which this letter was written. The Court was then at Choisy. At a theatrical entertainment given to the Court in a small theatre, or room which served as a theatre, some of the ladies-in-waiting refused to make room for the Comtesse du Barry and her two friends, the Duchesse de Mirepoix, and the Comtesse de Valentinois. A quarrel ensued in which Madame du Barry appears to have taken no part, for if she had come out in her native vulgarity one of her enemies would have reported it. One of the ladies who refused to give way to the King's favourite, was the Comtesse de Gramont, who is not to be confounded with the Duchesse de Gramont— a mistake 154 Th^ Life and Times of Madame du Barry which Horace Walpole made at first, till he was set right by Madame du Deffand. The Comtesse was the sister-in- law of the Duchesse; — a lively young widow who is de- scribed as foolish, impudent, and talkative. ^ She seems to have displayed all these qualities, and to have made some remarks about Madame du Barry, which the Mistress repeated to the King. Louis XV was morbidly sensitive about insults to his Mistress, his conscience, or what there was left of it, telling him that all reflections upon her struck him, and he ordered the Comtesse de Gramont not to come within fifteen leagues of the Court. The Comtesse de Gramont was one of the ladies-in- waiting of the Dauphiness, and Marie Antoinette's hatred of Madame du Barry was certainly not lessened by this contretemps. Several other ladies were concerned in the scandal, but the Comtesse was selected as an example for punishment. Three months later the Comtesse wrote to Marie An- toinette to say that her health was so bad she required to come to Paris for medical advice, and begged the Dauphiness to ask the King's permission. Marie Antoi- nette at once did so, but the King's reply was that he would consider the application. Marie Antoinette pressed the point, and said, " Consider, papa, what a disgrace it would be for me if one of my ladies-in-waiting died in exile; " at which the King laughed, and replied, "Madam, I have executed your orders. " He had not, however, executed the " orders, " and had no intention of doing so, for more than two -years later (1773) we find Marie 'Madame du Deffand, Letter to Horace Walpole. Marie •Antoinette and Madame du Barry 155 Antoinette again petitioned the King for her friend and met with a sharp rebuff in consequence. As Madame du Barry was the cause of the banishment of the Comtesse, and was the offended party, she was asked to intercede for the pardon of the lady-in-waiting, but, though not very vindictive, she did not appear willing to take any steps, being in all probability aware that the King had made up his mind on the subject, and was not easily to be moved. Her influence over him was un- doubtedly great, but he was not, as some historians imag- ine, her slave, and so fascinated by her charms that he was ready to blindly obey her least wish. The best proof of the contrary is found in the fact that at this very time —the latter part of 1770— he was thinking about getting married to an Austrian Archduchess. In the Correspon- dance secrete are two letters which cast a curious light on the King's proceedings. The first is addressed to the Comte de Broglie, who was head of the " Secret Corre- spondence " department, and who had several times acted as one of the agents of Louis. "Versailles, 6 June, 1770. "As one never knows what may happen, if Durand has not left, show him this letter, or if otherwise, send him a copy in cypher. Let him carefully examine, from head to feet, forgetting nothing that it is possible to see, the Archduchess Elizabeth, and let him even learn all he can of her character, but let it all be done in the greatest secrecy, and without raising any suspicion at Vienna, and let him give me an account of her, without hurrying him- self, on some safe occasion. " The other, letter is worth quoting in extenso for it not 156 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry only contains a passing mention of the Archduchess, but there is a good deal about Madame du Barry. It seems to have been written rather later in the year, possibly not long before the dismissal of Choiseul — an event that Louis was certainly contemplating when he wrote this letter, for he was never so dangerous as when he was compliment- ary. His letters are not easy to read; he wrote long paragraphs, unrelieved by a single comma or period, and with all the sentences running into one another. The spelling, too, was original and peculiar, and he had a habit of adding an s to the third person plural of verbs which is not without its utility to the student, as it enables his unsigned instructions to his agents to be easily identified. "You will find a Letter in this packet from M. de Fuentes containing praises of you which are quite true. " I begin with M. d'Aiguillon how can you imagine that he can replace you, I hke him well enough, it is true, on account of the trick that I served him a long time ago, but hated as he is what good could he do? " You manage my business very well, and I am satisfied with you, but beware of those around you, and advisers — that is what I have always disliked and detest more than ever. You know Madame du Barry, it was certainly not M. de Richelieu who introduced her to me although he knew her, and he dare not see her, and the only time he did see her for a moment was by my express order. I thought I knew her before her marriage she is pretty I am satisfied and I recommend her every day to beware also of those who surround her and advise her, for you may well believe they are not wanting she has no dislike to you, she knows your mind and wishes you no harm Marie Antoinette and Madame du Barry 157 the exasperation against her has been frightful and unjust for the most part, they would be at her feet— that is the way of the world. " She is very pretty she pleases me that ought to suffice. Do you want me to marry a lady of rank if the archduchess were such as I should desire her to be I would take her to wife with great pleasure for there must be an end of this and the fair sex otherwise would always trouble me, for very surely you will not see on my part a dame de Maintenon. And that I think is enough for this time. I have no need to recommend secrecy to you about all this, my writing is no better than yours. '" The story of the fall of Choiseul, and the part which Madame du Barry bore in it, will be related in the next chapter. ' The translation of this letter is as literal as is consistent with sense, in order to give the reader an idea of the King's epistolarj style. CHAPTER VII "HE FELL, LIKE AUTUMN FRUIT THAT MELLOWED LONG" One of the heaviest charges brought against Madame du Barry is that of having procured the dismissal of the most capable statesman of whom France could boast, and thereby having drawn upon her unfortunate country an era of misrule which culminated in the Revolution. Authors of every degree of trustworthiness, from the grand old Scotsman who would rather have cut off his right hand, than have knowingly published a lie, to the crafty blackmailers Thevenot and Mairobert, to whom truth was an occa- sional and rare visitant, have repeated this statement so often and so authoritatively that it may be the height of foolhardy presumption for one with no more weight than the present writer to cast doubts upon a tradition that is seemingly so well-founded. The fact is that nearly all the contemporary writers of Memoirs, who were supposed to be in a position to know the state of affairs — as for instance Besenval and Madame du Deflfand — were warm partisans of the Due de Choiseul. His downfall appeared to them so astonishing that it was only explicable by one of two causes; either it was due to the machinations of Madame du Barry, or it was a voluntary act on the part of the Due, who felt too virtuous 158 "He fell, like AutumnFruti thai Mellowed Long" 159 to exist longer in the contaminated atmosphere of the Court. The latter theory has but few exponents, for though Versailles was an Armida Palace, Choiseul was a very unlikely person to play Rinaldo; but the former has been generally accepted, and is believed by historians to the present day. It has even received the sanction of Carlyle, who, on almost the first page of his French Revolution, says, " For stout Choiseul would discern in the Dubarry nothing but a wonderfully dizened Scarlet Woman; and go on his way as if she were not. Intolerable: the source of sighs, tears, of pettings and poutings : which would not end till ' France' (La France, as she named her royal valet) finally mastered heart to see Choiseul; and with that quivering in the chin {tremblement du menton natural in such cases) faltered out a dismissal; dismissal of his last substantial man, but pacification of his scarlet- woman." Considerably more than half a century has elapsed since these words were penned, and the researches of men who were then unborn have cast fresh light upon historical facts, — not always to the advantage of " poor agitated Besenval," from whom Carlyle took the account he has given us of the fall of Choiseul. As for Pidansat de Mairobert he is hardly worth the trouble of refuting, but as a sample of his general truth- fulness — ex uno disce omnes — we will give the copy of the King's letter, ordering the Due de Choiseul into exile, as it is printed in the Anecdotes. "My Cousin, " The dissatisfaction caused by your services compels me to exile you to Chanteloup, whither you will betake yourself i6o The Life and Times of Madame du Barry within twenty-four hours. I should have sent you much farther, if it were not for the particular esteem I have for Madame de Choiseul, in whose health I am much interested. Take care that your conduct does not make me take other steps. With which I pray God, my cousin, to have you in His holy keeping. " Louis." This version, due to the inventive talent of Pidansat de Mairobert, was copied into various journals and books, and was accepted as authentic for upwards of fifty years, till, in 1829, M. Gabriel de Choiseul published an article in the Revue de Paris. As a relative of the Due, he had access to the family papers, and was enabled to give a copy of the original letter written by the King, which ran as follows, " I order my cousin, the Due de Choiseul, to place the resignation of his offices of Secretary of State and Super- intendent of Posts, in the hands of the Due de La Vrilliere, and to retire to Chanteloup until fresh orders on my part. " Versailles, this 24th day of December 1770. " Louis." Someone has said that if you give a lie twenty-four hours' start it will always keep ahead of the truth; how much more must this be the case when the lie has fifty years' start, and is about a woman whose reputation was so tainted, — for the wording of the letter, though not the actual writing of it, is ascribed to Madame du Barry, and is even now quoted as an exhibition of feminine spite. "^ ' Pidansat de Mairobert's version is given as the correct one in a book dated 1883. "^ He fell, like Autumn Fruit that Mellowed Long" i6i That the King's mistress should have compassed the fall of the Prime Minister was extremely natural. She had, ranged against her, the three most powerful persons in the kingdom, the Dauphin, the Dauphiness, and the Due de Choiseul, and to oppose this coalition, nothing but the hold which her beauty gave her over the notori- ously fickle, feeble, and unstable King. Against the two former she could do nothing, and it would therefore have been good generalship on her part to attack that wing of the enemy's forces where she was alone likely to obtain a victory. Besides, of the three, Choiseul was the most inveterate and implacable foe. By dint of constant prod- ding, Mesdames of France had persuaded their nephew that he ought to dislike the favourite, but that notable lack of decision which helped to bring him to the scaf- fold, rendered him, throughout all his life, of small account as either an active friend or foe. Madame du Barry is said also to have offended the young Prince by insinuat- ing that he was impotent. If she did say so it was a very natural remark, for if Louis XV thought it was time he had "finished with the beau sexe," his grandson did not think it time to begin, and though he had been married four months to a young and beautiful Princess had never had the courage or the inclination to enter her bed-room. He did at last inform Marie Antoinette that he would visit her on a certain night, and she men- tioned this to one of her ladies-in-waiting, who made it known to someone else. In a few hours it was buzzed all about the Court, and reached the Dauphin himself, who was so annoyed with the Dauphiness for having betrayed his confidence that he refused to carry out his promise, and postponed it indefinitely. If this amazing II 1 62 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry degree of chastity did call forth a sneer of contempt from Madame du Barry it is small matter for surprise, for the feeling must have been generally shared by all the cour- tiers, whilst the Dauphin for his part felt little sympathy with persons like Madame du Barry. The antipathy of Marie Antoinette to Madame du Barry was only the intolerable scorn of a good young woman, who has been brought up properly, for a cour- tesan, especially when the courtesan is exercising imdue influence over a relative of the virtuous person. But being a very dutiful daughter, the Dauphiness, though she had too much pride to show any marked deference to the Mistress— as her mother would have wished — was more lukewarm in her hostility than Choiseul and his friends liked. She pouted prettily when — having in- vited the King to supper— she saw him arrive with Ma- dame du Barry, and said merrily, " Sire, I asked you for one favour; you have granted me two!" Her mother's morality was not tuned to so high a pitch, and hardly a week went by without the arrival of a courier from Vienna with letters for the Dauphiness and the Ambassador. To her daughter Maria Theresa writes on one occasion, "You ought to set an example to the Court and courtiers, to show that you do your Master's will. If any base action, or familiarities, were re- quired of you, neither I nor anyone else would ask such things, but you axe asked only to make some common- place remark and to show some regard, not for the lady, but for your grandfather, your master, your benefactor." The Ambassador, also, was instructed to repress any ten- dency the Dauphiness might show to behave with cold- ness or rudeness to Madame du Barry, and had definite *" He fell, like Autumn Fruit that Mellowed Long'" 1 63 ■orders to explain away or apologise for any affront to ■which the favourite might be subjected. To most men this duty would have been intolerable, but Comte Mercy •d'Argenteau appears from his letters to have rather liked it, or at least pretended he did. He writes to the Empress, in September 1771, "Your Majesty will have deigned to observe, in my first humble report, that the Dauphin had approved of my representations as to the advisability of the Dauphin- •ess not treating Madame du Barry too harshly. This appears to me more essential than ever, because she {Madame du Barry) is the focus of all the mischief-mak- ing and petty squabbles into which the King allows him- self to be dragged to show his resentment towards his ■children. The opportunities I have had of studying the royal favourite have enabled me to understand her. She appears to have little sense, and plenty of frivolity and vanity, but to be devoid of malice or rancour. It is easy enough to make her talk, and many times you may learn much from her indiscretion. I am sure, that if the Princess would determine to speak but a word to her, it "would be easy for me to stop all these intrigues, and prevent the thousand difficulties which arise from the •curious position of affairs at Court." Maria Theresa, though an energetic and capable ruler, was almost as selfish as Louis XV, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that her sentiments were subser- vient to her interests. When the partition of Poland took place, she describes herself as weeping continually for the woes of that unfortunate country, but, as Frederick the Great said, " the more she cried the more she grabbed, for though she was always complaining of the very unfair 1 64 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry division of the country she had managed to take for her share fully five times as much as Prussia." A similar spirit actuated her conduct in regard to her daughter with reference to the King's Mistress. In one of her numerous letters to her Ambassador she says, "We know for a certainty . here, that both England and Prussia are trying to gain over Madame du Barry. You will know whether this is the case'' — she has just said that she knows for a certainty that it is— "and if so you will"— and then follows the usual exordium to keep an eye on the conduct of the Dauphiness and per- suade her to address a few commonplace remarks to the favourite. It were, perhaps, to " consider the matter too curiously " to say that Madame du Barry was in some remote degree the cause of the sad fate of Marie Antoinette, but there is some foundation for the theory. The French Ambas- sador at the Court of Vienna at that time was the Car- dinal de Rohan, and Marie Antoinette imagined, though wrongly, that it was owing to his representations that her mother sent these constant recommendations to con- ciliate Madame du Barry. This caused Marie Antoinette to take a strong dislike to the Cardinal. On his return to France he discovered this antipathy, and to regain her favour was led into the celebrated " Diamond Necklace " affair which was fraught with disaster for all who took part in it, made Queen Marie Antoinette intensely unpo- pular, and perhaps contributed in some measure to accel- erate the approach of the Revolution. The most powerful and most implacable enemy against whom Madame du Barry had to contend, was the Prime Minister, the Due de Choiseul. Every means that he '^ He fell, like Autumn Fruit that Mellowed Long'" 1 65 could use to compass her disgrace, or to make the King disgusted with her, or tired of her, he had employed. From the day she first made her appearance at Court she had been made the object of more satire, abuse, and contumely than has probably ever before or since been lavished on one person, and it was an open secret that the men who penned these abusive paragraphs, biting epigrams, or savage verses were in the pay of the Prime Minister. Finding these means fail, he had recourse to other means even more unjustifiable. At least twice did he introduce at Court beautiful women who were likely to attract the attention of the King. One of these was the wife of a Paris physician, a Madame Millon; the other was the wife of his nephew, the Marquis de Choiseul. She was a Creole, whose maiden name was Raby. Long before the ceremony of her presentation to the King, rumours were current at the Court concerning her wonderful beauty, and her even more wonderful accomplishments. Bets were freely made that Madame du Barry would have her nose put out of joint when this new divinity appeared, but either Louis XV preferred blondes to brunettes, or possibly he was afraid of the Choiseuls gaining too much influence, for he hardly noticed the charms of the young bride, and his behaviour to her was as cold as was consistent with politeness. Although the Prime Minister was doing all in his power to procure the downfall of the favourite, and she on her side was perfectly well aware that the satirists who wrote pasquinades about her were paid out of his purse, the two enemies had to meet nearly every evening and rautually maintain a show of politeness. Naturally each was stiff and constrained in the other's presence, much 1 66 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry to the amusement of Louis XV, who observed them both narrowly, and, as he said, loved "to bring the cat and the dog together.'' Under the circumstances it would have been quite natural that Madame du Barry should have done all in her power to persuade the King to get rid of the Minister, for she must have been perfectly aware that the struggle would not end till either he had ousted her from her position or she had brought about his dis- grace. In nearly every historical work in which Madame du Barry's name appears, it is related that once, at a dinner, she took a couple of oranges and threw them in the air, crying as she did so, "Jump, Choiseul! Jump, Praslin!" On another occasion, when she had discharged a man cook, she is stated to have said to the King, " I have got rid of my Choiseul; when are you going to get rid of yours?" The authenticity of these anecdotes is doubtful, but if they emanated from Pidansat de Mai- robert they have an appearance of probability which does not usually mark his inventions. But whilst it is very likely that Madame du Barry did all in her power to render the King disgusted with the Minister, it is very unlikely that she would have succeeded if she had not been aided by a powerful faction headed by the Due d'Aiguillon, Abbe Terray, and the Chan- cellor, Mauplou, and even they might have proved too weak if the policy of the Due de Choiseul had been more fully in accordance with the wishes of his Royal Master. He had committed several political faults, or what the King, rightly or wrongly, regarded as such. To examine these in detail would be outside the province of the pre- sent work, but, briefly stated, the two main grievances which the King had against him were, that he was in- ^ He fell, like Autumn Fruit that Mellowed Long^' 1 67 dined to support the claims of the Parliaments against the King, and that he was believed to wish to draw the country into a war with England. The latter reason es- pecially weighed with the King, for he dreaded war, not only on account of the unpopularity which fresh losses would bring, but also on account of the expense. Even in a time of peace the soldiers, and more particularly the officers, did not receive their pay regularly. Comte St. Germain, when he reduced the number of officers of the household troops by more than one half, said sarcasti- cally, " I might as well keep them all, for they cost the King nothing," and indeed, all the sums that dribbled into the Exchequer were needed for the King's pleasures. There seems also to have been a lurking suspicion in the King's mind that Choiseul desired war, not because it was to the national advantage, but because he believed that in case of a war his services would be indispensable to the King. He professed, however, to do his utmost to preserve the peace of Europe, though to attain that end he had to "make a straddle," — always a dangerous oper- ation, and seldom attended with satisfactory results. A quarrel was then going on between England and Spain, relative to the possession of the Falkland Islands. These islands had remained in the possession of Spain from the time of the Treaty of Utrecht, but the English erected a fort there, and threatened to drive out the Spaniards, if they would not leave the islands. The Spaniards replied by sending to Buenos Ayres for three frigates which came and bombarded the English fort, and took the garrison prisoners. As soon as the news reached England a squad- ron was sent out, with orders to retake the islands, un- less Spain would consent to make an apology for the in- 1 68 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry suit to the English flag, and send back the prisoners without loss of time. The King of Spain consented to these terms on condition that the English should evacu- ate the islands within a certain time, and the question of possession be treated diplomatically, but England would not entertain these proposals, and demanded an uncondi- tional acceptance of the terms, and the Spaniards, though obliged to give in, were so exasperated that, if they could have found an ally, they would willingly have declared war. To Choiseul this appeared an excellent opportunity for gaining Kudos, and he coquetted with both sides, — one day assuring the English Ambassador that he would personally visit the King of Spain and persuade him to accept the English demands, the next day assuring Spain that France would give her moral and practical aid in resisting the unjust claims of England. But Louis XV knew well the dangers of this double dealing, and realised that if it became known at St. James's it would probably lead to England declaring war with France, and at the same moment swooping down on some valuable French possession. For once the secret correspondence that he kept up with Charles III of Spain and other monarchs was of some use. Perhaps also he felt that this kind of double dealing was a usur- pation of the royal prerogative. The following letter from Louis XV to Charles III will suffice to show that Madame du Barry had nothing to do with the dismissal of the Due de Choiseul. It is not dated, but the letter of Charies III in reply to it bears the date of January 2, 1771 — nine days after the fall of Choiseul! The letter written by Louis XV was sent to the French Ambassador with orders to hand it privately to the King 'He fell, like Autumn Fruit that Mellowed Long''^ 169 of Spain, and the Ambassador in his reply states that he has received, " the letter Your Majesty deigned to write to me on December 23," — that is to say the day before the fall of the Minister. " My Brother and Cousin, " Your Majesty is not ignorant that a spirit of independ- ence and fanaticism is spreading throughout my kingdom. Up to the present time I have borne this with patience and forbearance, but if I am pushed to extremities, and my Parliaments endeavour to wrest from me the sovereign authority that I hold from God alone, I am resolved to use every means to make myself obeyed. War, in these circumstances, would be a terrible disaster for me and my people. But my extreme regard for Your Majesty, the close union which exists between us, cemented as it is by our family agreement, would cause me always to forget every- thing else. "My Ministers are but my instruments, and though I may feel obliged to change them, nothing can bring about a change in our affairs, and so long as I live we shall continue united. If Your Majesty can make some sacrifices to preserve peace, without loss of honour, you would render a great service to mankind and to me in particular in the circum- stances in which I at present find myself. With which I pray God to keep you. "Versailles, the " Charles III appears to have been able to read between the lines, and to understand that the fall of Choiseul had been already determined upon, for in his reply he says that as Choiseul was instrumental in bringing about the "family pact,'' his removal from office would cause the I70 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry enemies of France and Spain to imagine that there was a coolness between the two Royal Houses. In addition to this charge, the King had reason to com- plain that the Due de Choiseul and his sister encouraged the Parliaments in their opposition to the King. Louis, in another letter to the King of Spain, says that "these bodies (the Parliaments) have been led away from their duty, less from principle than by instigations," and these instigations could not have proceeded from anyone else than the Prime Minister. Maria Theresa, who followed the dictum of a certain philosophical fool, and had learned how to let go a great wheel that was running down hill, found out, as soon as the Minister was dismissed, that she had never liked the Choiseuls and wrote to Comte Mercy d'Argenteau, "If you should hear at any time anything concerning the Choiseuls, and the cause of their disgrace — for their inconsistent and impertinent conduct had been tolerated so many years that that could not be the reason of their fall — I desire you to inform me." Her Ambas- sador appears to have been as much taken by surprise as she was, and in reply wrote a long letter of explanation. Had he been able to inform the Empress that the disgrace of the Minister had been effected by Madame du Barry he would no doubt have done so, for Maria Theresa would have been pleased to think that she had been the first to recognise the extent of the favourite's influence on the King, and the advisability of treating Madame du Barry with deference, but the reason ascribed by Comte Mercy d'Argenteau is very different. " The enemies of M. de Choiseul," he wrote to the Empress, "persuaded the King that the Due had encouraged the Parliaments in their disobedience, and that there might be a rising in the '^ He fell, like Autumn Fruit that Mellowed Long^' 1 7 1 kingdom if the Minister were not quickly dismissed." On the whole then we feel bound to conclude that, though Madame du Barry hated the Choiseuls as much as she was capable of hating anybody, and was, no doubt, elated at their fall, she did very little to bring about that fall, which she was powerless to achieve. Many his- torians, however, impute to her the whole and sole re- sponsibility of the act. The Due de Choiseul is pictured as a noble, high-spirited man, and the only capable states- man in the country, and he is described as being sacrificed by the King he had served so long and so faithfully, to gratify the whim of a wanton woman. To make the virtues of the disgraced Minister still more conspicuous by contrast, the Due d'Aiguillon, who succeeded to his offices, is depicted in the worst colours. He embezzled the public money, was an arrant coward, and, as a matter of course, the lover of Madame du Barry. Carlyle has, in some degree, lent the weight of his vast authority to these statements; but Besanval, from whom he quotes, was a warm partisan of the Choiseuls, whose assertions must not be taken without caution, and in his sketch of the pre-Revolutionary times Carlyle perhaps did not evince the same care in verifying statements which marks the main body of the book. If the Due de Choiseul were really, as Carlyle calls him, the " last substantial man " on whom the King could rely, France was indeed badly supplied with statesmen at a time when she greatly needed them. A dexterity, which bordered dangerously near duplicity, was per- haps his most valuable merit, but he had the talent to recognise the force of public opinion, and, though deficient in many of the higher qualities of a statesman, his meas- 172 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry ures were often popular. He governed from day to day without any fixed principle. In private life he was haughty, stiff, and extravagant. In spite of the enormous salaries he drew he was always in debt, and he managed the State finances no better than his own.* His behaviour to Madame du Barry was not dignified, to say the least of it; nor was it consistent with the high moral tone he assumed, that he should have endeavoured to supplant Madame du Barry by finding for the King another mistress. His Memoirs are particularly unpleasant reading, being spoiled by an inflated self-conceit, which lessens the small his- torical value they have. On the other hand, it would not be difficult to show that the Due d'Aiguillon in no way resembled the portrait drawn by the partisans of Choiseul. As a statesman he was probably no better than the Minister he superseded, but it is doubtful if he were any worse. The point is not easily determined, for D'Aiguillon is one of the scape- goats of history, and few indeed are the writers of history who have not cast a stone at him, though the missiles vary considerably in kind. One critic asserts that he was " as bad as a Minister as he was clever as a scoun- drel, and his letters to the French Ambassadors at foreign Courts are distinguished by narrow views, false reasoning, and obscurity of style ' " ; and more modern writers de- scribe him as " a bad man and an incapable Minister * " ; or as being "without intelligence and without courage, uncouth, and malicious, but possessed of some wit, and 'See Darkste: Histoire de France, Vol. 6. p. 593. ^Letters of Comte de Vergennes, French Ambassador at Stock- holm, 1772. 'M. F. BARRlfiRE: Notice sur Madame Campan. "^ He fell, like Autumn Fruit that Mellowed Long'" 1 7 3 a deep schemer.*" A more celebrated historian speaks of him as a " dark and deep courtier worthy of being the nephew of Richelieu, and the protege of the Dauphin.^ " As for the accusations of poltroonery and tyranny and even of concussion (official plunder of money), which, Carlyle says " it was easier to get ' quashed ' by backstairs Influences than to get answered," they perhaps rest on very slight foundations. Whatever D'Aiguillon was he was certainly not a coward. When he was only seventeen he fought under Comte (afterwards Marechal) de Saxe, and in the following year was present at the attack of Chateau Dauphin, where he was dangerously wounded in the head. No sooner was his wound healed than he took part in the siege of Coni, where he was wounded in the leg, and he was present at quite ten other sieges and battles. A young soldier, who has been in more than a dozen engagements before he has attained his twenty- first birthday, may surely be said to have established his reputation. Nor would much backstairs influence be needed to quash the charge of cowardice brought against D'Aiguillon for his conduct at the battle of St. Cast. It was a battle in which we English may be excused for taking no in- terest. An English expeditionary force aided by a fleet of a hundred sail, had been harassing the coast of Brittany. The English numbered twelve thousand men under the command of General Bligh. D'Aiguillon hastily summoned such forces as he could muster in the province, marched rapidly over a hundred miles, and found the English just 'M. Louis Lacour: Preface des M^moires de Lauzun. "M. Henri Martin : History of France (1762-64), p. 237. 174 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry on the point of re-embarking. He attacked them at once and routed them, with a loss of three thousand killed and wounded, and took eight hundred prisoners including several officers, amongst whom was Lord Frederic Cavendish, third son of the Duke of Devonshire. The bay of St. Cast is surrounded by low hills, and on one of these, opposite the centre of the bay, stands a wind-mill. From this mill D'Aiguillon directed the move- ments of his troops and watched the battle. Nearly eight years later, when there was a quarrel between the local Parliament and the Lieutenant General, some Breton wit said that at the battle of St. Cast, " the troops were cov- ered with glory, and the General was covered with meal." The epigram told, it was repeated from mouth to mouth with the usual result, and soon it was said that D'Aiguillon had hidden himself in a wind-mill to be out of the way of the bullets, and, as a crowning touch, it was asserted that he made love to the miller's wife whilst her husband was fighting the English ! That the General could have remained some time in the upper part of a wind-mill without needing the application of a clothes-brush to his uniform would have been very extraordinary, but if he wanted to be out of the way of the enemy's bullets he might have selected a better spot than the top of a wooden structure exposed to the full force of the English fire; for a plan of the battle shows that the French artillery was massed round the mill, and if their shot could reach the English ships, the English guns, which were heavier and better served could have reached the mill. It is not difficult to show that D'Aiguillon was neither an incapable idiot nor a coward. That he was the lover of Madame du Barry there is no credible authority for '^ He fell, li^e Autumn Fruit that Mellowed Long^^ 175 believing, and the story that he owed his appointment as Minister to a trick devised by the King's Mistress seems scarcely to need refutation, although the amusing and tolerably trustworthy writer who mentions the incident speaks of it as "a certain and known fact." According to this account as soon as ever the favourite knew of the fall of Choiseul she sent for the Due d'Aiguillon, and said to him, " Go at once to the King, and thank him for having made you Minister of Foreign Affairs.'' " But," replied the Due, " I have received no intima- tion that I have been appointed." " How stupid men are 1 " cried Du Barry. " Do as I tell you; at once." D'Aiguillon did not altogether relish the job, but thought the stake worth the risk, and went straight to the King and began to stammer out his thanks for the honour conferred upon him. The King looked at him half angrily, and half amazed, but said nothing, and D'Aiguillon construing this silence to mean consent, bowed himself out of the Royal presence, and at once took possession of the office which had never been really given to him."^ The tale appears to us a violation of dramatic unity. Told about Madame de Pompadour and one of her proteges it would not have been wildly improbable, but Madame du Barry was a woman of a very different type, and if she had desired the promotion of D'Aiguillon would have trusted to the influence of her charms to win the King's consent to her views. The two chief actors in the little comedy change parts so suddenly that the effect is only absurd. The light-hearted, careless, ex- ' ChamforT: Oeuvres choisies. Paris, 1879. 176 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry travagant wanton whose only thought was of her own pleasure, and who, according to her worst enemies, never interfered in politics, is depicted as showing a new and unexpected aptitude for intrigue ; whilst the " dark and deep courtier," who had been a prime mover in every cabal which had originated at Versailles during the last few years, belies his relationship to the wily Cardinal by displaying an inability to see through a trick which would have appeared transparent to a school-girl. Whether D'Aiguillon owed his place to the schemes of Du Barry and the tacit consent of the King, or whether Louis XV had him in mind before he dismissed Choiseul matters very little at the present time. The King cared little or nothing for the vox populi, but he was probably very disgusted to find the disgraced Minister exalted to the position of a popular idol. When the Due de Choiseul left Versailles he was escorted by "a double row of car- riages of interminable length," and during the twenty-four hours he was allowed to remain in Paris nearly every person of importance in the city inscribed his name on a register at the Due's lodgings, despite the fact that the door of the house was guarded by two exempts of police. " They could not have made more of him if he had been a celebrated criminal," said the sarcastic Due d'Ayen.' Songs, epigrams, and bons-mots were made about him, and circular snuff-boxes bearing on one side the effigy of * The witticism was probably invented long afterwards, and ascribed to the Due d'Ayen as being the most likely person to have made it. De Belleval, indignant at seeing the ex-Minister's door guarded by police, wrote in his Souvenirs, " They could not have done more to a great criminal," and from that the sarcasm was most lilcely manufactured. '^ He fell, like Autumn Fruit that Mellowed Long^ 177 the Due de Choiseul, and on the other that of Sully, were sold in the streets. The beautiful and witty actress, Sophie Amould, said, on being shown one of these boxes, " Why, they have put the receipts and expenses together." The verses made in honour of the fallen Minister, are not as a rule particularly brilliant, though there is an easy swing about the following epigram: The Well-Belov'd of the Almanack Is not the well-belov'd of France. He does all ab hoc, ah hac. The Well-Belov'd of the Almanach. All things he puts in his sack Not only Justice but Finance. The Well-beloved of the Almanach Is not the well-beloved of France. Of considerably more literary merit was the quatrain: Like every other in his place. His enemies abound; But — like no other in disgrace — Fresh friends he daily found. Amidst this chorus of praise the Due de Choiseul retired to Chanteloup. He had never been able to make both ends meet when he was in receipt of an enormous salary, and though in exile he had not many opportunities for spending money, we are not surprised to hear of him, in a year's time or so, petitioning the King for money. He could not have had much hope of success, for, as he knew well, Louis XV, like all the Bourbons, "forgot nothing and forgave nothing," but he did receive a very handsome allowance, — far more than he had ever expected, and he owed it wholly and solely to the good graces of the woman 12 178 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry he had reviled and lampooned, and tried his hardest to drive from the Court— Jeanne du Barry. But, as gratitude, according to the cynical French philosopher, is only "a lively sense of favours to come," and, as after the King's death, she was not in a position to confer further benefits upon him, there was nothing to deter this noble and high- minded patriot and statesman from blackening her character still more in the Memoirs he compiled during his enforced leisure. To vilify a benefactress, even though she be a harlot, would be repugnant, if not impossible, to most men, but, perhaps, it was his high sense of duty and intense horror of vice which enabled him to achieve the task, and even to display an unctuous satisfaction in the performance of it. CHAPTER VIII AN EXAMPLE FROM ENGLISH HISTORY (1771) The fall of Choiseul, though it rather increased the King's troubles, freed Madame du Barry from a relentless foe, and relieved her from the necessity of being always on her guard against his machinations. She was able to devote her time to the improvement of her residence at Louveciennes. Amongst other things we find her investing in the purchase of books. Certainly her bookseller's bill, •when compared to her jeweller's, bears the same proportion as the bread did to the sack in Falstaff's score, but the books are well-selected, and not at all the kind of litera- ture which a thoughtless, empty-headed courtesan would be expected to buy. A bookseller's account for twelve hundred livres, now preserved in the Versailles Library, includes a translation of Robertson's History of Charles V, the Memoirs of Brantome, Bassompierre, D'AngoulSme and several others; lives of Turenne and Saxe; the travels of Chardin, Kemper, and La Condamine; the " Golden Ass," Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, translations of Bishop Burnet and Sir John Maundeville, and a few plays of her friend and admirer, Cailhava. One looks in vain 179 i8o The Life and Times of Madame du Barry for any of the erotic literature which abounded in those days; there is not a single work by Crebillon fils, Abbe Voisenon, or the Chevalier de la Morliere, nor even a copy of the book which the latter dedicated to her. It is evident that if Jeanne du Barry was not an Aspasia she was more than a Lais. But if Madame du' Barry was enjoying a respite from persecution at this time, her Royal lover was engaged in a deadly struggle with the Parliament. Louis XV claimed absolute and despotic sovereignty, and this the Parliament was unwilling to allow him. The mutterings of the com- ing storm could already be heard, and the King himself was not deaf to them, but, as he said, " things will last out my time." To use his own words, "We hold our crown from God alone. The right to make the laws" — faire des loix (sic) in the original — "by which our subjects should be led and governed, belongs to us alone, without dependence or division." But the day of despotism was over in France. The republican spirit was becoming more widely spread every day, as the King fully recognized. Fully half a dozen times in his letters he uses the word republic or republican, and more than once deplores the fact that, after his death, the country would be governed by a child, "and what could a child do against all the Republicans with whom I have to contend." He was fully convinced, however, that he was strong enough him- self to contend against any Parliament, however republican its tendencies, and having more than his share of the Bourbon obstinacy, he stood in no need of encourage- ment in supporting his prerogative. Nothing can be more erroneous than to suppose that Louis XV was abetted in his opposition to the Parliament by the evil counsel An Example from English History i8i of Chancellor de Maupeou, and Madame du Barry. Had he occupied the place of his unfortunate successor when the crisis came, the struggle between King and People would have been short and sharp, though no doubt the result would have been the same. To begin with, he would never have summoned the States General. It is related of him that one evening at his coucher, a courtier, "who, on account of his high office was very intimate with the King," said, "You will see. Sire, that this will lead to the necessity of convoking the States General." The King instantly abandoned his usual calm manner, and seizing the courtier by the arm, said passionately, "Never repeat those words. I am not bloodthirsty, but if I had a brother who was capable of offering me such advice, I would sacrifice him within twenty-four hours, to the duration of the monarchy and the tranquil- lity of the kingdom.^" Bearing in mind the jealous regard he had for the "right divine of kings to govern wrong," it would have been a work of supererogation on the part of De Maupeou, and contrary to what we know of the character of Madame du Barry, to advise him, and the stories about her — more particularly the celebrated one concerning the portrait of Charles I of England — rest on very slight foundation. The anecdote is so well-known that it will hardly bear repetition. It figures in every history of the i8th cen- tury. Michelet quotes it in his Histoire de la Revolution ; — Henri Martin in his Histoire de France. It is given in every biographical notice of Madame du Barry, and in countless reviews and magazine articles finds a place. We 'M6moires de Campan: Anecdotes sur Louis XV. 1 82 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry give it here in the words used by a well-known and trustworthy historian. "The King hesitated to strike the decisive step. The Du Barry succeeded where Maupeou would, no doubt, have failed. Well instructed by the Chancellor, she had placed in her apartment the portrait of Charles I by Van Dyck, and showing it to Louis XV, ' France ! ' (she gave the King of France the name of a lackey in a comedy) she said, 'Your Parliament will also cut off your head. "■'" Tracing back the story we find the germ of it in — Pidansat de Mairobert. He does not narrate it drama- tically but says that she had the picture placed in her room, and whenever the King appeared to show any in- clination towards clemency, or relapsed into his normal condition of good nature (!), she reminded him of the fate of the unfortunate monarch. Pidansat must either have invented the story, or have had some foundation for it. We find the latter in what has been termed " the thirty volumes of scurrilous eaves-dropping" of Bachaumont and his journeymen, where it is recorded under date of March 25) i77i> "The Empress of Russia has carried off the collection of paintings of the Comte de Thiers, who had a number of fine pictures. M. de Maxigny saw, to his grief, all these treasures acquired by a foreigner, for want of funds to purchase them for the King. Amongst the pictures was a full-length portrait of Charles I of England, by Van Dyck. That is the only one which remains in France. The Comtesse du Barry, who shows more and ' Or, according to another version, "Look, France, what your Parliaments will do to you if you give way to them. They will cut off your head." The quotation is from Henri Martin's History of France (1770 — 1771), p. 283. An Example from English History 183 more taste for the arts, gave orders to buy it. She paid twenty-four thousand livres, and on being reproached for having chosen this picture from so many others which would have suited her better, asserted that she had recovered a family portrait. In fact the Du Barrys pre- tend to be related to the house of Stuart." On October 22, 1771, Bachaumont asserts that Madame du Barry has placed the portrait of Charles I in her room and shows it to the King whenever his hatred of the Parliament is growing cool. Then the writer of the Nouvelles adds, with that "underhand malice" which a wholesome dread of the police made it necessary to employ — for the Bastille still loomed large in the horizon of every journalist who aspired to be "spicy'' — "One feels certain that a calumny so atrocious and so carefully prepared could not have emanated from the tender and ingenuous heart of Madame du Barry," — unless her fears for the King were played on by persons whose " policy is as clever as it is infernal." But being fearful lest unsophisticated readers should really fancy that Madame du Barry was incapable of the conduct ascribed to her, he concludes with, " This anecdote, which is proved by events, is attested by courtiers whose evidence has great weight." We find then that the story rests on no better authority than that of Bachaumont and Pidansat de Mairobert — arcades ambo — and even if we are inclined to believe their testimony, one or two difficulties remain. The Baron de Thiers died at Paris, December 15, 1770. The cata- logue of his pictures is preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale. It is dated 1765, and there is no mention in it of Van Dyck's portrait of Charles I. Perhaps the picture was acquired after 1765, but if so why was no 184 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry mention of such an important acquisition written in the catalogue? Presuming, however, that the picture was in his collection, when was the collection sold ? Bachaumont's first mention of the picture is dated March 25, 1771, three months after the death of the late proprietor. Scandal and news must be fresh, and it is not very likely that Bachaumont described at the end of March a sale which had taken place at the beginning of January, nor does it seem probable that the collection of Baron de Thiers was dispersed less than a month after the owner's death. But if the picture was not in the possession of Madame du Barry previous to January 20, she could not have used it to point a moral, for on that night the members of the Parliament were arrested and packed off to prison, and the difficulty solved — for the time being. To endeav- our to hocus Louis XV into the belief that the Parliament would cut his head off, when he had them safe under lock and key, and could have cut off their heads if he wished, appears a proceeding devoid of the most rudi- mentary common-sense. That Madame du Barry should have bought a portrait of Charles I because the Du Barrys claimed relationship with the Stuarts appears in some degree feasible, for though she was not a Du Barry except in name, and a Du Barry only in name, she was like nearly every other courtesan, extravagant; that she should have bought the picture for the purpose of incul- cating a lesson the King had already learned and applied in a pretty forcible manner, and would have learned without her assistance, is absurd. The absurdity is heigh- tened if we accept the version which makes her say, " This is what the Parliaments will do to you if you give way to them." The comparison was singularly An Example from English History 185 unhappy, for Charles met his fate because he did not accede to the will of the Parliament. The picture is now in the Louvre. In the official Guide it is (or was) described as having been acquired by Louis XV, but M. J. GuifFrey, the author of a valuable book on Van Dyck, has pointed out that this is an error, as the picture was not bought till the reign of Louis XVI. "It is very doubtful," he adds, "whether the portrait in question ever formed part of the collection of M. de Thiers. Where did Madame du Barry get it? We do not know." On the whole we must entertain a slight doubt as to whether she ever possessed the picture at all, and a very much stronger doubt, almost amounting to a certainty that she never used it, at the instigation of De Maupeou or any one else, as a bugbear to frighten Louis XV. Of literary men, and historians in particular, we have less hope. Anecdotes about Madame du Barry are none too plentiful, and to give up one of the best of them for mere considerations of innate probability, would be asking too much of weak human nature. In future lives of Madame du Barry or histories of the i8th century, the head of Charles I will be as certain to appear as it was in the writings of Mr. Dick. Chancellor de Maupeou, it will be noticed, plays an important part in this anecdote. It is by his recommen- dation that Madame du Barry buys the picture, and he employs her as the tool, when bad advice has to be proffered to the King. But he also figures in other stories recounted by the veracious Pidansat de Mairobert. On one occasion, when he was on a visit to Madame du Barry, Zamor, her negro boy, put cock-chafers [hannetons) in his wig, while the hostess and guests laughed con- 1 86 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry sumedly at the poor man's efforts to get rid of the insects. Another time, the King, on entering Madame du Barry's room, found her and a dozen friends, playing bhnd- man's-buff, — the blind man being the Chancellor, who looked so absurd in his wig and simarre that the King, who rarely laughed, nearly had a fit. We are not interested here in defending De Maupeou, though it may be remarked en passant that it was — and possibly is, for official traditions die very hard in France — the custom for the Chancellor always to remain at home in case he should be wanted suddenly. D'Agues- seau, the predecessor of De Maupeou, who held the post for many years, was stated to have dined out once only during his tenure of office, and De Maupeou maintained the tradition. His rupture with De Choiseul was said to be due to the fact that the Minister used to send for him, and the Chancellor resented this as an impertinence. But of two things, one. Either the Chancellor was a Machiavellian statesman able to bend the frivolous Du Barry to his will, and compel her to do anything he re- quired; or he was a sycophantic buffoon, willing to play the fool to gain the good will of the King's Mistress, and utterly devoid of all sense of dignity and self-respect. Whichever theory we accept we must ruthlessly reject the other, for they are morally incompatible, and, perhaps, we should do well to believe neither. De Maupeou was certainly intensely unpopular, and the feeling still exists to some extent; how far it was justified it is not our intention to enquire. The shafts of the satirist spared Madame du Barry after the fall of Choiseul, but lampoons and pasquinades were freely showered on De Maupeou and the King. An Example from English History 187 In the latter case they were often pasquinades in the true sense of the word, for the papers were affixed to his statue. One of these excited " general horror, " for it was a thinly-veiled incitement to murder. A placard was affixed to the King's statue, bearing the words, " By order of the Mint, a Louis struck badly is to be re-struck," — an allusion to the occasion when Damiens "wounded Royalty slightly under the fifth rib." There is too a parody on the Lord's Prayer, which need not be quoted, having no literary merit to redeem its pro- fanity. As for De Maupeou, it is to be hoped he was not thin-skinned, or passages like this would have hurt him very much. It was evidently penned by a "good hater." "Maupeou is the most abominable monster that hell has ever vomited forth to distress the kingdom, the most damnable hypocrite, the most determined villain, that has ever been seen on earth. The Jacques Clements, Ravail- lacs and Damiens, may yield him the first place in their murderous gang. The Sicilian Vespers, Saint Bartholo- mews, the defeats of Fontenoy, Poitiers, Azincourt and Malplaquet, were lucky days for the nation in comparison with that on which this traitor was born, for they only destroyed some Frenchmen, whereas this impious wretch would wipe out the very name of the nation. What good citizen, if any such are still left us, would not desire the honour to forge, load, and fire the weapon which should revenge the nation, and deliver it for ever from the scoun- drel who has ruined it." The passage is taken from a pamphlet, not named, quoted in Les Pastes de Louis XV. 1 88 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry The new Parliament which met April 13, 1771, proved tolerably obsequious to the King's desires, and therefore the story about Charles I must have been anterior to that date. At the " Bed of Justice, " held at Versailles when the Parliament met, the King said, " You have heard my wishes: I now order you to conform to them, and begin your functions on Monday. I forbid all discussions contrary to my edicts * * * I shall never alter." " Monsieur le due," — Bachaumont and his worthy follower, Pidansat de Mairobert, report Madame du Barry to have said to the Due de Nivemais,— "it is to be hoped that you will cease opposing the King's wishes, for, as you heard him say, he will never alter." "True, madam," replied the Due gallantly, "but he was looking at you when he spoke." Having whittled down the independence of the Par- liament to the vanishing point, and declared that from this resolve he would never alter, it was not needful for Du Barry to lend her aid to strengthen him in his determination. Indeed, we do not know for certain that she opposed the Parliament. We could wish for some better authority than Bachaumont, but we are bound to confess that the story about the Due de Nivemais is ben trovato. She was, with the possible exception of his daughters, the only person in France who eared for that battered old hulk of selfishness and vice, Louis XV, and who would have supported him, right or wrong. The knowledge of the afifection she had for the King, caused the Parliamentary party to try to wound her in a tender spot, by circulating the report that the King was getting tired of her, and was seeking a new mistress. Hardy, who only re-echoed public rumour, states under An Example from English History 189 date of Feb. 8, 1771, that he hears "they are trying to supplant her (Du Barry) by another mistress, who bears the name of Julia Smith, and who is said to be young and otherwise beautiful. There is also some .talk about the Princesse de Monaco, Madame de Valentinois, and a third who is not named." One would like to know something about Miss Julia Smith, but curiosity has to go unsatisfied. The Princesse de Monaco was a very pretty but very dissipated young woman, whose character could be best described by a short Anglo-Saxon word not usually printed. She lived at Versailles and refused to rejoin her husband at Monaco, but he was kept informed of her " goings on," and found a solace in erecting gibbets all round his Principality, and hanging thereon the effigies of his wife's lovers. The Principality was small (though larger then than it is now) and the number of courtiers who enjoyed the favours of the Prince's flighty spouse was very great, so that, finally, the gibbets formed a continuous line all along the frontier. Not one of these four ladies succeeded, however, in supplanting Madame du Barry, who remained secure of the King's affection. A very remarkable proof of the consideration in which she was held is shown by the register of Notre Dame, under date of Feb. 24, 1771, when the infant son of Claude Gerard, one of the Royal servants, was baptised, the sponsors being the " Very powerful and most excellent Prince Louis, King of France and Navarre " — represented by the Due de Duras, the First Gentleman of the Bed Chamber — and the " high and powerful Lady, Benedicte, Comtesse du Barry." Louis XV had a marked respect for all religious forms, and it is strange to find I go The Life and Times of Madame du Barry him associated, even by proxy, with his Mistress as sponsor at a baptism. He could not be blamed if he did not stand godfather very often, for the ceremony was expensive. On this occasion he had to pay for thirty- four dozen and six boxes of drage'es at four francs each, making a total of sixteen hundred and fifty-six francs, and then may be considered to have got off cheaply, for sometimes, when he was sponsor, his bill for sugar plums amounted to three thousand francs. It will be noticed that Jeanne du Barry is here called Benedicte. She was always lavish in the use of names, and she seems to have reserved this cognomen especially for public deeds, but why she adopted the name we know not. This same month, the Crown Prince of Sweden (after- wards Gustavus III), who was on a visit to Paris, and thought it possible that he might one day stand in need of the good offices of Madame du Barry, presented her with a handsome collar for her little dog. Rumour says that the collar was made of diamonds, but that may be an exaggeration. He also sent her every year, for the next few years at least, a handsome box filled with Swedish gloves. CHAPTER IX THE SCARLET WOMAN AND THE SCARLET ROBES Under the date May 7, 1771, Pidansat de Mairobert tells a story about Madame du Barry and a Jew, a story which has the rare merit of being likely to have occurred. A Jew, who was one of the many jewellers with whom Madame du Barry had dealings, foimd a difficulty in obtaining his money from the Favourite. He therefore prepared a small and tasteful piece of jewellery, and called upon Madame du Barry early one morning. He found her in bed, for ladies at that time often used to transact business in bed, or even whilst in their bath. As he expected, she took a fancy to the article, and told him to draw out an order on M. Beaujon, the Court Banker, and she would sign it. She signed the order without looking at it, but when M. Beaujon met her, a day or two later, he reproached her for her extravagance. She retorted that he was making a great fuss about a trifling sum, to which he replied that he did not consider sixty-six thousand francs a trifling sum. It was found that the astute Hebrew had made out the order for the full amount of his account. The Ught-hearted Mistress laughed heartily at the trick that had been played upon her, and told the King, who was also much amused. 19T 192 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry A page or two later Pidansat de Mairobert recounts one of the " celebrated " anecdotes of Madame du Barry, — a story which has been copied into the works of dozens of grave historians, and has been often depicted on canvas. We will, as usual, give the tale in Pidansat's own words, and then examine it critically. "Soon after," — presumably soon after May 7, 1771, the date of the story about the Jew, — " an anecdote was spread abroad which shows how easy it was for her to bewitch and enchant her august lover, for, to do that she had only to give way to the many follies which passed through her head. This natural ease, freedom, or, to speak more properly, neglect of all modesty, never failed of its effect. The story concerns two of the most grave and sedate personages of the Court, — the Nuncio, and Cardinal de la Roche-Aymon. The King was in her bed-chamber, and the Countess was in bed, where it was her custom to remain all the morning. The two prelates were paying their court to the King, and the Favourite. At this moment M. Pot d'Auteuil arrived to bring her a contract to sign. She made some difficulty about allowing this officer of justice to enter her room whilst the King was there, but the Monarch insisted on his coming in, and she sprang from the bed in much the same costume as Venus rising from the sea, and made each of the pre- lates put on one of her shoes whilst they, as a reward, enjoyed the ravishing spectacle of her hidden charms ! "The notary left as soon as his business was finished, and, before he had recovered from his surprise, recounted the adventure, which, he added, had extremely amused His Majesty. We may be sure that the Marquise de Pompadour, and all the other mistresses before her, would The Scarlet Woman and the Scarlet Robes 193 have never dared to play such a prank, and it is this recklessness, which, as we have observed, renders the society of this petulant beauty so delightful to the King.i" The details are recounted with so much circumstantial- ity, and the supposed eye-witness of the incident — the family notary of Madame du Barry— is a person of such respectability and credibility, that it is not to be wondered at that historians of the old school, who accepted their data without examination, when princes and statesmen were not concerned, inserted the story in their books. But a very slight analysis will reveal so many discrepancies, errors, and absurdities, that the story, like so many more of the Anecdotes, must be relegated to the limbo of found- out-lies. M. Vatel, whose statements may usually be received as correct, asserts that, from 1767 to 1774, there was no Papal Nuncio at the Court of France, and that Abbe Sozzifanti acted as charge d'affaires during those years, and it is very doubtful whether the Abbe's position entitled him to the en- tree to the King's private apartments. De la Roche-Aymon, Archbishop of Rheims, Grand Almoner to the King, and doyen of the Bishops of France, would certainly have had the right to enter the King's apartment, but in 1771 he was 79 years old, and very infirm. The moral, or immoral delight he would have derived from gazing at the fully revealed charms of Du Barry, would not have compensated him for the physical difficulty he would have had in kneeling down to put on her slipper. Moreover, he was not made a Cardinal till June, 1772, or fully a year after ■ Anecdotes sur Madame la Comtesse du Barri, vol. 2, pp. 24 and 25 (edition 1776). 13 194 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry the date of the supposed incident. He lived to place the Crown upon the head of Louis XVI, and it seems more than doubtful whether that fastidiously virtuous Prince would have cared to be crowned by an ecclesiastic who had truckled so obsequiously to the Mistress of the late King. We now come to the person who witnessed the incident and recounted it. The Sieur Pot d'Auteuil must have been a very extraordinary professional man, and have conducted his business on very peculiar principles. An objection to write business letters to a rich client has never yet been generally noticed amongst members of the legal profession, but this notary, instead of writing to make an appointment for a certain hour on a certain day, starts off from Paris for Versailles, Marly, or Fontainebleau (as we do not know the exact date we are not sure where the Court was) on the off-chance of finding his client at home. We are not told whether Madame du Barry was in the King's chamber, or whether he was in her room, but presumably the former, for surely the two venerable ecclesiastics would not have gone to the bed-chamber of the Royal concubine to consult the King on a matter of business. However valuable M. Pot d'Auteuil's time may have been he would hardly have dared to hunt up his client in the King's private apartments, nor, if he had gone to her apartments, would a notary have- suffered himself to be announced when he learned that the King was there and was conferring with the two highest digni- taries of the Church. Like every other professional man, he had no doubt often seen strange sights, and though he had never before beheld such a spectacle as the Pope's Legate and an aged The Scarlet Woman and the Scarlet Robes 195 Archbishop engaged in placing satin mules on the dainty, little feet of a beautiful courtesan, the experience was not so remarkable as to make him forget long acquired habits of secrecy. It was the barber, not the confidential adviser of King Midas, who was obliged to rush out and whisper to the growing corn that his master had asses' ears. Taking up the next point we are led to consider what was the document to which it was so important that Madame du Barry should affix her signature without delay. She could not have wanted to borrow money, for all her drafts were honoured — though not without some grum- bling — by Beaujon, the Court banker, nor did she lend. The only house she had was not hers to sell, for it was State property, and she did not buy another house till the close of the following year, some eighteen months later. But Notary Pot d'Auteuil, though unbusinesslike in some respects, kept a careful record of all his transactions. His books are still extant and have been searched with great care by M. Ch. Vatel, the biographer of Madame du Barry. No record of any transaction in which she was concerned is recorded between September i, 1768, the date of her marriage contract, and December 7, 1772, when she bought the Hotel Binet, at Versailles. There are two other characters in the little comedy whose conduct requires an instant's notice, — the King and Madame du Barry. Louis XV always showed a super- stitious reverence for sacred things and veneration for ecclesiastics, and hated all unseemly conduct, in public at least. Madame du Barry also, according to a chronicler none too well disposed towards her— Senac de Meilhan — was always decent in her behaviour, and reserved. Summing up the details of the story we find then, that 196 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry a notary who requires Madame du Barry's signature to a deed, of which he preserved no record, called upon her unexpectedly, and tried to force his way into her presence though he was informed that the King was with her, and was engaged on business with two dignitaries of the Church. Madame du Barry refused to see him, but the King in- sisted on his being admitted. He entered, and the King's Mistress sprang out of bed in the scantiest of garbs, whilst the two prelates, one almost an octogenarian, knelt at her foot to put on her shoes. M. Pot d'Auteuil was so shocked or surprised, that, although in his business capacity he was the repository of family secrets of all sorts, he could not help blurting out the particulars of the scene he had wit- nessed, to the first persons he met. These numerous and important discrepancies have not prevented the story being used by many writers, especially during the Revolution, and with such additions as they thought necessary. Camille DesmouHns quoted it, and in the Annales Patriotiques there was a version, far too indecent to be printed here. It is the foundation of a coarse and abominable lie, told by Soulavie the elder, not about Madame du Barry but — Marie Antoinette. ' For such writers it was well adapted as exemplifying the cynical indifference of the King, the immodesty of the favourite, and the time-serving servility and want of dignity of the clergy, or as Camille Desmoulins puts it, " showing what sort of wood the bishops were made of. " Honest Republicans were expected to be shocked at such depravity, but many middle-aged tradesmen must " Memoires historiques du rigne de Louis XVI, par Jean Louis Soulavie (I'^nfe), vol. VI. pp. 8 and 9. Paris, an X (i8oo). The Scarlet Woman and the Scarlet Robes 197 have been able to remember the days when Court ladies gave orders to tradesmen and servants, or listened to odes or music, not only whilst dressing, but whilst in bed, or even sometimes, it is said, in their bath. In the latter case the beauty effectually concealed all her charms, however, by wearing a peignoir, aftd a covering was also spread over the top of the bath. A story is told of the painter Doyen "interviewing" Madame du Barry in her bath. She happened to mention that about a year previously she had been so alarmed by a terrible peal of thunder, whilst she was in her bath, that she jumped out, and ran as she was into another room. The artist rose, walked to the window, and opened it. "What are you doing, Doyen?" cried Madame du Barry. "Madame la Comtesse," he replied gravely, "I was looking out in the hope of seeing a storm-cloud. It would be such a good chance for a painter." CHAPTER X "Base ingratitude crams, and blasphemes his feeder" That Madame du Barry should escape the notice of the blackmailers was not to be expected. Little was known of her career, but what was known was not to her credit, and the ignorance of the public about her early life made it easier for the scoundrels who wished to draw money out of her to exercise their invention without the fear of detection. The satirists in the pay of the Due de Choiseul had shot some hundreds of poisoned darts at her, but their productions were ephemeral; each lampoon lived only a few hours or a few days, and then died, or was driven out of the public mind by some fresher and livelier squib. But a book is a very different affair: it can be put on a shelf, and perused and re-perused whenever the owner likes. Considering that Madame du Barry had a past life that would not bear investigation, it is rather strange that she should have occupied the position of mistress to the King for two years before she began to receive the attention of the literary blackmailers. It was not till July, 1771, that Thevenot de Morande brought 198 Base Ingratitude igg out the Gazetier Cuirass^, which professed to be " scandal about the Court of France," and contained a good deal about Madame du Barry, mixed with ill-natured tattle about many other people of consequence. Thevenot de Morande well knew that "A lie that is all a lie may be fought with and killed outright, But a lie that is half the truth is a harder matter to fight ; ° and spiced his narrative with distorted facts, derived from a "lady of Courcelles," and cleverly altered so as to give most pain, so that Madame du Barry, when she heard that he had a second book, more specially devoted to her, implored her Royal lover to take steps to prevent the publication. The story of how Beaumarchais was employed on this embassy, and how well he succeeded, has already been told in the introduction. Pidansat de Mairobert was, morally, not a bit better than Thevenot de Morande, but as he lived in France and held some sort of official position, he could not bring out his collection of scandal until after the King's death, when Madame du Barry was in exile, and no longer in a position to buy him off. He therefore hated Thevenot de Morande, — or, as he, no doubt purposely, calls him "Maraud" (scoundrel) — with all the intensity that the unsuccessful rogue feels for the successful one. He cannot too strongly condemn Thevenot, but he carefully quotes all the worst passages from his rival's book, not for the purpose of examining or contradicting them, but on the ground that Thevenot's book being a failure, it has become so rare (in four years) that readers have no chance to see it. They were both experienced masters in the ignoble 200 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry art of mud-flinging;— some of their filth has clung to the memory of their victim for a hundred and twenty years, and in all human probability will never be entirely washed away. Madame du Barry appears to have made no attempt to buy the MS. of the Gazetier Cuirass^. Perhaps Thevenot never intended to let her have the opportunity, in order that he might get a better price when he attacked her again; or perhaps she felt more secure of the King's affec- tion in 1771 than she did at the close of 1773. There is the evidence of Comte Mercy d'Argenteau to prove, however, that at this time (1771) no change had occurred in the King's regard. There had been the usual never ending squabble about the behaviour of the Dauphiness towards the Mistress, and the young Princess had con- tinued in her usual, and proper, course of conduct, despite the lectures and advice of her worldly-wise mother, and the Ambassador, though Maria Theresa recommended her daughter to look upon the Du Barry as the same as any other lady admitted to the Court, and Mercy d'Argenteau never lost an opportunity of " improving the occasion." In a letter to the Empress he states that he had had an interview with the King's Mistress, who hoped that the Dauphiness would not " regard her with an eye of aversion." She (Madame du Barry) had begged the King to permit her to be absent whenever Mesdames ^ were present, and that the King not having replied to the proposal when it was made verbally, she had repeated it in writing, and received a very satisfactory reply. "I thought instantly," says Comte Mercy, "that for many reasons it would be ' Madame du Barry believed that the King's daughters en- couraged the Dauphiness to snub her. Base Ingratitude 201 very advisable to see this reply, and in order to do so, I feigned not to quite understand what the favourite had told me. I made some objections, and induced her at last, though with some trouble, to show me the letter which I read through. It was carelessly written, both as regards the form and the matter, and began as follows, 'You are wrong to believe that I love you any the less because I did not reply in the first instance. I always love you greatly, and love you the same.' The King went on to say that, if he ordered that the favourite should be better treated, he would be obeyed, but with a bad grace, and that he attributed the antipathy of Mesdames to the Com- tesse du Barry to their principles of devotion, and scruples; that the late Queen, though very pious, would never have conducted herself thus; and that he, being heartily sick and tired of it all, proposed to exclude them (Mesdames) from all future petits voyages and only invite the Dauphiness and the Comtesse de Provence." From all which Comte Mercy concludes that Madame du Barry is a person whose acquaintance should be cultivated. "Stout Choiseul," when in office, "looked upon her only as a wonderfully bedizened Scarlet Woman, and went on his way as though she were not," but he had now ■been in exile nearly a year, and began to feel the everlasting want of pence which had vexed him as a public man even when he had an income of fully three fourths of a million of francs a year. At Chanteloup he kept good cheer and gave magnificent banquets to his many sym- pathizers, hunted twice a week, held sumptuous receptions, and had private theatricals. His house was open to any man of letters who chose to ingratiate himself with his 202 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry host by speaking or writing against Madame du Barry. ' Some good-natured friend no doubt reported this to the King, who retaliated by depriving the Due de Choiseul of the colonelcy of the Swiss Guard, a post worth a hundred thousand francs a year. This so reduced the ex-Minister's finances that he was obliged to ask the King for aid, but his old pride and haughtiness were not abated by his fall, and his epistle to Louis XV is more like the demand of a foot-pad, than the ordinary begging letter. The requests, or rather the stipulations, are not distinguished by modesty. He requires: (i) liberty to visit any part of France, the Court and Paris excepted ; (2) an important military com- mand; (3) settlement of all the debts he had contracted whilst in office, including three or four millions of francs he had borrowed from his wife and another couple of millions due to other creditors; (4) a revenue of forty thousand francs on the forest of Hagenau, and forest rights amounting to about eight hundred thousand francs; (5) an annuity of fifty thousand francs with reversion to his wife if he should die first. He thought also of adding a protest concerning his deprivation of the office of colonel of the Swiss Guards, on the ground that the office was permanent, but from this his friends dissuaded him. This letter was entrusted to one of his friends, the Due du Chatelet, who was as haughty, cold, and proud as himself, with orders to deliver it into the King's hands, and particularly to avoid all intercourse with either the Mistress or the Ministers, for " any interest they might ' The description is taken from the Memoirs of the Prince de Ligne and the MS. Memoirs of M. Dufort de Chevemy, — a warm partisan of de Choiseul, who visited Chanteloup several times whilst the Minister was in disgrace. Base Ingratitude 203 show in my affairs, or benefits they might confer would be humiliating to me.'" Perhaps the Due du Chatelet received verbal in- structions which cancelled the others, for though as a Due, and Colonel of the King's regiment of Infantry, he might have obtained an interview with the King without much trouble, he went straight to the Due d'Aiguillon, unfolded the nature of his embassy, and told the Minister that he wished to deal direct with the King. He informed Choiseul of the steps he had taken, and the ex-Minister does not appear to have objected, and probably did not care, so long as he obtained the money somehow, by what means it had been procured. As a stroke of diplomacy, the step taken by the Due du Chatelet was ill-advised, for D'Aiguillon was surprised and annoyed, and the King naturally refused to treat the matter except through his Minister. Finding that he was likely to do more harm than good to his cause by discussing the matter any further with the Due d'Aiguillon — who finally began to lose his temper — the Due du Chatelet resolved, on leaving his presence, to go straight to Madame du Barry, and interest her on behalf of his friend before D'Aiguillon could interfere to prejudice her. He obtained an interview with her and sent a long account of all that she said to the Due de Choiseul. This letter affords a most striking testimony to her amiability, generosity, good sense, and forgiving disposition, for it must be remembered that the person for whom her intercession was asked was her bitterest foe, who still had all the will, though not the ' Memoires de M. de Choiseul ecrits par lui-meme et im- privie's sous ses yeux, dans son cabinet de Chanteloup et a Paris (1790). Vol. 2, p. 4. 204 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry power to insult and annoy her, and who was certain to be the reverse of grateful to her, even though she risked much to serve him. So suspicious and distrustful was Louis XV, that if Madame du Barry had advocated too warmly the cause of the Due de Choiseul, she might have involved herself in his ruin, — especially if the King had chanced to notice, about the same time, some fresh young face which took his fancy. The letter of the Due du Chatelet to the Due de Choiseul is of great length, but the portrait it gives of Madame du Barry — though drawn by an unwilling hand, and not calculated to please the recipient — is so flattering, that any book which purports to give a life of Jeanne du Barry would be incomplete if it did not give extracts from this epistle, and show the better side of the character of a woman, who, if she led a " life of vice" had at least some compensating good qualities, and foremost among them the virtue which " neVer faileth " — Charity. After explaining the object of his embassy, Du Ch§,telet begged her to procure for him the favour of an interview ■with the King — for Louis XV had peremptorily refused to see him as soon as he knew the nature of his business — which " she promised with the best grace in the world. " He goes on to say, "I even offered to read her the copy of your letter, — in an excess of confidence for which you may scold me, but which I thought due to the frank and open manner in which she spoke of the old quarrel between you and her, and the wish she had to be on good terms with you. She declined the proposal, but I discussed with her all your demands, and recited your letter almost word for Base Ingratitude 205 word, for, as you may well imagine I have had the time to learn it by heart. I began by claiming that your appoint- ment was irrevocable, and that you owed it to yourself to make this observation to the King. * " She agreed, but passed over this article quickly, though I perceived she was perfectly well-informed on the subject as she repeated the same arguments which M. d'Aiguillon. had used about the brevet. As to the forest of Hagueneau I explained the matter, and she appeared to well under- stand it. She raised no objection either as to the pension to Madame de Choiseul, which I explained in the most fit and proper manner, adding that the Duchesse knew nothing of the step you had taken, and which your sense of probity had dictated to you, and it was even very uncertain that she would accept the pension. From which I conclude, that if the King deigns to interest himself in your situation, and grant you a sum of money to meet your most pressing debts, you might increase that sum and drop the question of the pension. " She cried out a good deal, but without showing temper, when I spoke of ready money, because there is not a crown in the Treasury. To which I replied that the difficulty would not be so great, if the King was willing — as the colonelcy of the Swiss was worth more than a hundred thousand livres nett — to make a deduction from the salary of the new colonel. She replied that this plan could not ' Alluding to the Colonelcy of the Swiss Guards. Though not included in the letter Du Chatelet appears to have had instructions to mention the point, and had done so to D'Aiguillon, who remarked that the words " during our good pleasure " occurred in the brevet, to which Du Chatelet replied that was " a mere form of words " not affecting the rights of the question. 2o6 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry be adopted, because no deductions could be made from the pay of the person to whom the King intended to give the command of the Swiss. You will conclude, if you think as I do, that it is intended for the Comte d'Artois or else the Comte de la Marche. "I ought to have commenced by telling you, but writing so hastily I do not remember the order of events, that the first subject treated of was your Kberty. She told me that it would be imprudent to speak of that at the present moment, but a more favourable opportunity would surely come, and perhaps soon. I replied, however, that that was a point on which you strongly insisted." (Here follow three pages of reasons.) " I was satisfied with her replies ; she told me that she bore you no ill-will, and was glad of an opportunity to show that such was the case ; that all that had happened had been your fault, and she had in the beginning done all she could to prevent it; that you must feel that matters could not again be on the same footing as they once were, — not as regarded herself, for she was a mere nobody, but in regard to the King, whom you continually offended by aiming at the object of his affections. " I suppress many of the minor details which have nothing to do with the present, or even any future, subject, but neither in tone or manner did she show any resentment. I recapitulated at the end of the conversation all that I had said in the course of it, and grew as warm on the subject as I possibly could. If enthusiasm for goodness and virtue is communicative, I might flatter myself that I inspired it. But, however that may be, I have every reason to be as satisfied with the end as with the beginning of my interview, and Madame du Barry promised to give Base Ingratitude 207 an account, at once, to the King of the object of our interview, and to ask permission for me to hand him your letter." If Madame du Barry were the coarse, vulgar, ignorant, and giddy courtesan she is generally depicted, it must be confessed that in this interview she displayed consummate ability in concealing those defects. The Due du Chitelet was not by any means a first-rate diplomatist, and perhaps it required no more than a woman's ordinary wit to answer his very shallow arguments. Her replies are marked by good sense and modesty, and her frankness and candour disarmed an enemy who would have been glad of an oppor- tunity to report any signs of vanity, frivolity, or stupidity. To a quick perception to detect the weak points in a case that would never have been strong, even in better hands, is united a considerate regard for the difficulties of the am- bassador, with just a touch of self-respect to show that though she was unmindful of herself, she was carefully jealous that the King should not be wounded through her. If she had been playing a part, and affected a sympathy she did not feel, we might admire her clever- ness, though we should have no reason to respect her, but, as will be seen, she gave the practical aid of her great influence to Choiseul, and the unlooked-for success which his application received was entirely due to her efforts. When it is remembered that she undertook this task for a man who had never lost a chance of trying to drive her from the Court, who had searched everywhere for pretty women whom he hoped would be able to supplant her; who had subsidized wits to lampoon her, and hired detec- tives to search out the details of her past life; who, in public, treated her with as much scorn and contumely as he 2o8 The Life and Times of Madame du Barry dared to show, and, in private, always alluded to her as " cette catin,'' — her action becomes almost noble. Many estimable women calling themselves good Christians, who — proud in the possession of a chastity which has never been tempted — shudder at the name of Jeanne du Barry, would find it impossible to show quite such a forgiving spirit. In subsequent letters the Due du Chttelet states, even more explicitly, that Madame du Barry assisted him in his difficult task. On December 13, he writes to M. de Choiseul that at Trianon he had spoken to the King, but Louis XV had avoided all mention of Choiseul, and etiquette forbade Du Chttelet to start the subject. He, thereupon, went to Madame du Barry, stated that he was in despair, his honour was compromised, and he thought himself of sufficient importance to be able to deliver a letter to the King. Madame du Barry was " touched, " and even " frightened. " She told him the King did not wish to appear in person in the negotiations; that she was sincere; that M. d'Aiguillon had no animosity against Choiseul, and she had still less, but the King was displeased with the ardour shown by many of the ex-Minister's friends; and finally she promised to see the King and D'Aiguillon, and let Du Ch&telet know the result. Before leaving, the Due repeated all the provisoes of Choiseul's letter, but came down in the matter of the " compensation " to two millions. He insisted, however, that the exiled Minister should have the privilege of visiting any part of France, except Paris and the Court. " She replied," he writes, " that as for liberty, that must not be dreamed of, but it would come, if led up to quietly. That as to the money arrangement, she knew nothing about finance, but would speak to M. d'Aiguillon, and tell him Base Ingratitude 209 it must end in the manner I proposed, that is to say that somehow or other you should have a hundred thousand livres annually for life. I added that I was filled with gratitude at her kindness, which I took for myself and not for you, and that I should glory in making known publicly my gratitude. She listened to me, understood perfectly, and even appeared touched at my position. She concluded by assuring me that M. d'Aiguillon had no power over her ; she heard everyone who came to her, and did as she liked. She promised to tell me the following day how she had succeeded." Madame du Barry did not conquer the King's aversion to Choiseul without some difficulty. " She was shut up with him from six till half past eight," says Du Chatelet. "So long an interview augured well for me, and I flattered myself somewhat on my success." On the morrow Du Chatelet went to Paris, and purposely avoided a meeting with D'Aiguillon who sent a courier to him. After a Cabinet Council had been held, and the Choiseul claims considered, Du Chatelet came back from Paris, expecting a refusal, he says, and prepared to quarrel with D'Aiguillon in consequence. He visited Madame du Barry, who told him that D'Aiguillon was very angry with her for the part she had taken, and she very sensibly remarked that she was imder no obligation to assist Choiseul, and the most that could be expected of her was to show no animosity towards him. All that she had done, and would do, would be for Du Chatelet alone. On the previous evening she had had a long interview with the King, who was very angry with her. A second council was held, at which the King was reported "to have been very short and sharp with M. 14 2IO The Life and Times of Madame du Barry . d'Aiguillon, and Madame du Barry left in a very bad temper," — of which Du Chitelet flattered himself he was the cause. As soon as D'Aiguillon arrived home, Du Chatelet called upon him and was shown the subjoined letter from the King. " My Cousin, You need not trouble to send me the letter of M. de Choiseul which M. du Chatelet has handed you. I have already made known to you my intentions, and shall not change them. M. de Praslin was in a different position from M. de Choiseul, and, moreover, was very ill. He is very lucky in only being sent to Chanteloup, but I will not permit him to leave there. I consent, however, out of kindness, to grant him two hundred thousand livres gratification, with reversion to Madame de Choiseul in case she should survive him. That is my decision : let us drop the subject and not speak of it again." In the meantime, however, M. de Choiseul, learning that the command of the Swiss Guards was intended for a member of the Royal Family, sent in an unconditional resignation of the post, — the first wise step he had taken, and one which did him much good with the King, and so delighted poor Du Chatelet that he twice kissed the courier who brought him the news. By this sudden change of position from a claimant to a petitioner, Choiseul forced the King's hand, and threw himself on the royal generosity, though he nearly undid the good he had effected, says Besenval, * " by sending through the post a letter intended to come under the King's eyes, and likely to exasperate him." M. du Chatelet thought that all was lost. In his ' The Choiseul and Du Chatelet correspondence ends at this point, but the subsequent history of the transaction is to be found in Besenval's Memoirs, vol. ii. pp. 48 to 50. Base Ingratitude 211 despair he addressed himself again to Madame du Barry iQ the salon at Choisy. She turned toward M. d'Aiguillon, and said in a loud voice, " It must be like that." Theii ensued a lively conversation between the King and M. d'Aiguillon, and the King said, as he sat down to the gamiag table, "Sixty thousand livres pension, and a hundred thousand crowns in ready money." Shortly after- wards M. d'Aiguillon informed M. du ChStelet of the decision, adding that of the sixty thousand livres, fifty thousand were reversible to Madame de Choiseul. M, du Chitelet was much relieved at hearing this news which he had not expected at all. He sought, and found, an opportunity to thank Madame du Barry. She told him that after the manner in which M. de Choiseul had given in his resigna- tion, the King had determined of his own accord to grant this augmentation. The long and unpleasant task of M. du Chitelet — who had made himself quite ill worrying about his friend's aflfairs — was thus brought to a satisfactory conclusion. It is to be hoped he was thanked for his pains — no one else was. The Due de Choiseul received a sum in ready money which was equal, in modern currency, to about ;f40,ooo, with an annuity of some £,'],