account of the death of Louis XV--The duc de la Vrilliere--The --Letter to the queen--Departure for the abbey of


Special Introduction by Robert Arnot

Up to the time of the Du Barry the court of France had been the
stage where the whole political and human drama of that country
was enacted.  Under Louis XV the drama had been transformed into
parades--parades which were of as much importance to the people
as to those who took part in them.  The spectators, hitherto silent,
now began to hiss and be moved.  The scene of the comedy was
changed, and the play was continued among the spectators.  The old
theatre became an ante-chamber or a dressing-room, and was no
longer important except in connection with the Cardinal de Bernis
and the Duc de Richelieu, or Madame de Pompadour and Madame
du Barry.

The monarchy had still a step to take towards its downfall.  It
had already created the  (Louis XV's seraglio),
but had not yet descended to the Parisian house of prostitution.
It made this descent leaning on the arm of Madame du Barry.
Madame du Barry was a moral sister to Manon Lescaut, but instead
of taking herself off to Louisiana to repent, she plunged into the
golden whirlpool at Versailles as a finish to her career.  Could
the coaches of a King mean more than the ordinary carriage of an
abandoned girl?

Jeanne Vaubernier--known in the bagnios by the name of Mademoiselle
Lange--was born at Vaucouleurs, as was Jeanne d'Arc.  Better still,
this later Jeanne said openly at Versailles--dared she say otherwise?--
that she was descended in a straight line from the illustrious,
the venerated, the august, sacred, national maid, Jeanne.*  "Why did
Du Barry come to Paris?'" says Leon Gozlan in that account of the
Château de Lucienne which makes a brilliant and learned chapter in
the history of France.  "Does one ever know precisely why things are
done?  She obeyed the magnet which attracts to Paris all who in
themselves have a title to glory, to celebrity, or to misfortune.
Du Barry had a pretty, provincial face, bright and charming, a face
astonished at everything, hair soft and ash-colored, blue eyes,
veiled and half open, and a skin fair with rose tints.  She was a
child of destiny.  Who could have said, when she crossed the great
town in her basket cart, which rolled lazily along on its massive,
creaking wheels, that some day she would have equipages more
beautiful than any of those which covered her with mud in passing,
and on her arms more laces and diamonds than any of these ladies
attended by footmen in liveries?"

	*A claim which blithely ignored the fact that Jeanne
d'Arc had no children.--Gutenberg editor

When Jeanne left the provinces to come to Paris, she found her
native country.  She was granted the freedom of the city, and
expanded in her joy like a delicate plant transplanted into a
hothouse.  She found herself at home for the first time; and felt
that she could rule as a despot over all frequenters of the
streets.  She learned fashion and love at one and the same time.
Gourdan had a hat made for her, and, as a reward, initiated her
into the customs.  But she was called to other destinies.

One day, when she was walking in the Tuileries, a lunatic--and
lunatics have second sight--asked her favor when she should
become queen.  Du Barry said to herself: "This man is mad."  But
then she thought of the Pompadour, blushed--it was the only time--
and turned her eyes towards Versailles.

But Versailles was an unhoped-for shore to such a girl as this,
a girl known to all Paris.  Would the King care to be the lover of
one who had ruled all his courtesans?  Who could say?  The King
often wearied of what he had.  Had not a poet already been found
who compared her to Venus:

O Jeanne, thy beauty seduces
And charms the whole world;
In vain does the duchess redden
And the princess growl;
They know that Venus rides proudly
The foam of the wave.

The poet, while not Voltaire, was no less a man than Bouffiers.

While the King was seeking a mistress--a nocturnal reverse of
Diogenes, fleeing from the lanterns of  the wise--he found Jeanne
Vaubernier.  He thought he could love her for one evening.  "Not
enough," said she, "you must love me until broad daylight."  So
he loved her for a whole day.  What should one eat in order to be
loved by royalty?  Was it necessary to have a coat of arms?  She
had them in number, because she had been loved by all the great
names in the book of heraldry.  And so she begged the Viscount
Jean du Barry to give her the title of viscountess.  "Better still,"
exclaimed Jean, "I will give you the title of countess.  My brother
will marry you; he is a male scamp, and you are the female.  What
a beautiful marriage!"

So they were united.  The newly made countess was solemnly
presented at court by a countess of an ancient date, namely, the
Countess de Bearn.  King Voltaire protested, in a satire entitled
"" (topsy-turvy), afterwards denying
it.  The duc de Choiseul protested, France protested, but all
Versailles threw itself passionately at the feet of the new countess.
Even the daughters of the King paid her court, and allowed her to
call them by their pet names: Loque, Chiffe, and Graille.  The King,
jealous of this gracious familiarity, wished her to call him by some
pet name, and so the Bacchante, who believed that through the
King she held all France in her hand, called him "La France," making
him a wife to his Gray Musketeers.

Oh, that happy time!  Du Barry and Louis XV hid their life--like
the sage--in their little apartments.  She honeyed his chocolate,
and he himself made her coffee.  Royalty consecrated a new verb
for the dictionary of the Academy, and Madame du Barry said to
the King: "At home, I can love you to madness."  The King gave
the castle of Lucienne to his mistress in order to be able to sing
the same song.  Truly the Romeo and Juliet .

Du Barry threw out her fish-wifely epithets with ineffable tenderness.
She only opened her eyes half way, even when she took him by the
throat.  The King was enchanted by these humors.  It was a new
world.  But someone said to him: "Ah, Sire, it is easy to see that
your Majesty has never been at the house of Gourdan."

Yet Du Barry was adored by poets and artists.  She extended both
hands to them.  Jeanne's beauty had a penetrating, singular charm.
At once she was blonde and brunette--black eyebrows and lashes
with blue eyes, rebellious light hair with darker shadows, cheeks
of ideal contour, whose pale rose tints were often heightened by
two or three touches--a lie "formed by the hand of Love," as
anthology puts it--a nose with expressive nostrils, an air of
childlike candour, and a look seductive to intoxication.  A bold
yet shrinking Venus, a Hebe yet a Bacchante.  With much grace
Voltaire says:

"Madame:

"M. de la Borde tells me that you have ordered him
to kiss me on both cheeks for you:

"What!  Two kisses at life's end
What a passport to send me!
Two is one too much, Adorable Nymph;
I should die of pleasure at the first.

"He showed me your portrait, and be not offended,
Madame, when I tell you that I have taken the liberty
of giving that the two kisses."

Perhaps Voltaire would not have written this letter, had he not
read the one written by the King to the Duc de Choiseul, who
refused to pay court to the left-hand queen:

"My Cousin,

"The discontent which your acts cause me forces me to
exile you to Chanteloup, where you will take yourself
within twenty-four hours.  I would have sent you farther
away were it not for the particular esteem in which I
hold Madame de Choiseul.  With this, I pray God, my
cousin, to take you into His safe and holy protection.
 				"Louis."

This exile was the only crime of the courtesan.  On none of her
enemies did she close the gates of the Bastille.  And more than
once did she place a pen in the hands of Louis XV with which to
sign a pardon.  Sometimes, indeed, she was ironic in her compassion.

"Madame," said M. de Sartines to her one day, "I have discovered
a rogue who is scattering songs about you; what is to be done with him?"

"Sentence him to sing them for a livelihood."


But she afterwards made the mistake of pensioning Chevalier de
Morande to buy silence.

The pleasures of the King and his favorite were troubled only by
the fortune-tellers.  Neither the King nor the countess believed in
the predictions of the philosophers, but they did believe in
divination.  One day, returning from Choisy, Louis XV found
under a cushion of his coach a slip of paper on which was transcribed
this prediction of the monk Aimonius, the savant who could read
all things from the vast book of the stars:

"As soon as Childeric had returned from
Thuringia, he was crowned King of France
And no sooner was he King than he espoused
Basine, wife of the King of Thuringia.
She came herself to find Childeric.  The
first night of the marriage, and before the King
had retired, the queen begged Childeric to look
from one of the palace windows which opened on a
park, and tell what he saw there.  Childeric
looked out and, much terrified, reported to the
princess that he had seen tigers and lions.
Basine sent him a second time to look out.
This time the prince only saw bears and wolves,
and the third time he perceived only cats and dogs,
fighting and combating each other.  Then Basine
said to him: I will give you an explanation of what
you have seen: The first figure shows you your
successors, who will excel you in courage and power;
the second represents another race which will be