there until the 18th to await new passports, and arrives at Luciennes the
19th. She finds seals on the pavilion. Zamora and his accomplices, that
band of infamous servants to whom Madame Du Barry had been so gentle,
kind, and generous, ruthlessly continued their odious denunciations. The
Convention rendered, June 2, a decree expressed in these terms: “The
constituted authorities, throughout the whole extent of the Republic,
shall be obliged to have seized and placed in arrest all persons
notoriously suspected of incivism.” Madame Du Barry’s persecutors availed
themselves of this decree to arrest her. Once she has been released and
reinstated in her pavilion. But hatred is not discouraged. The wretches
take an address to the Convention in which, speaking in the name of “the
brave sans-culottes of Luciennes,” they call for the definitive arrest
of a woman who, say they, “has been able, by means of her riches and
her caresses learned at the court of a feeble and dissolute monarch,
to escape, in spite of her notoriously incivic relations, from the
Declaration of the Rights of Man, and has made her château the centre of
liberticide projects against Paris.” The Convention applauds this stupid
language and felicitates the commune of Luciennes on its patriotism. The
thing is done. Madame Du Barry is ruined.
September 22, surrounded by gendarmes, she quits the pavilion of
Luciennes, which she is never again to see. She is transferred to the
prison of Sainte-Pelagie, where she is placed in the chamber that had
been occupied by Queen Marie Antoinette. What funereal presentiments!
What alarms! What dismal thoughts! In her prison, she who had been the
mistress of Louis XV. could think of the corpse of her royal lover. A few
days before, August 10, the Convention had executed its decree concerning
the violation of the tombs of Saint Denis, of that Saint Denis which the
favorite formerly beheld from the heights of the terrace of Luciennes.
They had exhumed “these former kings and queens, princes and princesses.”
They had broken the coffins, and melted the lead of them. The corpse of
Louis XV., like that of Louis XIV. and his predecessors, had been cast
into the common pit.
The Countess Du Barry shudders. Now it is her time to die. December 7,
1793, at nine o’clock in the morning, she appears all trembling before
the revolutionary tribunal. Fouquier-Tinville is spokesman, in virtue
of his office as public prosecutor, and in his requisition he yields
to what he calls “his indignation as an honest man and a patriot.” He
declaims in that cruel and inflated jargon, odious and grotesque, of
which this infamous epoch has the secret. He declares that he “does not
wish, through modesty, to lift the veil which should cover forever the
frightful vices of the court.” The modesty of Fouquier-Tinville!...
Several of the former domestics of Madame Du Barry, Zamora at their
head, are cowardly enough to depose against her. The penalty of death
is pronounced. The poor woman grows pale and totters. The gendarmes
are obliged to support her so that she may not fall. She is to mount
to-morrow the fatal cart, the bier of the living, as Barrère calls it.
Mad with terror, breathless, the condemned woman passes a night of
anguish. She revolves every means of prolonging her existence for some
hours, some minutes. She says she will make revelations, she will show
at Luciennes the hiding-places of all her jewels, all her treasures.
The public prosecutor sends a substitute to her cell. She details, like
a woman who is afraid of forgetting something, all the items of her
inventory, because she imagines that every word adds a second to her
life. But the executioner is waiting. She must go.
It is the 8th of December, 1793. Fifty-three days before, another woman,
a queen, had come out of the same prison, the same chamber, to go
likewise to execution. The cart was filthy. For a seat a board. On the
board neither hay nor straw. Behind the victim, Sanson the executioner,
holding the ends of a thick cord which tied the condemned Queen’s
arms behind her. A poor comic actress had lent her a gown in which she
could decently present herself at the scaffold. Well! in this sorry
attire, amidst the yelling of the crowd, on a cold morning in October,
the daughter of the Cæsars had been more sublime, more majestic, than
on the throne. Dressed in white, like a phantom, a little red on the
cheekbones, but otherwise pale, the eyes injected, not with tears, but
blood, the hair whitened by grief, she was to the very end calm, serene,
magnanimous, and regarded with mildness and compassion the infernal
tumult that surrounded her. For one instant only did her impassible
features betray emotion. When the cart was passing rue Saint Honoré,
opposite the Oratory, a little child in its mother’s arms threw a kiss
to the Queen, and at this salute of innocence Marie Antoinette wept. On
arriving at Calvary, she sadly contemplated that sacrilegious spot where
her husband had been executed, that accursed spot where, twenty years
before, had occurred a catastrophe which was an omen. She turned her
eyes toward that cemetery of the Madeleine where the victims were then
entombed, and where her own headless body was soon to be placed. Then she
cast a last glance toward the Tuileries, which to her had been so fatal,
the Tuileries, her first prison, and, happening to step on the foot of
the executioner, she said to him with queenly politeness: “Sir, I beg
your pardon.” She died, but it was the death of heroines and martyrs.
She died, but the purple of her blood has covered her with a second
royal mantle, and her head, cut off, is resplendent with the flames of
an aureole which will shine from age to age. She died, but the pure, the
radiant angels have borne her beautiful soul to heaven.
Madame Du Barry does herself justice. She feels that she cannot have so
magnificent a death. The apotheosis of the saint is not for her, but
the expiation of the sinner. The wife of Louis XVI. had looked death in
the face. The mistress of Louis XV. will not have that courage. She is
frightened, she sobs, she utters such heartrending cries that it is much
if the Terror itself, the unpitying Terror, is not for the first time
moved to compassion.
As the cart passes in front of the Palais Royal, the victim perceives the
balcony of a millinery establishment from which a number of working-women
are looking at the funereal procession. She recognizes the house; it
was there she worked as a milliner’s apprentice when a very young girl.
Alas! why did she become Madame the Countess Du Barry? Her countenance is
by turns of a livid pallor or a deep red. She struggles so between the
executioner and his two assistants that they can hardly keep her on her
bench. Her cries redouble. “Life! life!” she says; “only let them leave
me life, and I will give all my property to the nation.” Then, from the
crowd, a man replies: “You would only give the nation what belongs to
it, since the tribunal has just confiscated your property.” A charcoal
peddler, standing in front of this man, turns round and gives him a slap
in the face. The victim begins anew her supplications. “My friends,” she
cries, “my friends, I have never done harm to any one! In the name of
heaven, I beg you, save me!” Who knows? the stocking-knitters themselves,
the furies who lick the guillotine, are perhaps going to be affected by
these accents of the woman of the people. This time it is not a queen
who is about to die; it is a countess, but a countess who was first a
working-woman. The horses are whipped up, the end is hastened to stop
the compassion of the crowd. At last the cart arrives at the place which
was formerly called Place Louis XV.; there where once rose the statue of
the monarch, the scaffold is erected where they are going to execute his
mistress. It is half-past four o’clock. “Help! help!” she cries. “Mercy!
mercy! Monsieur Executioner! Once more....” The knife falls. It is all
over with Madame Du Barry.
Had we not reason to say, at the beginning of this study, that history
is a long funeral oration? Ah! as Virgil has said, there are tears in
things, and all that is mortal affects our soul:—
_Sunt lacrymæ rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt._
If we confine ourselves to the surface of the ages, we remain cold,
indifferent; but if we descend to their depths, if we penetrate the
secret of souls, if we lend an attentive ear to voices from beyond the
tomb, to the groanings, the cries of anguish issuing from the abyss
of the past, we are possessed by an invincible sadness, a salutary
melancholy. We perceive, in the language of Bourdaloue, “that all these
grandeurs on which the world glorifies itself and the pride of man is
fed, that this birth on which they pique themselves, this credit which
flatters them, this authority of which they are so proud, these successes
of which they vaunt, these goods in which they glory, these charges and
dignities of which they take advantage, this beauty, valor, reputation
which they idolize, is nothing but a lie.” The lessons of history are
neither less instructive nor less eloquent than the best sermons of the
preachers. All destinies have their conclusion and all deaths their
instruction. One feels surrounded by a host of phantoms, sometimes livid,
sometimes bloody, whose sepulchral aspect causes a shudder, and whose
dismal voices say: “Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou
must return.—_Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris._”
Behold the women of the court of Louis XV.; behold the royal mistresses,
once so flattered, who appear for the last time, and one after another
take up the word!
“I,” says the Countess de Mailly, “when banished by an earthly king,
found my consolation at the feet of the King of heaven. I have wept
sincerely for my faults, and God, in His mercy, has deigned to grant me
time for repentance.”
“I,” says the Countess de Vintimille, “had barely crossed the threshold
of that fatal château of Versailles, when stricken as by a thunderbolt, I
died in giving birth to the infant of my crime.”
“I also,” says the Duchess de Châteauroux, “I passed like the grass of
the field which withers in a day. Crushed by affronts and anguish, I lost
my miserable sceptre, and at the moment when I seized it again, I died
very young, I died enwrapped in my shameful triumph as in the most sorry
of shrouds.”
“And I,” says the Marquise de Pompadour, “never tasted a single instant
of real happiness in all my twenty years of power. I had everything
except the esteem which cannot be bought. At the bottom of my intrigues
and pretended pleasures I found only nothingness. My conscience spoke
louder than my flatterers; I felt my own wretchedness. My life, brilliant
externally, was inwardly replenished with sorrow and darkness. A
sorceress had predicted it to me: I died of nothing but chagrin.”
“I,” says the Countess Du Barry, the last of the royal mistresses,
she whose execution is as it were the summing up, the symbol of the
expiations, “I have paid very dear for the enjoyments of luxury and
sensuality; I knew neither how to live nor how to die. At an epoch when
heroism was a common thing, I weakened, I was afraid, I shuddered on the
scaffold!”
After the favorites, it is the turn of the sovereign whose fatal love was
the cause of all their misfortunes.
“I,” he says, “have seen, like the Preacher, all that is done under
the sun, and I have found that all is vanity and vexation of spirit. I
became voluntarily the victim of guilty passions which, when once the
inebriation was over, left nothing in the soul but a painful stupor and a
cruelly felt void. I was disgusted with others and with myself. I did not
believe in the prestige of my own crown, and in spite of my riches, my
power, my ability to realize all my caprices, there was incarnated in me
that gnawing evil, ennui. If my weaknesses have given scandal, horrible
has been the chastisement. I have been punished in myself and punished in
my race, punished as man, punished as king.”
When, in the silence of mind and heart one has just listened to these
lessons of history and death, one reflects. After meditating on
instructions so austere, one finds the problems of human destiny less
insoluble, and recognizing the point from which things must be viewed,
one discovers, as Bossuet says, that what at first seems confusion is in
fact only concealed art, an ensemble of combinations admirably ordained
by Providence. Then earthly grandeurs appear in their true light, and
one feels better, calmer, less ambitious, less disposed to complain of
the inequalities of fate. The shades of princes and princesses, of great
lords and ladies, have their mysterious language, and all combine to say
in unison these words from the _Imitation of Christ_, the most affecting
and purest of all books, if the Gospel did not exist:—
“It is vanity to amass perishable riches and place one’s hope in them.
“It is vanity to seek for honors and elevate one’s self to the chief
places.
“It is vanity to follow the desires of the flesh and to love that which
in the end will merit rigorous chastisements.
“It is vanity to desire long life and to be so little concerned to have
it good.
“It is vanity to think only of present things and not to foresee those
that are to come.
“It is vanity to love that which passes so quickly, and not to be eager
to gain heaven where joy endures forever.”
FOOTNOTES
[1] Residences of the Duke of Orleans and the Prince of Condé, then in
disgrace for having taken sides with the former Parliament against that
of Chancellor Maupeou.
[2] The Duke de Choiseul’s place of exile.
[3] M. Taine, _Les Origines de la France Contemporaine_.
[4] Grimm, _Correspondance littéraire_, 1770.
[5] Memoirs of Madame du Hausset.
[6] Manuscript Memoirs of Regnaud, procureur to the Parliament of Paris
at the time of the _coup d’État_ of 1771.
[7] Manuscript Memoirs of Siméon Prosper Hardy.
[8] M. Charles Aubertin, _L’Esprit public au XVIIIᵉ siècle_.
[9] La Bruyère.
[10] Massillon.
[11] The Marquis d’Argenson.
[12] _Gustave III. et la cour de France_, by M. A. Geffroy.
[13] _Memoirs of the Duc de Lauzun._
[14] Marivaux, _La Réunion des Amours_.
[15] Buffon, _Discours sur la nature des animaux_.
[16] Messrs. de Goncourt, _L’Amour au XVIIIᵉ Siècle_, a very witty and
pleasant volume. Dentu.
[17] Messrs. de Goncourt.
[18] M. Taine, _Origines de la France contemporaine_.
[19]
When Boufflers appeared at court,
People thought they saw the mother of Love;
Every one was eager to please her,
And every one did so in his turn.
[20] Duke de Levis, _Souvenirs et portraits_.
[21] Prosper Mérimée, article in the _Moniteur Universel_ of April 29,
1867.
[22] See M. Grasset’s fine study, _Madame de Choiseul et son temps_.
[23] Now the Ministry of War.
[24] She was born in 1699.
[25] See the excellent introduction by M. Charles de Morey prefaced to
the _Correspondance du roi Stanislas-Auguste Poniatowski et de Madame
Geoffrin_, a very interesting volume, published by Plon.
[26] See the remarkable study by M. Lescure prefaced to the
_Correspondance de la Marquise Du Deffand_. 2 vol. Plon.
[27] M. Taine, _Origines de la France contemporaine_.
[28] January 25, 1766.
[29]
And my hand would twist the entrails of the priest,
Lacking another cord to strangle kings.
[30] Letter of March 17, 1771.
[31] Letter of January 25, 1766.
[32] Letter of October 19, 1765.
[33] Letter of December 5, 1765.
[34] The Carthusian convent at Paris, rue d’Enfer. At that time Lesueur’s
Saint Bruno, now in the Louvre, might be seen there.
[35] _Gustave III. et la Cour de France_, par M. A. Geffroy.
[36] Memoirs of Madame Campan.
[37] The house is No. 2 at present.
[38] The wisest takes fire and pledges himself without knowing how.
[39] Sénac de Meilhan, _Portraits et Caractères des personnes distinguées
de la fin du XVIIIᵉ. siècle_.
[40]
Long live the King! The deuce take Love!
The rogue has played me a trick
Which may take down my presumption.
The Du Barry, cold as ice to me,
Is about, they say, to change my destiny.
Of old I owed my fortune to wantons;
I am going then to owe them my disgrace.
[41]
Here thy journey begins.
If thou wert never to return!...
Thy poor mother has no courage
To leave thee, to bless thee.
Labor well, say thy prayer;
Prayer gives courage;
And think sometimes of thy mother,
That will bring thee happiness.
Adieu, my child, adieu!
To God’s grace I commend thee!...
She goes, the gentle exile,
To earn her bread ’neath other skies;
A long time yet, in the valley,
The poor mother follows her with her eyes;
Then, when her bitter sorrow
Is no longer witnessed by her child,
She weeps, poor mother,
For the child who says from afar:
Adieu, mother, adieu!
To God’s grace I commend thee!...
[42] Madame the Countess d’Armaillé, _La Mère et la Fille_, (Maria
Theresa and Marie Antoinette).
[43] Memoirs of Madame Campan.
[44]
Sire, the great of your state
Behold with much pain
A princess of Lorraine
Preferred before them at the ball.
If Your Highness project
This affront to inflict,
They will cut off their queues,
And all dancing refuse.
Take heed: all is said,
The league has been made.
Signed: the Bishop of Noyon,
La Veaupalière, Beaufremont,
Clermont, Laval and De Villette.
[45] Room No. 115 of M. Soulié’s _Notice du Musée_.
[46] Room No. 117 of M. Soulié’s _Notice du Musée_.
[47] _Souvenirs de Baron de Gleichen_, preceded by a notice by M. Paul
Grimblot.
[48] See M. de Grasset’s interesting work, _Madame de Choiseul et son
Temps_. 1 vol. Didier.
[49] See M. de Lescure’s interesting work: _La Princesse de Lamballe_.
[50]
Pious like Boaz, gentle though austere,
You love mankind and yet the Lord you fear.
One prop your family yet lacks, alas!
You wed not Ruth, who takes a daughter’s place.
[51] Count de Mercy-Argenteau’s letter to Maria Theresa, February 25,
1771.
[52]
Yes, that Maupeou, alone, from the labyrinth of the laws
Has been able to withdraw the crown,
That he alone has returned it to the palace of our kings,
This is what I have seen, this is what amazes me.
I avow with antiquity
That its heroes are admirable;
But, unfortunately, they are fables;
And this is the verity.
[53]
What! two kisses toward the end of my life!
What a passport you deign to send me!
Two! that is one too many, adorable Egeria,
I shall be dead of pleasure at the first one.
[54]
You cannot prevent this homage,
The feeble tribute of all who have eyes.
’Tis for mortals to adore your image,
The original was made for the gods.
[55] _Les Maîtresses de Louis XV._, by MM. de Goncourt.
[56]
Over thy double portrait, charming Du Barry,
The perplexed spectator wishes to admire thee everywhere;
If thou changest thy sex before his eyes,
He has only to change his taste.
If he sees thee as woman, in his soul
He feels all the pleasure of being man;
Thou becomest man,
And suddenly he is all desire to be a woman.
[57] Room No. 126 of the _Notice du Musée de Versailles_, by M. Soulié.
[58] Room No. 120 of the _Notice du Musée de Versailles_, by M. Soulié.
[59]
There thou art, poor Louis,
In a coffin at Saint Denis!
There doth grandeur expire.
For a long time, one must needs say,
Incompetent to give the law,
Thou hast borne the idle name of king
Under the tutelage and the empire
Of tyrants who reigned for thee.
Wert thou good? It is a problem
Which can easily be resolved.
A good prince never causes
The wretchedness of a people who love him,
And one cannot call good
A king without restraint or reason,
Who lives for no one but himself....
Feeble, timid, insincere,
And caressing more than ever
Him who had managed to displease thee,
Up to the moment when of thy wrath
He was about to feel the effects:
That, I think, was thy character.
Lover of loose speeches,
Famous drinker, and king celebrated
For hunting and for wantons:
That is thy funeral oration.
INDEX
Adelaide, Madame, 146, 167, 191.
Agen, Duke d’, his words concerning Madame Louise, 111.
Argenson, Marquis d’, his words prophetic of revolution, 24.
Artois, Count d’, his character, 144, 145, 174, 191.
Atheism in France, Walpole’s words concerning, 68, 72;
Diderot’s words concerning, 71.
Barbier, quoted, 68.
Beaumarchais, 26;
the hero of the day, 27;
censured by the court, 27, 28.
Beaumont, Christopher de, Archbishop of Paris, visits Louis XV.
during the King’s last illness, 191.
Beauvais, Abbé de, 20.
Boufflers, Duke de, 52.
Boufflers, Madame de, 56;
her words at death of Louis XV., 195, 196.
Breteuil, Baron de, 84.
Brissac, M. de, see Cossé-Brissac, Duke de.
Broglie, Count de, engaged in secret diplomacy, 83, 84.
Buffon, his words concerning love, 47-50.
Campan, Madame, quoted, 79;
reads to Madame Louise, 105, 106;
visits Madame Louise at Saint Denis, 110;
her words concerning dinners of royal family, 146;
her words concerning Madame Sophie, 147.
Carmelite convent at Saint Denis, the, 107 _et seq._
Catherine II., Czarina, 58;
Diderot’s adoration of, 71.
Chamfort, his definition of love, 46.
Chartres, Duke de, 155.
Chateaubriand, his words concerning society during last years of
Louis XV., 87, 181.
Châteauroux, Duchess de, quoted, 212.
Choiseul, Duchess de, her salon, 54;
her sound sense, 54;
her criticism of Rousseau, 54-56;
her purity, 56;
words of Walpole concerning, 56.
Choiseul, Duke de, character of, 88, 89;
his enemies, 89, 97;
his attitude toward Madame Du Barry, 101-104;
his power weakening, 104;
meets Marie Antoinette, 132;
his downfall, 151-155;
exiled, 155, 156.
Church, a revolution forming against, 25.
Clergy of France during last years of Louis XV., 18-21.
Clotilde, Madame, 145.
Cossé-Brissac, Duke de, his attachment to Madame Du Barry, 200, 201;
massacred, 202;
his legacy to Madame Du Barry, 202, 203.
D’Aiguillon, 187, 190.
D’Alembert, 51;
his love for Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, 62, 67.
Dauphin, the, marriage of, to Marie Antoinette, 121;
letter to, from Marie Antoinette, 121;
meets Marie Antoinette, 132;
celebration of his marriage, 136-142;
his character, 144;
his hostility to Choiseul, 154, 191;
his words at death of Louis XV., 193;
departs for Choisy, 193.
Deer Park, 80, 85, 90, 98.
Deffand, Marquise du, the salon of, 57, 60-63;
compared with Madame Geoffrin, 60;
her blindness, 60;
her wit and satire, 62;
her letters, 62;
Voltaire’s fear of, 62;
her religious inclinations, 65;
her words on life and death, 65, 66;
her affection for Horace Walpole, 66;
her criticism of Madame Louise, 111.
Desalleurs, Count, 84.
Diderot, his words concerning atheism, 71;
his adoration for the Empress Catherine II., 71.
Du Barry, Count Jean, 94, 95.
Du Barry, Count William, his marriage, 95.
Du Barry, Madame, Louis XV.’s passion for, 9, 42;
suit between heirs of, 91-93;
her birth, 92;
her early years, 93;
called Mademoiselle l’Ange, 94;
delights Louis XV., 94;
her marriage, 95;
becomes mistress of Louis XV., 95;
presented at Versailles, 97, 98;
her apartments at Versailles, 98;
her house in the city and her riches, 99;
her personal charms, 99, 100;
Walpole’s words concerning, 100, 101;
her position at court, 101-104;
her attitude toward Duke de Choiseul, 101-104;
her words concerning Madame Louise, 112;
her relations to Marie Antoinette, 150 _et seq._;
her victory over Choiseul, 151-155;
her attitude towards Parliament, 177, 178;
letter to, from Voltaire, 179, 180;
feelings of the people for, 180, 181;
makes her mother Marquise de Montrable, 181;
compared with Madame de Pompadour, 179, 181, 186, 187;
her life after death of Louis XV., 200 _et seq._;
her conquest of the Duke de Cossé-Brissac, 200, 201;
shelters royal body-guards at Luciennes, 201;
her letter offering hospitality of Luciennes to Marie Antoinette,
201, 202;
her pavilion at Luciennes robbed, 202, 203;
her trips to England, 199, 204;
betrayed by her servants, 204-206;
taken from Luciennes to prison, 206;
appears before the revolutionary tribunal, 206, 207;
condemned to death, 207;
her execution, 209, 210, 212.
Durfort, Marquis de, demands Marie Antoinette for the Dauphin, 121.
Egmont, Countess d’, 42.
Elisabeth, Madame, 145.
Eon, Chevalier d’, 83.
Epinay, Madame d’, her words concerning modesty, 47.
Étioles, Lenormand d’, 186.
Encyclopedists, Madame Geoffrin’s attitude towards, 64.
Fouquier-Tinville, 206, 207.
Francis, Emperor, 116, 117.
Gassner, forecasts future of Marie Antoinette, 117.
Genet, Mademoiselle, afterwards Madame Campan; see Madame Campan.
Geoffrin, Madame, her salon, 57-60;
her husband, 57;
her character and manners, 59;
the greatest nobles pay court to her, 58;
her visits to Warsaw and Vienna, 58, 117, 118;
Walpole’s admiration for, 59, 60;
compared with Madame du Deffand, 60;
her relations toward the Encyclopedists, 64;
meets Marie Antoinette, 118.
Gleichen, Baron de, 151, 152.
Goethe, his words concerning marriage of Marie Antoinette, 128.
Goëzman, Counsellor, 26, 27.
Guibert, M. de, Mademoiselle de Lespinasse’s love for, 67.
Gustavus III. of Sweden, letters to, 41-43, 177.
Henriette, Madame, 86.
Joseph II., Emperor, his visit to Luciennes, 200.
Laborde, M. de, 179;
his _Pandora_, 180.
La Bruyère, quoted, 68.
La Harpe, 51.
La Marck, Countess de, 43.
Lamballe, Princess de, 173.
Lespinasse, Mademoiselle de, her salon, 57, 63;
sketch of, 62, 63;
her unhappy love, 67.