Memoirs of the Comtesse du Barry | Page 9

last
words only are preserved: "Behold us orphaned both of father and
mother."
If Madame du Barry was one of the seven plagues of royalty, she died
faithful to royalty. After her exile to Pont aux Dames she returned to
Lucienne, where the duc de Cosse Brissac consoled her for the death of
Louis XV. But what she loved in Louis was that he was a king; her true
country was Versailles; her true light was the sun of court life. Like
Montespan, also a courtesan of high order, she often went in these dark
days to cast a loving look upon the solitary park in the maze of the
Trianon. Yet she was particularly happy at Lucienne.
I have compared her to Manon Lescaut, and I believe her to have been
also a sister to Ganesin. All three were destroyed by passion.
One day she found herself still young at Lucienne, although her sun
was setting. She loved the duc de Brissac, and how many pages of her
past romance would she that day have liked to erase and forget!
"Why do you weep, Countess?" asked her lover.
"My friend," she responded, "I weep because I love you, shall I say it? I
weep because I am happy."
She was right; happiness is a festival that should know no to-morrow.
But on the morrow of her happiness, the Revolution knocked at the
castle gate of Lucienne.
"Who goes there?"
"I am justice; prepare for destiny."

The Queen, the true queen, had been good to her as to everybody.
Marie Antoinette remembered that the favorite had not been wicked.
The debts of Du Barry were paid and money enough was given to her
so that she could still give with both hands. Lucienne became an echo
of Versailles. Foreign kings and Parisian philosophers came to chat in
its portals. Minerva visited shameless Venus. But wisdom took not root
at Lucienne.
For the Revolution, alas! had to cut off this charming head, which was
at one time the ideal of beauty--of court beauty. Madame du Barry gave
hospitality to the wounded at the arrest of the queen. "These wounded
youths have no other regret than that they have not died for a princess
so worthy as your Majesty," she said. "What I have done for these
brave men is only what they have merited. I consoled them, and I
respect their wounds when I think, Madame, that without their devotion,
your Majesty would no longer be alive. Lucienne is yours, Madame, for
was it not your beneficence which gave it to me? All I possess has
come to me through the royal family. I have too much loyalty to forget
it."
But negro Zamor became a citizen like Mirabeau. It was Zamor who
took to Du Barry her lover's head. It was Zamor who denounced her at
the club of the Jacobins. "The fealty (faith) of the black man is white,"
said the negro. But he learned how to make it red. Jeanne was
imprisoned and tried before Dumas.
"Your age?"
"Forty-two years." She was really forty-seven. Coquetry even at the
guillotine.
The public accuser, Fouquier Tinville, was not disarmed by the sweet
voluptuousness still possessed by this pale and already fading beauty.
He accused her of treason against the nation. Could the defender of Du
Barry, who had also defended Marie Antoinette, find an eloquent word?
No; Fouquier Tinville was more eloquent than Chauveau-Lagarde. So
the mistress of Louis was condemned. It was eleven o'clock in the
evening--the hour for supper at Versailles when she was queen!

She passed the night in prayer and weeping, or rather in a frenzy of
fright. In the morning she said it was "too early to die"; she wished to
have a little time in order to make some disclosures. The Comite sent
someone to listen to her. What did she say? She revealed all that was
hidden away at Lucienne; she gave word by word an inventory of the
treasures she had concealed, forgetting nothing, for did not each word
give her a second of time?
"Have you finished?" said the inquisitor. "No," said Jeanne. "I have not
mentioned a silver syringe concealed under the staircase!"
Meanwhile the horses of destiny stamped with impatience, and
spectators were knocking at the prison gate. When they put her, already
half dead, on the little cart, she bent her head and grew pale. The Du
Barry alone--a sinner without redemption.
She saw the people in the square of Louis XV; she struck her breast
three times and murmured: "It is my fault!" But this Christian
resignation abandoned her when she mounted the scaffold--there where
the statue of Louis XV had been--and she implored of the executioner:
"One moment, Mr. Executioner! One moment more!"
But the executioner was pitiless