mistress_. She was as much a part of the
royal establishment as a prime minister was of the royal councils;
and, as if for the purpose of offering a still more contemptuous
defiance to the common decencies of life, the etiquette was, that this
mistress should be a _married woman_! Yet in that country the whole
ritual of Popery was performed with scrupulous exactness. A vast and
powerful clergy filled France; and the ceremonials of the national
religion were performed continually before the court, with the most
rigid formality. The King had his confessor, and, so far as we can
discover, the mistress had her confessor too; the nobles attended the
royal chapel, and also had their confessors. The confessional was
never without royal and noble solicitors of monthly, or, at the
furthest, quarterly absolution. Still, from the whole body of
ecclesiastics, France heard no remonstrance against those public
abominations. Their sermons, few and feeble, sometimes declaimed on
the vices of the beggars of Paris, or the riots among the peasantry;
but no sense of scriptural responsibility, and no natural feeling of
duty, ever ventured to deprecate the vices of the nobles and the
scandals of the throne.

We must give but a fragment, from Walpole's _catalogue raisonne_, of
this Court of Paphos. It had been the King's object to make some women
of rank introduce Madame du Barri at court; and he had found
considerable difficulty in this matter, not from her being a woman of
no character, but on her being a woman of no birth, and whose earlier
life had been spent in the lowest condition of vice. The King at last
succeeded--and these are the _chaperons_. "There was Madame de
l'Hopital, an ancient mistress of the Prince de Soubize! The Comtesse
Valentinois, of the highest birth, very rich, but very foolish; and as
far from a Lucretia as Madame du Barri herself! Madame de Flavacourt
was another, a suitable companion to both in virtue and understanding.
She was sister to _three_ of _the King's earliest mistresses_, and had
aimed at succeeding them! The Marechale Duchesse de Mirpoix was the
last, and a very important acquisition." Of her, Walpole simply
mentions that all her talents were "drowned in such an overwhelming
passion for play, that though she had long and singular credit with
the King, she reduced her favour to an endless solicitation for money
to pay her debts." He adds, in his keen and amusing style--"That, to
obtain the post of _dam