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 Sanson. It was block and the
knife--without the "one moment!"

Such was the last bed of the Du Barry. Had the almanac of Liege only
predicted to her that the one who would lead her to her bed for the
last time would not be a King but a citizen executioner, it might have
been--but why moralize?

Robert Arnot

_To the Reader_

_As the early part of Madame du Barry's career had little to
differentiate it from the life of an ordinary courtezan, the editor has
deemed it best to confine the memoirs to the years in her life which
helped to make history._

_--Editor*_

* "Editor here means the author, who is assuming
the persona of the editor of the Comtesse's memoirs.

CHAPTER I

Letter from Lebel--Visit from Lebel--Nothing conclusive--
Another visit from Lebel--Invitation to sup with the king--
Instructions of the comte Jean to the comtesse

One morning comte Jean entered my apartment, his face beaming with
delight.

"Read