Memoirs of the Comtesse du Barry | Page 8

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 illustrious for their

conquests, and which will augment your kingdom for many centuries;
but the third denotes the end of your kingdom, which will be given over
to pleasures and will lose to you the friendship of your subjects; and
this because the little animals signify a people who, emancipated from
fear of princes, will massacre them and make war upon each other."
Louis read the prediction and passed the paper to the Countess: "After
us the end of the world," said she gaily. The King laughed, but the abbé
de Beauvais celebrated high mass at Versailles after the carnival of
1774, and dared to say, in righteous anger: "This carnival is the last; yet
forty days and Nineveh shall perish." Louis turned pale. "Is it God who
speaks thus?" murmured he, raising his eyes to the altar. The next day
he went to the hunt in grand style, but from that evening he was afraid
of solitude and silence: "It is like the tomb; I do not wish to put myself
in such a place," said he to Madame du Barry. The duc de Richelieu
tried to divert him. "No," said he suddenly, as if the Trappist's
denunciation had again recurred to him, "I shall be at ease only when
these forty days have passed." He died on the fortieth day.
Du Barry believed neither in God nor in the devil, but she believed in
the almanac of Liège. She scarcely read any book but this-- faithful to
her earliest habits. And the almanac of Liège, in its prediction for April,
1774, said: "A woman, the greatest of favorites, will play her last role."
So Madame the Countess du Barry said without ceasing: "I shall not be
tranquil until these forty days have passed." The thirty-seventh day the
King went to the hunt attended with all the respect due to his rank.
Jeanne wept in silence and prayed to God as one who has long
neglected her prayers.
Louis XV had not neglected his prayers, and gave two hundred
thousand livres to the poor, besides ordering masses at St. Geneviève.
Parliament opened the shrine, and knelt gravely before that miraculous
relic. The least serious of all these good worshippers was, strange to
say, the curate of St. Geneviève: "Ah, well!" said he gaily, when Louis
was dead, "let us continue to talk of the miracles of St. Geneviève. Of
what can you complain? Is not the King dead?"
At the last moment it was not God who held the heart of Louis--it was

his mistress. "Ask the