Memoirs of the Comtesse Du Barry / With Minute Details of Her Entire Career as Favorite of Louis XV

GUTENBERG EDITOR’S NOTE:
This delightful (piquant, the comtesse would say) pseudonymous work was in fact written not “by herself” but by Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon (1786-1864). The persona created is that of a woman who always tells the truth as she sees it, but it is made clear to the reader that what the narrator sees is very seldom exactly the objective truth. The author ends as well as begins in medias res (in the middle of the action), thus creating an illusion of a slice of a journal but simultaneously giving the reader the uneasy feeling that the first and last chapters seem to be missing.
The French-style quotation marks have, for ease in typesetting and use, been changed to American-style quotation marks, and the dot after the name of Louis XV has been removed to conform to American punctuation. Captions of illustrations are omitted because the illustrations themselves cannot be inserted. A few minor editing errors have been silently corrected. No other changes have been made; the irregularity in italicizing or not italicizing, in translating or not translating French words, and in punctuating quotations of letters, is in the text itself. Notes are identified as coming from author, tr. (translator), editor, or
Gutenberg editor.
Up to the time of the Du Barry the court of France had been the stage where the whole political and human drama of that country was enacted. Under Louis XV the drama had been transformed into parades—parades which were of as much importance to the people as to those who took part in them. The spectators, hitherto silent, now began to hiss and be moved. The scene of the comedy was changed, and the play was continued among the spectators. The old theatre became an ante-chamber or a dressing-room, and was no longer important except in connection with the Cardinal de Bernis and the Duc de Richelieu, or Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry.
The monarchy had still a step to take towards its downfall. It had already created the Pare aux Cerfs (Louis XV’s seraglio), but had not yet descended to the Parisian house of prostitution. It made this descent leaning on the arm of Madame du Barry. Madame du Barry was a moral sister to Manon Lescaut, but instead of taking herself off to Louisiana to repent, she plunged into the golden whirlpool at Versailles as a finish to her career. Could the coaches of a King mean more than the ordinary carriage of an abandoned girl?