pet name, and so the Bacchante, who believed that through the
King she held all France in her hand, called him "La France," making
him a wife to his Gray Musketeers.

Oh, that happy time! Du Barry and Louis XV hid their life--like
the sage--in their little apartments. She honeyed his chocolate,
and he himself made her coffee. Royalty consecrated a new verb
for the dictionary of the Academy, and Madame du Barry said to
the King: "At home, I can love you to madness." The King gave
the castle of Lucienne to his mistress in order to be able to sing
the same song. Truly the Romeo and Juliet .

Du Barry threw out her fish-wifely epithets with ineffable tenderness.
She only opened her eyes half way, even when she took him by the
throat. The King was enchanted by these humors. It was a new
world. But someone said to him: "Ah, Sire, it is easy to see that
your Majesty has never been at the house of Gourdan."

Yet Du Barry was adored by poets and artists. She extended both
hands to them. Jeanne's beauty had a penetrating, singular charm.
At once she was blonde and brunette--black eyebrows and lashes
with blue eyes, rebellious light hair with darker shadows, cheeks
of ideal contour, whose pale rose tints were often heightened by
two or three touches--a lie "formed by the hand of Love," as
anthology puts it--a nose with expressive nostrils, an air of
childlike candour, and a look seductive to intoxication. A bold
yet shrinking Venus, a Hebe yet a Bacchante. With much grace
Voltaire says:

"Madame: