The King wanted to get the packet again; she resisted, and made him run
two or three times round the table, which was in the middle of the
council-chamber, and then, on passing the fireplace, she threw the letters
into the grate, where they were consumed. The King became furious; he
seized his audacious mistress by the arm, and put her out of the door
without speaking to her. Madame du Barry thought herself utterly
disgraced; she returned home, and remained two hours, alone, abandoned to
the utmost distress. The King went to her; she threw herself at his feet,
in tears, and he pardoned her.

Madame la Marechale de Beauvau, the Duchesse de Choiseul, and the Duchesse
de Grammont had renounced the honour of the King's intimate acquaintance
rather than share it with Madame du Barry. But a few years after the
death of Louis XV., Madame la Marechale being alone at the Val, a house
belonging to M. de Beauvau, Mademoiselle de Dillon saw the Countess's
calash take shelter in the forest of St. Germain during a violent storm.
She invited her in, and the Countess herself related these particulars,
which I had from Madame de Beauvau.

The Comte du Barry, surnamed 'le roue' (the profligate), and Mademoiselle
du Barry advised, or rather prompted, Madame du Barry in furtherance of
the plans of the party of the Marechal de Richelieu and the Duc
d'Aiguillon. Sometimes they even set her to act in such a way as to have
a useful influence upon great political measures. Under pretence that the
page who accompanied Charles I. in his flight was a Du Barry or Barrymore,
they persuaded the Comtesse du Barry to buy in London that fine portrait
which we now have in the Museum. She had the picture placed in her
drawing-room, and when she saw the King hesitating upon the violent
measure of breaking up his Parliament, and forming that which was called
the Maupeou Parliament, she desired him to look at the portrait of a king