Romeo and Juliet _de la main gauche_.

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:

"M. de la Borde tells me that you have ordered him to kiss me on both
cheeks for you:

"What! Two kisses at life's end
What a passport to send me!
Two is one too much, Adorable Nymph;
I should die of pleasure at the first.

"He showed me your portrait, and be not offended, Madame, when I tell
you that I have taken the liberty of giving that the two kisses."

Perhaps Voltaire would not have written this letter, had he not read the
one written by the King to the Duc de Choiseul, who refused to pay court
to the left-hand queen:

"My Cousin,

"The discontent which your acts cause me forces me to exile you to
Chanteloup, where you will take yourself within 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 trou