ritten of her;
when she went out driving, fruit and vegetables were often hurled at
her. Thus were the fickle hearts of the people she loved turned against
their Bibi by the poisonous tongues of those jealous courtiers who so
ardently sought her downfall.

You all know the pitiful story of her fall from favour--how the King,
enraged by the stories he had heard of her, came to her room just as she
was going to bed.

"You've got to go," he said.

"Why?" she answered.

History writes that this ingenuous remark so unmanned him that his eyes
filled with tears, and he dashed from the room, closing the door after
him in order that her appealing eyes might not cause him to deflect from
his purpose.

Poor Bibi--your rose path has come to an end, your day is nearly done.
Back to Paris, back to the squalor and dirt of your early life. Bibi,
now in her forty-seventh year, with the memories of her recent
splendours still in her heart, decided to return to the stage, to the
public who had loved and feted her. Alas! she had returned too late.
Something was missing--the audience laughed every time she came on, and
applauded her only when she went off. Oh, Bibi, Bibi Coeur d'Or, even
now in this cold age our hearts ache for you. Volauvent writes in the
_Journal_ of the period: "Bibi can dance no longer." Veaux caps it by
saying "She never could," while S. Kayrille, well known for his wit and
kindly humour, reviewed her in the Berlin _Gazette_ of the period by
remarking, in his customarily brilliant manner, "She is very plain and
no longer in her first youth." This subtle criticism of her dancing,
though convulsing the Teutonic capital, was in reality the cause of her
leaving the stage and retiring with her one maid to a small house in
Montmartre, where history has it she petered out the last years of her
eventful career.

Absinthe was her one consolation, together with a miniature of Louis in
full regalia. Who is this haggard wretch with still the vestiges of her
wondrous beauty discernible in her perfectly moulded features?--not La
Belle Bibi! Oh, Fate--Destiny--how cruel are you who guided her straying
feet through the mazes of life! Why could she not have died at her
zenith--when her portrait was painted?

But still her gay humour was with her to the end. As she lay on her
crazy bed, surrounded by priests, she made the supreme and crowning _bon
mot_ of her brilliant life. Stretching out her wasted arm to the nearly
empty ab