w on the marriage morning, and on
whom she looked her last at the church door.

Then followed for the maid of the kitchen a few years of such Queendom
and splendour as have seldom fallen to the lot of any lady cradled in a
palace--the idolatrous worship of a King, the intoxication of the power
that only beauty thus enshrined can wield, the glitter of priceless
jewels, rarest laces, and richest satins and silks, the flash of gold on
dinner and toilet-table, an army of servants in sumptuous liveries, the
fawning of great Court ladies, the courtly flatteries of princes--every
folly and extravagance that money could purchase or vanity desire.

Six years of such intoxicating life and then--the end. Louis is lying on
his death-bed and, with fear in his eyes and a tardy penitence on his
lips, is saying to her, "Madame, it is time that we should part." And,
indeed, the hour of parting had arrived; for a few days later he drew
his last wicked breath, and Madame du Barry was under orders to retire
to a convent. But her grief for the dead King was as brief as her love
for him had been small; for within a few months, we find her installed
in her beautiful country home, Lucienne, ready for fresh conquests, and
eager to drain the cup of pleasure to the last drop. Nor was there any
lack of ministers to the vanity of the woman who had now reached the
zenith of her incomparable charms.

Among the many lovers who flocked to the country shrine of the widowed
"Queen," was Louis, Duc de Cosse, son of the Marechal de Brissac, who,
although Madame du Barry's senior by nine years, was still in the prime
of his manhood--handsome as an Apollo and a model of the courtly graces
which distinguished the old _noblesse_ in the day of its greatest pride,
which was then so near its tragic downfall.

De Casse had long been a mute worshipper of Louis' beautiful "Queen,"
and now that she was a free woman he was at last able to pay open homage
to her, a homage which she accepted with indifference, for at the time
her heart had strayed to Henry Seymour, although in vain. The woman
whose beauty had conquered all other men was powerless to raise a flame
in the breast of the cold-blooded Englishman; and, realising this, she
at last bade him farewell in a letter, pathetic in its tender dignity.
"It is idle," she wrote, "to speak of my affection for you--you know it.
But what you do not know is my pain. You have not deigned to reassure
me about that which most