e in her cell at the conciergerie.

In vain did an Irish priest who visited her offer to secure her escape
if she would give him money to bribe her jailers. "No," she answered
with a smile, "I have no wish to escape. I am glad to die; but I will
give you money willingly on condition that you save the Duchesse de
Mortemart." And while Madame de Mortemart, daughter of the man she
loved, was making her way to safety under the priest's escort, Jeanne du
Barry was being led to the scaffold, breathing the name of the man she
had loved so well; and, however feeble the flesh, glad to follow where
he had led the way.

CHAPTER VI

THE REGENT'S DAUGHTER

Many unwomanly women have played their parts in the drama of Royal
Courts, but scarcely one, not even those Messalinas, Catherine II. of
Russia and Christina of Sweden, conducted herself with such a shameless
disregard of conventionality as Marie Louise Elizabeth d'Orleans, known
to fame as the Duchesse de Berry, who probably crowded within the brief
space of her years more wickedness than any woman who was ever cradled
in a palace.

It is said that this libertine Duchesse was mad; and certainly he would
be a bold champion who would try to prove her sanity. But, apart from
any question of a disordered brain, there was a taint in her blood
sufficient to account for almost any lapse from conventional standards
of pure living. Her father was that Duc d'Orleans who shocked the none
too strait-laced Europe of two centuries ago by his orgies; her
grandfather was that other Orleans Duke, brother of Louis XIV., whose
passion for his minions broke the heart of his English wife, the Stuart
Princess Henriettta; and she had for mother one of the daughters of
Madame de Montespan, light-o'-love to _le Roi Soleil_.

The offspring of such parents could scarcely have been normal; and how
far from normal Marie Louise was, this story of her singular life will
show. When her father, the Duc de Chartres, took to wife Mademoiselle de
Blois, Montespan's daughter, there were many who significantly shrugged
their shoulders and curled their lips at such a union; and one at least,
the Duc's mother, Elizabeth Charlotte, Princess Palatine, was
undisguisedly furious. She refused point-blank to be present at the
nuptials, and when her son, fresh from the altar, approached her to ask
her blessing, she retorted by giving the bridegroom a resounding slap on
the face.

Such was the ill-omened openi