e. Do not believe them. The
du Barry, my dear, was quite as good as the Widow Scarron, and the more
agreeable woman of the two. In my time a woman could keep her dignity
among her gallantries. Indiscretion was the ruin of us, and the
beginning of all the mischief. The philosophists--the nobodies whom we
admitted into our salons--had no more gratitude or sense of decency than
to make an inventory of our hearts, to traduce us one and all, and to
rail against the age by way of a return for our kindness. The people are
not in a position to judge of anything whatsoever; they looked at the
facts, not at the form. But the men and women of those times, my heart,
were quite as remarkable as at any other period of the Monarchy. Not one
of your Werthers, none of your notabilities, as they are called, never
a one of your men in yellow kid gloves and trousers that disguise the
poverty of their legs, would cross Europe in the dress of a travelling
hawker to brave the daggers of a Duke of Modena, and to shut himself up
in the dressing-room of the Regent's daughter at the risk of his life.
Not one of your little consumptive patients with their tortoiseshell
eyeglasses would hide himself in a closet for six weeks, like Lauzun,
to keep up his mistress's courage while she was lying in of her child.
There was more passion in M. de Jaucourt's little finger than in
your whole race of higglers that leave a woman to better themselves
elsewhere! Just tell me where to find the page that would be cut in
pieces and buried under the floorboards for one kiss on the Konigsmark's
gloved finger!

"Really, it would seem today that the roles are exchanged, and women
are expected to show their devotion for men. These modern gentlemen are
worth less, and think more of themselves. Believe me, my dear, all these
adventures that have been made public, and now are turned against our
good Louis XV, were kept quite secret at first. If it had not been for
a pack of poetasters, scribblers, and moralists, who hung about our
waiting-women, and took down their slanders, our epoch would have
appeared in literature as a well-conducted age. I am justifying the
century and not its fringe. Perhaps a hundred women of quality were
lost; but for every one, the rogues set down ten, like the gazettes
after a battle when they count up the losses of the beaten side. And in
any case I do not know that the Revolution and the Empire can reproach
us; they were coarse, dull, licentio