Love And Lovers of the Past

ht on this famous favourite, and explain certain parts of the later years of her life which are not well known. Those papers show us the woman rather than the favourite, and according to a new phrase, ' after the official document, we have the natural one.' Among the police notes, accusations, indictment, inquiries, and diverse documents, there is a bundle containing nine letters. On the coarse wrapper is the following inscription : ' Letters of Brissac before and since the Revolution.?Of no great importance, except that they prove his intimacy with her [Madame du Barry], and his ideas on the Revolution. ' It is to be noticed that she spent the whole night previous to her death at Versailles, in burning her correspondence with him.' These nine letters, written in a clear, bold, but fluent hand, awaken a whole past, and make us deeply regret those which, if we credit the annotation, were burnt by Madame du Barry during a night of anguish and mourning. Yet, few as they are, they enable the reader to reconstruct the history of a grandseigneur's love for the royal mistress. This reconstruction is made easier still by several detached papers contained inthe bundle and relating to this liaison, such as letters from Mademoiselle de Mortemart (Brissac's daughter), Maussabre (the duke's aide- de-camp), the Chevalier Bernard d'Escours (an old friend and confidant of Madame du Barry), and a few short notes written by herself and easy to detect, owing to the fine, smal...