The man bowed low, with no shadow of hesitancy, made this cryptic answer to her query:

"Mademoiselle, will you grant me the first reasonable request I may make of you when you are Queen of France?"

Thinking he was a crank--as perhaps he was--she sought to humor him, and replied:

"Certainly, monsieur. I promise."

"You take me for a madman," he returned, with a second grave bow. "But I am not insane. Adieu, mademoiselle. There will be nothing more extraordinary than your elevation--except your end."

He spoke and vanished, either into the street crowd or into thin air.

You may recall the story of the "Man in Black's" midnight visit to Ninon de l'Enclos, with a gift to the essence of youth and the warning of her death? This was a well-believed and oft-repeated narrative in Marie's day. It is highly possible that she built from it her recital of the adventure of the "elegantly attired" stranger.

At all events, she told Jean du Barry about it. Whether or not he believed it, is no concern of yours or mine. But it a.s.suredly gave him an idea; the supreme idea of his rotten life. He saw a one-in-fifty chance of making more money through Marie than she could have earned for him in a century as divinity of his gambling rooms. And, remote as were the scheme's prospects for success, he resolved to make a gambler's cast at the venture.

Louis XV., King of France, had been ruled for nearly twenty years by the Marquise de Pompadour, who had squandered royal revenues, had made and unmade men's career by a nod or a shake of her pretty head, and had played at ducks and drakes with international politics. And now Madame de Pompadour was dead. Many a younger and prettier face had caught Louis' doddering fancy, since her death. But no other ~maitresse en t.i.tre~ had ruled him and France since then.

Briefly, Jean coveted the vacant office for Marie.

Not for her own sake. Jean did not care for her happiness or welfare, or for the happiness or welfare of any mortal on earth except of one Jean, Vicomte du Barry. But he foresaw that with Marie as the royal favorite, he himself, as her sponsor, could reap a harvest such as is not the guerdon of one man in a million.

He set to work at his self-appointed task with the same rare vigor and cunning that had so long enabled him to elude the hangman and to live on better men's money. The first step was to engage the help of Lebel, the king's ~valet de chambre~.

Lebel was nominally a servant, but, in a sense, he was mightier than any prime minister. For Louis relied implicitly on the valet's taste in feminine beauty. It was Lebel, for instance, who had first brought Madame du Pompadour to the king's notice. He had done the same good turn to many another aspiring damsel. And now, heavily bribed by Jean du Barry, he consented to see if Marie was worth mentioning to Louis.

At sight of Marie, the connoisseur valet realized to the full her super-woman charm. He recognized her as the thousandth woman--even the millionth.

Yet Lebel was ever cautious about raising false hopes. So, not knowing that Jean had gone over the whole plan with Marie, he asked her if she would honor him by attending a little informal dinner he was soon to give, in his apartment, at the Versailles palace; a dinner in honor of "the Baron de Gonesse."

Marie, with sweet innocence, accepted the invitation; then timidly asked Lebel if she might sit beside him at the dinner, as all the others would be strangers to her. The bare thought of his presuming to sit down in the presence of the king--otherwise "the Baron de Gonesse"--so filled Lebel with horror that he forgot his role of diplomacy and blurted out:

"~I?~ Sit at the table with ~him~? I--I shall be unexpectedly called from the room, as usual, just as dinner is served. And I shall not return until it is over."

When Marie--carefully coached as to behavior, repartee, and so forth, by the ever-thoughtful Jean--arrived at Lebel's apartments in the palace, on the night of the dinner, she found, to her disgust, that the king was nowhere in sight--not even disguised as "the Baron de Gonesse"--and that her fellow guests were merely a group of Versailles officials.

Not being versed in palace secrets, she did not know that Louis was seated in a dark closet behind a film-curtained window, looking into the brightly lighted dining room and noting everything that went on, nor that cunningly arranged speaking tubes brought every whispered or loud-spoken word to him.

Finding the king was not to be one of the guests, the girl philosophically choked back her chagrin and set herself to get every atom of fun out of the evening that she could. She ate much, drank more, and behaved pretty quite like a gloriously lovely street gamin.

There was no use in wasting on these understrappers the fine speeches and the courtesy she had been learning for the king's benefit. So she let herself go. And the dinner was lively, to say the very least. In fact, it was the gayest, most deliciously amusing dinner ever held in those sedate rooms--thanks to Marie.

Louis, in paroxysms of laughter, looked on until the sound of his guffaws betrayed his royal presence. Then he came out of hiding.

Marie, for an instant, was thunder-struck at what she had done. She feared she had ruined her chances by the boisterous gayety of the past hour or so. Then--for her brain was as quick as her talk was dull--she saw the fight was not lost, but won, and she knew how she had won it.

Louis XV. was fifty-eight years old. He lived in France's most artificial period. No one dared be natural; least of all in the presence of the king. All his life he had been treated to honeyed words, profound reverence, the most polished and adroit courtesy.

People--women especially--had never dared be ~human~ when he was around.

Marie saw that it was the novelty of her behavior which had aroused the king's bored interest. And from that moment her course was taken.

She did not cringe at his feet, or pretend innocence, or a.s.sume ~grande-dame~ airs. She was ~herself~, Marie Becu, the slangy, light-hearted, feather-brained daughter of the streets; respecting nothing, fearing nothing, confused by nothing--as ready to shriek gutter oaths at her king as at her footman. And, of course, she was also Marie Becu, the super-woman whose magnetism and beauty were utterly irresistible.

The combination was too much for Louis. He succ.u.mbed. What else was there for him to do? After the myriad poses of the women he had known, Marie's naturalness was like a bracing breeze sweeping through a hothouse; a slum breeze, if you like, but none the less a breeze, and delightfully welcome to the jaded old monarch.

Louis fell in love with Marie. It was not a mere infatuation of an hour, like most of his affairs. He fell completely and foolishly in love with her. And he never fell out of love with her as long as he lived.

Lebel was in despair. He had hoped Marie might amuse the king. He had had no shadow of an idea that the affair would go further. By reason of his privileges as an old servant, he actually ventured to remonstrate with Louis.

"Sire," he protested, "she is not even legitimate. The birth records attest that."

"Then," laughed the king, "let the right authorities make her so."

Accordingly, messengers were sent posthaste to her babyhood home, and a new birth certificate was drawn up; also a certificate attesting to her mother's legal marriage to a wholly mythical Monsieur de Gomard de Vaubernier and to several other statements that made Marie's legitimacy as solid as Gibraltar.

"Also," pleaded the valet, "she is neither a wife nor a woman of t.i.tle."

"We can arrange both those trifles," the king a.s.sured him.

And, with charming simplicity, the thing was done. Jean sent for his worthless elder brother, Guillaume, Comte du Barry, who was at that time an army captain. And on September 1, 1768, Marie and Guillaume were duly married. The lucky bridegroom received enough money to pay all his debts and to make him rich. Then he obligingly deserted his new-made wife at the church door, according to program, and wandered away to spend his fortune as might best please him. Thereby, Marie Becu became Madame la Comtesse du Barry, without having her cur of a husband to bother about.

A list of her possessions and their values--duly set down in the marriage contract, which is still on file--shows the state of Marie's finances at this time. I copy it for the benefit of those who may be interested to learn of a useful life's by-products. At twenty-two--in 1768--so says the contract, Marie was the sole owner of:

One diamond necklace, worth sixteen hundred dollars; an aigret and a pair of earings in cl.u.s.ters, worth sixteen hundred dollars; thirty dresses and petticoats, worth six hundred dollars; lace, dress tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, caps, et cetera, worth twelve hundred dollars; six dozen shirts of fine linen, twelve complete morning dresses, and other articles of linen, et cetera, worth four hundred dollars.

One obstacle alone now barred Marie's road to supremacy. According to unbreakable royal etiquette, three things were indispensable to the woman who aspired to become a French king's ~maitresse en t.i.tre~--she must be legitimate, she must be of n.o.ble rank, and she must have been presented at court.

The first two conditions, Marie had fulfilled. The third was a poser.

In order to be presented at court, some reputable woman of the old n.o.bility must act as sponsor. And not one decent woman of high rank would sink to acting as sponsor for Marie. Moreover, the king declared he did not care whether she were presented or not, and he would take no step to help her in the matter.

Without this presentation, she could not appear publicly at court, she could not sway overt political influence, she could not have a suite of rooms at the palace. Between a presentation and no presentation lay all the difference between uncrowned queen and a light o' love. And no one would sponsor Marie.

Jean du Barry, at last, solved the problem, as he had solved all the rest.

He had able a.s.sistance. For, a court clique had been formed to back Marie's pretentions. The clique was headed by such men as the old Duc de Richelieu and the much younger Duc d'Aiguillon. The latter was violently in love with Marie, and there is no reason to think that his love was hopeless. But the rest of the clique cared not a straw about her. To them, the whole thing was a master move in politics. With Marie in control of the king, and themselves in control of Marie, they foresaw an era of unlimited power.

The Duc de Choiseul, prime minister of France, was the sworn enemy of this clique, which formed the "opposition." And Choiseul swore to move heaven and earth to prevent Marie's presentation, for he knew it would lead to his own political ruin; as it did.

Jean du Barry hunted around until he discovered somewhere in Navarre a crotchety and impoverished old widow, the dowager Comtesse de Bearn.

She was a scion of the ancient n.o.bility, the decayed and dying branch of a once mighty tree. She was not only poor to the verge of starvation, but she had a pa.s.sion for lawsuits. She had just lost a suit, and was on the verge of bankruptcy.

The good-hearted Jean, through the clique's help, arranged to have the case reopened and the decision reversed. This was before our own day of an incorruptible judiciary. He also promised her a gift of twenty thousand dollars in gold. All this in return for the trifling service of journeying up to Paris and thence to Versailles, to act as sponsor for the lovely Madame du Barry, who had wilfully declared that she would be presented under no less auspices than those of the ill.u.s.trious Comtesse de Bearn.

The old comtesse accepted the offer with all the shrinking reluctance a hungry dog shows at the proffer of a bone. She came up to Paris, at the expense of the clique, and was immured in Jean's house, with the gambler's sister, Chon (Fanchon) du Barry as her jailer and entertainer.

Choiseul, through his spies, learned of the plot, and he tried in every way to kidnap the old lady or to out-bribe the du Barrys.

Meanwhile, coached by Jean, the fair Marie was making King Louis' life miserable by throwing herself at his feet, in season and out of season, and beseeching him to silence her enemies forever by allowing her to be presented. When these tactics failed, she would let loose upon the poor king a flood of gutter language, roundly abusing him, turning the air blue with her profanity, and in other ways showing her inalienable right to a place in court circles.

Louis would promise nothing. The turmoil alternately bored and amused him. At last--April 21, 1769--on his return from the hunt, after an unusually good day's sport, the king casually remarked to all concerned: