If the nobility had a problem with Mme de Pompadour’s background, it paled into insignificance when the next (and last) official mistress arrived on the scene. Madame du Barry was from a working class family and had been a high class call girl before she became Louis XV’s mistress.
Marie Leszczynska had died before Madame du Barry was presented at court.
Louis XV met the very beautiful blue eyed blonde when he was 58 and she was 24. The King defied everyone’s opinion. He was in love and had never been happier. Unlike most mistresses, she had no political ambitions. Even when people hated her (as Marie-Antoinette did), she tried to get on with them and was polite.
Madame du Barry occupied a large luxurious apartment on the second floor. This was not the original mistresses’ apartment. Its previous occupant had been Louis XV’s widowed daughter in law, who had died the year before Louis met Madame du Barry.
The apartment was immediately above the King’s private bed chamber, overlooking the marble courtyard. Access was via the King’s staircase but there was also hidden staircase directly linking the King’s private apartment and Madame du Barry’s bedroom.
In the wood panelling there is a service door which opens on to a toilet (the new kind with a flush!) and a small room for the maid.
Unlike many of the courtiers, Madame du Barry was fastidious about hygiene and bathed regularly. It was something the King appreciated.
They were together at the Petit Trianon when Louis became very ill. He had smallpox and returned to his private bedroom at Versailles where he died two weeks later.
As soon as Louis XV died, Madame du Barry was packed off to a convent where she remained for almost a year before being allowed to return to Louveciennes, the chateau Louis XV had given her.
She was beheaded during the French Revolution.
