Yes, she was one with these people; the great aristocrats had always scorned her. M. de Choiseul had lost his place for a disdainful word of her; they had all recognised that she was, however gilded by the homage of Louis, only a common creature. She tried to recall the years of her glory when she had ruled France, and to search in her mind for any cause of offence given to the People who were now the masters. She thought that her conscience was clear: she had never meddled with politics; she had been kind to those dependent on her; she had done her best to amuse a King who was “unamusable.” True, she had used the public treasury as her own, but she had robbed no one, for the money would only have gone to some other woman. No, she could not see that she had done more than fill her part. Certainly, when she had ruled France it had not floated in blood as it was floating now; she had not pulled down God and profaned His Churches; she had not imprisoned the innocent and massacred the helpless. With the thought that the People had no crime to charge her with she consoled herself, and she was not afraid of the actual charge on which she was condemned, for it was vague and feeble. The truth they did not know. Having fled to London on the first outbreak of the revolution, she had returned to France–not, as her accusers believed, to fetch her jewels with which to succour the emigrants in England, but to put her wealth and her services at the disposal of those who were engaged in a plot to rescue the Queen. Marie Antoinette had always looked over the head of Madame du Barry; while the old King lived she had afforded her, under compulsion, a frozen tolerance; when she became Queen the favourite had been banished to a convent, utterly ignored and forgotten. Yet on an impulse of loyalty Madame du Barry had come impetuously from London to endeavour to rescue the Queen whom she had always admired, whom she admired rather more perhaps for her constant lofty attitude of contempt towards herself; her placid, rather foolish mind had never resented the disdain of an Emperor’s daughter. She was very sorry that her attempt to serve the Queen had been frustrated; she resolved, when she was free, to make another endeavour, though she had already given nearly all the spoils of her years of plunder to help the refugees in England.… The dusk began to fall; the room was shiveringly cold. No one came to her. She paced up and down the room to keep herself warm and beat her hands on her breast. Suppose that, after all, they did mean to drag her out to the guillotine? Many, many had gone already; many, many were yet to go–women as beautiful as herself, as innocent of offence towards the People. At this thought her spirit shrieked aloud; she fell across the chair by the window and gazed frantically at the strip of darkening sky.