“Madame du Barry was one of the prettiest women at the Court, where there were so many, and assuredly the most bewitching, on account of the perfections of her whole person. Her hair, which she often wore without powder, was fair and of a most beautiful color, and she had such a profusion that she was at a loss to know what to do with it. Her blue eyes, widely open, had a kind and frank expression, and she fixed them upon those persons to whom she spoke and seemed to follow in their faces the effect of her words. She had a tiny nose, a very small mouth, and a skin of dazzling whiteness. In short, she quickly fascinated every one.” A FANCIFUL FABRIC.--“DU BARRY” FIRST PRODUCED. The play which Belasco fabricated and produced under the name of “Du Barry” is radically fanciful: its uses historic names, but it is not, in any sense, history. As in many precedent cases so in this one, [Illustration: Photograph by Sarony. Belasco’s Collection. MRS. LESLIE CARTER AS _DU BARRY_] authentic records were ignored and an arbitrary, gilt-edged, rosy ideal took the place of truth. _Nell Gwynn_, in the person of Miss Henrietta Crosman, had worn the halo but a little time before (Bijou Theatre, New York, October 9, 1900), and if _Nell Gwynn_ could wear it, why not _Marie Jeanne_? This burnishing process, to be sure, is diffusive of vast and general misinformation, but for most persons that seems to be quite as useful as accurate knowledge, and, after all, if the Stage is to present imperial wantons in any fashion it may as well present them in a decent one. The gay _du Barry_ as seen by the dramatist,--or, at least, as shown by him,--was abundantly frail, but she was also fond, and while she did not scruple to pick up the royal pocket-handkerchief she nevertheless, in her woman’s heart, remained true to her first love: that is the story of the play. The adventurous actual du Barry became the paramour of Cossé-Brissac, after King Louis the Fifteenth had died and after she had been exiled from the French Court. In the play the lady hides that lover in her bed (he has been wounded, and she persuades him to seek this retirement by pounding on his wounds with a heavy candlestick, until he becomes insensible), so that the jealous _King_, committing the blunder of Byron’s _Don Alfonso_, in “Don Juan,” cannot find him: she also wields the convenient candlestick with which to smash the sconce of an interloping relative who otherwise would betray him; she defies, for his sake, the gracious Majesty of France and every appurtenance thereunto belonging; and, at the last, she goes pathetically to the guillotine, still loving him and still deploring her innocent, youthful past, when they were happy lovers together, when all was peace, joy, and hope,--because as the old poet Rogers prettily phrases it, “Life was new and the heart promised what the fancy drew.”