But She Had Such a Sweet Winning Smile
Louis the Fifteenth, king of France,
Adored Madame du Barry.
His royal ardor was not bound
To the person he did marry.
His paramour was hard to please.
The king brooded day and night
On what act of loving kindness
Might appease her appetite.
One day he called his jeweller,
Whose face turned pale, then green,
When told to make a necklace
The likes of which no eyes had seen.
Vanity of vanities! Let nobody forget:
All humankind proposes yields to a Higher Will.
For the king lay dead and buried
When it was time to pay the bill.
They asked:' Who has got the money?
Who is there so rich
As to settle payment
And haul us from this ditch?
Louis the Sixteenth was now king,
But not long on the throne.
To purchasing the necklace
He himself was prone.
His wife strongly objected.
She thought the whole thing crazy.'
'We need to spend on self-defence:
More vessels for the navy!'
Now Cardinal De Rohan was a worldly priest,
Not averse to 'oo la la.'
Especially not in the matter of
Jeanne de la Motte Valois.
As a young girl she was naughty,
But she confessed in style.
The priest let her off counting rosary beads
All for the sake of her sweet winning smile.
Jeanne told the cardinal
They could have a sales deal signed
As friends at court had signaled
That the queen had changed her mind.
The queen and cardinal soon met
And the queen signed with aplomb.
De Rohan was too befuddled
To sense something was wrong
The queen received the necklace
But the queen was not the queen.
Charming though the lady was,
Who knew where she had been?
The necklace was picked to pieces
And sold off part by part.
O woeful desecration
Of this glorious objet d'art?
The cardinal faced the music
A victim of delusion
'Gullable, not guilty,'
came the court's conclusion.
Madame de la Motte Valois
Had no basis for a plea
And she was branded on both arms
With the letter V.
This letter stood for 'Voleuse,'
Meaning in English 'thief.'
Somehow she got to London,
And there she came to grief.
When fleeing from her creditors,
She fell from an upper floor.
Those creditors she did escape,
But only at death's door.
During her interment
Wagging tongues spoke of her guile
But someone chirped in her defence:
'But she had such a sweet winning smile.'
Copyright © Julian Scutts | Year Posted 2021
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