al pain." Her happiest hours--for
she did not love the king--were those spent with her brother, the
Marquis de Marigny, in the midst of artists, musicians, and men of
letters.

As for the queen, she was in the background, absolutely. "All the
prerogatives of a princess of a sovereign house were, at this time,
about 1750, conferred by the king upon Mme. de Pompadour, and all
the pomp and parade then deemed indispensable to rank so exalted were
fully assumed by her." At the opera, she had her _loge_ with the king,
her tribune at the chapel of Versailles where she heard mass, her
servants were of the nobility, her carriage had the ducal arms, her
etiquette was that of Mme. de Montespan, Her father was ennobled to De
Marigny, her brother to be Marquis de Vandieres. The marriage of her
daughter to a son of the king and his former mistress was planned,
then with a son of Richelieu, then with others of the nobility;
fortunately, the girl died.

Mme. de Pompadour gradually amassed a royal fortune, buying the
magnificent estate of Crecy for six hundred and fifty thousand livres;
"La Celle," near Versailles, for twenty-six thousand livres; the Hotel
d'Evreaux, at Paris, for seventy-five thousand livres--and these were
her minor expenses; her paintings, sculpture, china, pottery, etc.,
cost France over thirty-six million livres. Her imagination in art and
inventions was wonderful; she retouched and decorated the chateau
in which she was received by the king; she made "Choisy"--the king's
property--her own, as it were, by all the embellishments she ordered
and the expenditures which her lover lavished upon it at her request.
All the luxuries of the life at "Choisy," all the refinements even to
the smallest detail, had their origin in her inventions. It was she
who planned the fairy chateau with its wonderful furniture, her own
invention.

At that time, her whole life was spent in adding variety to the life
of the king and in distracting the ennui which pursued him. In her
retreats she affected the simplicity of country life; the gardens
contained sheepfolds and were free from the pomp of the conventional
French gardens; there were cradles of myrtle and jasmine, rosebushes,
rustic hiding places, statues of Cupid, and fields of jonquils filled
the air with the most intoxicating perfume. There she amused her
sovereign by appearing in various characters and acting the parts--now
a royal personage, now a gardener's maid.

However,