, as the one who had seemed the most amiable
to her; she loved him sincerely, sentimentally, if not with a profound
passion. On her arrival at court, her ideal would have been to amuse him
with a thousand entertainments borrowed from the arts, or even from
matters of the intellect, to make him happy and constant in a circle of
varied enchantments and pleasures. A Watteau landscape, sports,
comedies, pastorals in the shade, a continual Embarkation for Cythera,
that would have been the round she would have preferred. But once
transported into the slippery enclosure of the court, she could realize
her ideal very imperfectly. Kind and obliging by nature, she had to take
up arms to defend herself against enmity and perfidy and to take the
offensive to avoid being overthrown; necessity led her into politics and
induced her to make herself Minister of State.

She loved the arts and intellectual things far above the comprehension
of any of the ladies of quality. On her arrival at her eminent and
dishonourable post--much more dishonourable than she thought--she at
first only thought of herself as destined to aid, to call to her side,
and to encourage struggling merit and men of talent of all kinds. This
is her sole glory, her best title, and her best excuse. She did her best
to advance Voltaire and to make him agreeable to Louis XV., whom the
petulant poet so strongly repelled by the vivacity and even the
familiarity of his praises. She thought she had found a genius in
Crebillon and honoured him accordingly. She showed favour to Gresset;
she protected Marmontel; she welcomed Duclos; she admired Montesquieu
and plainly showed it. She would have liked to serve Jean-Jacques
Rousseau. When the King of Prussia ostentatiously gave d'Alembert a
modest pension and Louis XV. was scoffing in her presence at the amount
(1200 livres), in comparison with the term _sublime genius_, for which
it was given, she advised him to forbid the philosopher to accept it and
to double it himself; which Louis XV. did not dare to do; his religious
principles would not permit it on account of the _Encyclopedie_. It was
not her fault that we cannot say _the century of Louis XV._, as we say
_the century of Louis XIV_.

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF MADAME DE POMPADOUR.
_De la Tour._]

There are then in the career and power of Madame de Pompadour two
distinct periods: the first, the most brilliant and most greatly
favoured, was that following the peac