etails, but I prefer to stop and send the curious to the
model itself: there they will find a thousand things that I scarcely
dare to touch upon.

Such in her best days was this ravishing, ambitious, frail, but sincere
woman, who in her elevation remained good, faithful (I love to believe)
in her sin, obliging, so far as she could be, but vindictive when driven
to it; who was quite one of her own sex after all, and, finally, whose
intimate life her lady-in-waiting has been able to show us without being
too heavy or crushing a witness against her.

In spite of everything, she was exactly the mistress to suit this reign,
the only one who could have succeeded in turning it to account in the
sense of opinion, the only one who could lessen the crying discord
between the least literary of kings and the most literary of epochs. If
the Abbe Galiani, in a curious page, loudly preferring the age of Louis
XV. to that of Louis XIV., has been able to say of this age of the human
mind so fertile in results: "Such another reign will not be met with
anywhere for a long time," Mme. de Pompadour certainly contributed to
this to some extent. This graceful woman rejuvenated the court by
bringing into it the vivacity of her thoroughly French tastes, tastes
that were Parisian. As mistress and friend of the Prince, as protectress
of the arts, her mind found itself entirely on a level with her role and
her rank: as a politician, she bent, she did ill, but perhaps not worse
than any other favourite in her place would have done at that period
when a real statesman was wanting among us.

When she found herself dying after a reign of nineteen years; when at
the age of forty-two years she had to leave these palaces, these riches,
these marvels of art she had amassed, this power so envied and disputed,
but which she kept entirely in her own hands to her last day, she did
not say with a sigh, like Mazarin, "So I must leave all this!" She
faced death with a firm glance, and as the _cure_ of the Madeleine, who
had come to visit her at Versailles, was about to depart, she said:
"Wait a moment, _Monsieur le Cure_, we will go together."

Madame de Pompadour may be considered the last in date of the Kings'
mistresses who were worthy of the name: after her it would be impossible
to descend and enter with any decency into the history of the Du Barry.
The kings and emperors who have succeeded in France, from that day to
this, have been either too virtuous,