What the Preacher thought, Louis XV. thought also. Like Solomon, he was bored. His ennui was the terror of Madame de Pompadour. The problem she had to solve was how to entertain a man who could no longer be amused. The favorite trembled. Here was her favor barely begun, and already she beheld symptoms of indifference and lassitude in her royal lover. D’Argenson writes in 1747: “The Pompadour is about to be dismissed. The King will live with his family.” The Marquise was afraid lest the sovereign, who really had a badly understood but sincere religion at bottom, might some day conclude to be truly devout. Hence she desired at any cost to divert him from serious ideas and plunge him, in his own despite, into the vortex of false pleasures whose emptiness and poverty he knew so well.
Even amid the splendors of Versailles, the new Marquise regretted her successes as a private actress. The echo of the applause she had become accustomed to in the parlor theatres of M. Lenormand de Tournehem, at Étioles, and of Madame de Villemur, at Chantemerle, still resounded in her flattered ears. Those who are habituated to the emotions and vanities of the stage cannot easily do without them. Madame de Pompadour was homesick for the footlights and the boards. To play in comedy is such a fine occasion for a pretty woman to shine! To see all eyes fixed on her; to put beauty and her toilettes in the best lights; to be greeted when she appears by a murmur of admiration; to receive when the play is ended the rain of flowers and garlands that tumble at her feet; and at last, when the actress resumes the grande dame and re-enters the drawing-room, to glean compliments, madrigals, and enthusiastic plaudits afresh,—what a triumph for a fashionable woman, what exquisite joy for a coquette!
Women of the highest social rank are often jealous of actresses. It annoys them to perceive that they have not that order of charms which comediennes possess. They envy them the privilege of attracting the attention of a whole theatre, of being the object of all regards, the subject of all eulogies, and the ability to say to a lover after a triumph: “I have played only for you, I have thought of you alone; these flowers that have been thrown to me I give to you.” They envy them the excitement of those noisy ovations, in comparison with which all the flatteries of society seem tame. They envy them above all that faculty of metamorphosis which transforms the same woman into a shepherdess or a queen, a nymph or a goddess, so that a man while adoring a single beauty, but a beauty incessantly changed and transfigured, finds himself at once faithful and inconstant.
This is why Madame de Pompadour wanted to play comedy at Versailles. Little by little she accustomed Louis XV. to this idea. Holy Week was always a sad time for the monarch, who was tortured by remorse and ashamed of playing so badly his part as eldest son of the Church. The favorite conceived the notion of enlivening this dreaded week by interludes, half religious, half profane. Accompanied by actors and amateurs, she sang pieces of sacred music. This Lent à la Pompadour, this mixture of church and opera, this exchange of religions for chamber, not to say alcove, music, was very acceptable to such a character as Louis XV. and a devotion as inconsistent and spurious as his. The courtiers, of course, went into ecstasies over the charming voice of the Marquise. They reminded the King of the triumphs of the little theatres at Étioles and Chantemerle, and pitied him for not having seen comedy played by so remarkable an actress. Sacred music had served its time; another sort was now in order.
Madame de Pompadour achieved her purpose. A theatre was constructed for her at Versailles,—a miniature theatre, an elegant little place, a perfect gem.[31] The spot chosen was the gallery contiguous to the former Cabinet of Medals, a dependence of the King’s small apartments (room No. 137 of the Notice du Musée de Versailles, by M. Eudore Soulié). Nearly one-third of the orchestra was composed of amateurs belonging to the most illustrious families, the other two-thirds being professional artists. The chorus singers were selected among the King’s musicians. The dancers were boys and girls from nine to thirteen years at most, who, on reaching the latter age, were to enter the ballet corps of the opera, the Théâtre Français, or the Comédie-Italienne (the little girls distinguished themselves later on in choregraphic shows and gallantry). Celebrated painters, Boucher at their head, supplied the decorations. The mise en scène and the costumes were of incomparable elegance. As to the actors and actresses, they bore such names as the Duke de Chartres, the Duke d’Ayen, the Duke de Duras, the Duke de Nivernais, the Duke de Coigny, the Marquis d’Entraigues, the Count de Maillebois, the Duchess de Brancas, the Marquise Livry, the Countess d’Estrades, Madame de Marchais, and finally, the principal actress, the Armida of all these enchantments, the Marquise de Pompadour. The Duke de La Vallière was chosen as director of the troupe; as sub-director l’historiogriffe of cats, Moncrif, academician and reader to the Queen; as secretary and prompter, the Abbé de La Garde, librarian to the Marquise. Madame de Pompadour drew up the regulations for the players. As approved by the King, they contained ten articles:—
“1. In order to be admitted as an associate, it will be necessary to prove that this is not the first time that one has acted, so as not to make one’s novitiate in the troupe.
“2. Every one shall choose his own line of characters.
“3. No one may choose a different line from that for which he has been accepted, without obtaining the consent of all the associates.
“4. One cannot, in case of absence, appoint his substitute (a right expressly reserved to the Society which will appoint by an absolute majority).
“5. On his return, the person replaced will resume his own line.