“Ci-gît qui, sortant d’un fumier,
Pour faire sa fortune entière,
Vendit son honneur au fermier
Et sa fille au propriétaire.”[42]
When her brother, Abel Poisson, metamorphosed into Marquis de Marigny and superintendent of the crown buildings, had received the blue ribbon of the Holy Spirit, people said the fish was turning blue.
In 1754 Madame de Pompadour had the misfortune of losing her only daughter, Alexandrine d’Étioles, who was only eleven years old. She would have liked to marry her to young De Vintimille, who passed as the son of Louis XV. One day she brought the two children together, as if accidentally, at Bellevue, and showing them to the King, said to him: “That would be a fine couple.” Louis XV. received this overture more than coldly. Madame de Pompadour said afterwards to Madame du Hausset: “If he were a Louis XIV., he would make a Duke du Maine of the child, but I do not ask so much as that; a position and a ducal title is very little for his son, and it is because he is his son that I prefer him, my dear, to all the little dukes of the court. My grandchildren would share a resemblance to both grandfather and grandmother, and this blending which I expect to see will one day be my happiness.”—“Tears came to her eyes in saying these words,” adds Madame du Hausset.
Sainte-Beuve has poured witty contempt on this adulterous dream. “It seems to me,” says the prince of critics, “that one lights unexpectedly on the perverted but persistent bourgeois vein in this wish of Madame de Pompadour; she brings ideas of affection and family arrangements even into her adulterous combinations. She has sentiments; she thinks of herself already as a most affectionate grandmother. A picture, which I would call a Greuze-Pompadour, might be made of this scene, the Marquise tearfully pointing out the two children to the King.”
The favorite found it hard to renounce her cherished project of this alliance. Afterwards she thought of the young Duke de Fronsac, Richelieu’s son, as a husband for her daughter. She caused overtures to be made to the celebrated courtier. He answered by a disguised refusal. “My son,” said he, “has the honor of belonging, on his mother’s side, to the house of Lorraine; hence I cannot dispose of him without the consent of that family, but I shall proceed to demand it urgently if the Marquise still persists in her intentions.”
Madame de Pompadour understood, and insisted no further. She planned another marriage for her daughter, who was promised to the young Duke de Pecquigny, son of the Duke de Chaulnes of the De Luynes family. But Mademoiselle d’Étioles died prematurely at the very time when the marriage was about to be contracted. She was buried in the sepulchre her mother had bought from an illustrious family. “The bones of the La Trémoille,” said the Princess de Talmond, “must have been must astonished at finding fish bones (les arêtes des Poisson) near them.”
We have seen the disgusting flatteries of which the Marquise was the object. These hyperboles of interested praise had a terrible counterpart. While the court was obsequious, Paris remained implacable. There was an incessant succession of sneers, satires, and invectives. There had been mazarinades of old; now there were poissonades. Minister Maurepas was the instigator and often the author of these violent rhymed diatribes, which made people say France was an absolute monarchy tempered by ballads. The masses avenged themselves by refrains of more than Gallic animation. We cite one among a thousand. It was sung to the air Trembleurs d’Isis:—