And herein my ill-fortune prevailed over the reluctance I had to leave the King my husband, after the instances of renewed love and regard which he had begun to show me.
[ THE MEMOIRS OF LOUIS XV. AND OF MADAME DE POMPADOUR ]
ON MADAME DE POMPADOUR
"Madame de Pompadour was not merely a grisette, as her enemies attempted to say, and as Voltaire repeated in one of his malicious days. She was the prettiest woman in Paris, spirituelle, elegant, adorned with a thousand gifts and a thousand talents, but with a sort of sentiment which had not the grandeur of an aristocratic ambition. She loved the king for himself, as the finest man in the kingdom, as the person who appeared to her the most admirable. She loved him sincerely, with a degree of sentimentalism, if not with a profound passion. Her ideal had been on arriving at the court to fascinate him, to keep him amused by a thousand diversions suggested by art or intellect, to make him happy and contented in a circle of ever-changing enchantments and pleasures. A Watteau-like country, plays, comedies, pastorals in the shade, a continual embarking for Cytherea, that would have been the setting she preferred. But once she had set foot on the shifting soil of the court, she could only realize her ideal imperfectly. Naturally obliging and good-hearted, she had to face enmity open and concealed, and to take the offensive to avoid her downfall. Necessity drove her into politics, and to become a minister of state. Madame de Pompadour can be considered as the last king's mistress, deserving of the name. The race of the royal mistresses can then be said, if not ended, to have been at least greatly broken. And Madame de Pompadour remains in our eyes the last in our history, and the most brilliant."
SAINTE-BEUVE.
INTRODUCTION
It is one of the oldest of truisms that truth is stranger than fiction. The present volume is but another striking example in point. The legend of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid palls before the historic story of a certain Jeanne Poisson, an obscure French girl who won a king's favor and wielded his sceptre for twenty years. We do not hear anything further from the Beggar Maid, after she became queen; but the famous Pompadour became the most powerful figure of her day in all France, not excepting the king himself.
These veritable Memoirs of her reign are ascribed to her attendant, Madame du Hausset, a woman of good family and, above all, of good memory, who has here given us a faithful account of her remarkable subject. Her opportunities for exact knowledge may be gathered from her mistress's own words: "The king and I trust you so completely that we look upon you as we might a cat or a dog, and talk ahead with as much freedom as though you were not there." And the critic, Sainte-Beuve, adds: "When the destiny of a nation is in a woman's bedroom, the best place for the historian is in the ante-chamber. Madame du Hausset seemed created for this rôle of a Suetonius by her position and her character.... A good woman, furthermore, incapable of lying, and remaining on the whole quite respectable."
After the death of Madame de Pompadour, the journal of this waiting-woman fell into the hands of M. de Marigny, brother of the favorite, with whom it remained in manuscript form for some years. It was finally published, in 1802, ostensibly as "Drawn from the Portfolio of the Maréchale D---- by Soulavie"; but the French editors, MM. Vitrac and Galopin, assert that Soulavie only lent his name to the work. They also call attention to the fact that a History of Madame de Pompadour, by Mlle. Fouqué, was published in London, as early as 1759. But no such general history, or biography, could possibly have the intimate value of a document written at the closest range of its subject. "These Memoirs," say the French editors, "give a faithful portrait of Madame de Pompadour.... They are clearly hostile, as are nearly all documents preserved about her; for it was one of the evil fortunes of Madame de Pompadour to be made known to us chiefly through her enemies, D'Argenson, the Duc de Luynes, and Richelieu."
The above opinion sums up neatly the consensus of historical opinion concerning this famous woman. She has, indeed, been in the hands of her enemies, ever since the day of her death, in 1764. But this fact is not surprising. The mistress of a weak monarch, she made use of her large influence over him to further her own ends and appoint her own ministers to power. She was, in fact, "the King." Michelet, the historian, asserts in so many words that she "reigned twenty years," and he admits that "although of mean birth, she had some patriotic ideas." However, leaving the question of her political career aside, for the moment, the reader will be interested to make the acquaintance of this remarkable woman, herself. Who was she? What was the secret of her long continued hold upon the King? Louis XV. was a notoriously fickle monarch, whose many amours have become a part of history. But none exercised the influence over him--and over all France, through him--as did this person of "mean birth." Even her enemies have had to admit her wonderful executive ability, in addition to her womanly charms. These Memoirs, though rambling and without strict sequence, answer our many questions interestingly. They have been written, very evidently, by an inmate of the household. They give, in addition, much of the secret history of the Court at this important period, and point out, to the discerning reader, a few of the chief causes which were to make possible the French Revolution, at the century's close.