Madame de Montespan put the same Prince to very enormous expences; she appeared always with the pomp and parade of a Queen, even to the having guards to attend her.
Scarron’s widow carried her pride and ostentation still further: she drew the King in to marry her, and this mistress came to be queen, an elevation which will be an eternal blot on the Prince’s memory.
This clandestine commerce gave rise to an infamous practice at court, with which Madame de Pompadour cannot be charged. All these concubines having children, to gratify their vanity, they must be legitimated; and, afterwards, they found means to marry these sons, or daughters, of prostitution, to the branches of the royal blood; a flagrant debasement of the house which were in kin to the crown: for though a Sovereign can legitimate a bastard, to efface the stain of bastardy is beyond his power. The consequence was, that the descendants of that clandestine issue aspired to the throne; and, through the King’s scandalous amours, that lustre which is due only to virtue, fell to the portion of vice.
It was given out in France, and over all Europe, that Madame de Pompadour was immensely rich: but nothing of this appeared at her death, except her magnificent moveables, and these were rather the consequences of her rank at court, than the effects of her vanity. This splendor his Majesty partook of, as visiting her every day.
The public is generally an unfair judge of those who hold a considerable station at court, deciding from vague reports, which are often the forgeries of ill-grounded prejudice. Madame de Pompadour has been charged with insatiable avarice. Had this been the case, she might have indulged herself at will: she was at the spring-head of opulence; the King never refused her any thing; so that she might have amassed any money; which she did not. There are now existing, in France, fifty wretches of financiers, each of a fortune far exceeding her’s.
It was also said, that the best thing which could happen to France, was to be rid of this rapacious favourite. Well; she is no more; and what is France the better for it? Has her death been followed by one of those sudden revolutions in the government, which usher in a better form of administration? Have they who looked on this Lady as an unsurmountable obstacle to France’s greatness, proposed any better means for raising it from its present low state? Is there more order in the government? are the finances improved? is there more method and oeconomy? No, affairs are still in the same bad ways the lethargy continues as profound as ever. The ministry, which before Madame de Pompadour’s death was fast asleep, is not yet awake. Every thing remains in statu quo. Some European governments have no regular motion; they advance either too fast, or too slow; their steps are either precipitate, or sluggish.
In this favourite’s time, there was too much shifting and changing in the ministry; now she is gone, there is none at all, &c. &c.
I am very far from intending a panegyric on Madame de Pompadour. Faults she had, which posterity will never forgive. All the calamities of France were imputed to her, and she should have resigned in compliance to the public: a nation is to be respected even in its prejudices. With any tolerable share of patriotism, Madame de Pompadour would have quitted the court, and thus approved herself deserving of the favour for which she was execrated; but her soul was not capable of such an act of magnanimity: she knew nothing of that philosophy which, inspiring a contempt of external grandeur, endears the subject to the Prince, and exalts him above the throne.
There is great appearance that this Lady intended to revise both her Memoirs and her will, and that death prevented her: she used to write, by starts, detached essays, without any coherence; and these on separate bits of paper. These were very numerous and diffuse, as generally are the materials intended to form a book, if she really had any such design.
We were obliged to throw by on all sides, and clear our way through an ocean of writings, a long and tiresome business.