It is far from being improbable, that Madame de Pompadour got some statesman, well versed in such matters, to assist her in compiling this book: however that be, we give it as it stands in her original manuscript.
M E M O I R S
O F T H E
Marchioness of Pompadour.
THE following narrative is not confined to the particular history of my life. My design is more extensive: I shall endeavour to give a true representation of the court of France under the reign of Lewis XV. The private memoirs of a King’s mistress are in themselves of small import; but to know the character of the Prince who raises her to favour; to be let into the intrigues of his reign, the genius of the courtiers, the practices of the ministers, the views of the great, the projects of the ambitious; in a word, into the secret springs of politics, is not a matter of indifference.
It is very seldom that the public judges rightly of what passes in the cabinet: they hear that the King orders armies to take the field; that he wins or loses battles; and on these occurrences they argue according to their particular prejudices.
History does not come nearer the mark; the generality of annalists being only the echoes of the public mistakes.
These papers I do not intend to publish in my life-time; but should they appear after my death, posterity will see in them a faithful draught of the several parts of the administration, which were acted, in some measure, under my eye. Had I never lived at Versailles, the events of our times might have been an inexplicable riddle to posterity; so complicated are the incidents, and in many particulars so contradictory, that, without a key, there is no decyphering them.
Ministers and other place-men are not always acquainted with the means, which they themselves make use of for attaining certain ends. A plenipotentiary very well knows that he signs a treaty of peace, but he is ignorant of the King’s motives for putting an end to the war.
Every politician strikes out a system in his own sagacious brain; the speculatists have often fathered on France what she never dreamed of; and many refined schemes have been attributed to her ministers, which never made part of their plan.