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What had he to do, after forty years of reign; after having exhausted everything? Every pleasure that Dubois could invent for his hot youth, or cunning Lebel could minister to his old age, was flat and stale; used up to the very dregs: every shilling in the national purse had been squeezed out, by Pompadour and Du Barri and such brilliant ministers of state.
I have a supreme disgust for the man who at the hustings has no opinion beyond or above the clamour round him. How such a fellow would have kissed the ground before a Pompadour, or waited for hours in a Buckingham's antechamber, only to catch the faintest beam of reflected light from royalty. But I declare we have been just like schoolboys talking about forms of government and so on.
This lamentable affair was related to me by the Mother-Abbess, when I had some acquaintance with her at the time of the accouchement I have spoken of, which I never had before, nor since. To return to my history: Madame de Pompadour said to me, "Be constantly with the 'accouchee', to prevent any stranger, or even the people of the house, from speaking to her.
Happily, there are some in the Parliament upon whom I can rely, and who affect to be very violent, but can be softened upon occasion. It costs me a few abbeys, and a few secret pensions, to accomplish this. There is a certain V who serves me very well, while he appears to be furious on the other side." "I can tell you some news of him, Sire," said Madame de Pompadour.
The King had a son by Madame de Vintimille, who resembled him in face, gesture, and manners. He was called the Comte du . Madame de Pompadour had him brought: to Bellevue. Colin, her steward, was employed to find means to persuade his tutor to bring him thither. They took some refreshment at the house of the Swiss, and the Marquise, in the course of her walk, appeared to meet them by accident.
But do not the Pyramids end in a point on which a bird may perch? The Count had set all his hopes on this supreme instant, and he had reached it. "In all my life I remember nothing more formidable than my uncle's entrance into that little Pompadour drawing-room, at ten that evening.
"To stand by one another," like Castor and Pollux, in a manner; "24,000, reciprocally, to be ready on demand;" nay I think something of "subsidies" withal, TO Austria, of course. But the particulars are not worth giving; the Performance, thanks to a zealous Pompadour, having quite outrun the Stipulation, and left it practically out of sight, when the push came.
He came, one day, to visit Madame de Pompadour, at a time when the Court was in full splendour, with knee and shoe-buckles of diamonds so fine and brilliant that Madame said she did not believe the King had any equal to them.
The door opened cautiously and there entered a man about thirty years of age, of medium height and slightly, even delicately, built. That he was a Frenchman was apparent even at a glance. The dark closely cropped hair, worn in the so-called pompadour or military style, the pale, saturnine features, the manner and general bearing all loudly proclaimed his Gallic nationality.
The day after my departure I had so perfectly forgotten what had passed, the parliament, Madam de Pompadour, M. de Choiseul, Grimm, and D'Alembert, with their conspiracies, that had not it been for the necessary precautions during the journey I should have thought no more of them.
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