child.  Under a diligent course of study the little Jeanne Antoinette made rapid strides toward perfection in the arts she loved, and her intellectual acquirements were vaunted by all who knew her.  Fontenelle, Voltaire, Duclos, and Crebillon, who, in their character of beaux esprits, had the entree of the house, spread everywhere abroad throughout the fashionable world the praises of her beauty, her grace, and her talents.

Madame de Pompadour offered in her person the model of a woman, at the same time beautiful in the strict acceptation of the word, and simply pretty.  The lines of her features possessed all the purity of one of Raphael’s creations, but there it must be said the resemblance ceased; the spirit which animated these features was of the world, worldly:  in short, it was the true spirit of a Parisian woman.  All that gives brilliancy, charm, and play to the physiognomy she possessed in the happiest degree.  Not a single court lady could at that period boast an air at the same time so noble and yet so coquettish, features so imposing and yet so delicate and playful, or a figure at once so elegant and yet so supple and undulating:  her mother used always to say that a king alone was worthy of her daughter.  Jeanne, it is said, had at in early age what might be called the presentiment of the throne, at first on account of this frequently-expressed opinion of her mother’s, and afterward because she fancied she loved the king.  “She owned to me,” says Voltaire, in his Memoirs, “that she had a s[illegible] presentiment that she would be loved by [illegible] king, and that she had herself a violent inclination for him.”  There are certain [illegible] in life in which destiny permits itself for a moment, as it were, to be divined. [ illegible] those who have succeeded in climbing [illegible] rugged mountain of human vanities [illegible ] that from their earliest youth certain visions and presentiments have ever warned them of their future glory.

But how was she to attain to this throne of France, the object of her ambition?  This was a difficult question to solve.  In the meanwhile she familiarized herself with what might be considered the life of a queen, a part which, it must be allowed, she could play to admiration.  Beautiful, witty, intellectual, ever admired and ever listened to, she soon beheld at her feet all the courtiers of her father’s fortune; she gathered around her, consequently, a brilliant crowd of poets, artists, and philosophers, over whom she reigned with all the dignity of majesty.