“You have seen me.”

“Where?”

“In the forest of Senart.”

“Then,” said the king, “you can divine that we should like to see you again.”

About a month or two after this interview, according to some biographers, Madame d’Etioles, being determined by a coup de main to attain her grand object, namely, the securing a permanent footing at Versailles, arrived one morning at the palace in a state of violent agitation, and demanded an audience of the king.  One of the gentleman ushers, a certain M. de Bridge, who had been a guest at Etioles during the festivities of the preceding season, conducted her into the presence of Louis XV.

“Sire,” she exclaimed, “I am lost; my husband knows my glory and my misfortune.  I come to demand a refuge at your hands.  If you shelter me not from his anger he will kill me.”

From that hour she took up her residence at Versailles to quit it no more.

We know that Louis XV. passed his life in a state of constant lassitude and ennui, from which it was almost impossible to arouse him; indolence, indeed, may be said to have been the predominant trait in his character:  he hated politics and political matters, and all allusions to state affairs were most irksome to him.

“Your people suffer, sire,” said the Duke de Choiseul to him one day, after a long political harangue.

“Je m’ennuie!” replied the king.

By skillfully and constantly varying the amusements of her royal lover, with hunting-parties, promenades, fetes, spectacles, and petits soupers, Madame d’Etioles was enabled to strengthen her empire over the heart of Louis XV., by making him feel how necessary she had become to his happiness.  One striking advantage she had over her predecessors, and this was, the art she possessed of being able to metamorphose herself at all hours of the day.  No one could better vary the play of her physiognomy than Madame de Pompadour.  At one time she would appear languishing and sentimental as a madonna; at another, lively, gay, and coquettish, as a Spanish peasant girl.  She possessed also, in a marvelous degree, the gift of tears:  none knew better than she did when to weep, or how many tears it was necessary to shed.  As a poet of the time has said, “She wept with so much art that she was enabled to give to her tears the value of pearls.”  Those who had seen her in the morning, superb, imperious, a queen in all the splendor of power, would find her in the evening, gay, whimsical, capricious, presiding over one of these petits soupers with all the exuberant and madcap gayety of an actress after the theater.  The Abbe Soulavie, who saw her often, has left us a well-studied portrait of the favorite;—­

“In addition to the charms of a beautiful and animated countenance, Madame de Pompadour possessed also, in an eminent degree, the art of transforming her features; and each new combination, equally beautiful, was another result of the deep study she had made of the affinity between her mind and her physiognomy.  Without in the least altering her position, her countenance would become a perfect Proteus.”