“Where are you going, marchioness?” Louis XV. would say on seeing her going out so frequently.

“Sire,” she would reply, “I am building myself a hermitage for my old age.  You know I am rather devout:  I shall end my days in solitude.”

“Yes,” replied the king, “like all those who have loved deeply, or who have been loved deeply.”

About the time when spring gives place to the first advances of summer; when the trees were in leaf, and the plants in flower; when the bright greensward, enameled with its countless flowrets, carpeted the alleys of the park, Madame de Pompadour one morning begged Louis XV. to come and breakfast with her at the hermitage.

The king was conducted thither by his valet.  His surprise was great.  At first, before entering, at the sight of the humble thatched roof, he imagined that he was about to breakfast like a true anchorite, and began to fear seriously that the marchioness had not displayed much taste in the adornment of her retreat.  He entered the court and proceeded straight to the door of the hermitage.  At this instant a young peasant girl advanced to meet him; as she was well made, delicate, and pretty looking, the king began to find the hermitage more to his taste.  With deep reverence his guide begged of him to follow her to the farm.

As he approached the farm, another peasant girl, more delicate still than the former, advanced to meet him, and, with a thousand reverences, presented him with a bowl of milk.  At the sight of this pretty milkmaid, with her little straw hat coquettishly disposed on one side of her head, her white corset and blue petticoat, the king was charmed.  Before taking the milk from her hands, he gazed at her a second time from head to foot.  Her arms, which were uncovered, were white as lilies; she wore suspended from her neck a little gold cross, which seemed to lose itself in a magnificent bouquet of flowers which she wore in her bosom; but what above all astonished the king were two little stockingless feet incased in a pair of the most rustic sabots.  With a motion of innocent coquetry, the pretty milkmaid drew one of her feet out of its wooden prison and placed it on the sabot.  All at once the king recognized the marchioness, and avowed to her that for the first time in his life he had felt the desire of kissing a pretty foot.  Madame de Pompadour returned with her royal lover to the hermitage, where he could not sufficiently admire the refined taste which had been displayed by the fair architect in the planning and arrangement of the building and grounds.  This was the origin of what was afterward known as the notorious Parc-aux-cerfs.