From this time forth she showed herself in Paris no more; and at court she would only appear by candle-light, and then in the apparel of a Queen of Golconda, crowned with diamonds, her arms covered with bracelets, and wearing a magnificent Indian robe, embroidered with gold and silver.  She was always the beautiful Marchioness de Pompadour, but a closer inspection would show that the lovely face of former days was now but a made-up face, still charming, but like a restored painting, showing evident symptoms of having been here and there effaced and retouched.  It was in the mouth that she first lost her beauty.  She had in early life acquired the habit of biting her lips to conceal her emotions, and at thirty years of age her mouth had lost all its vivid brilliancy of color.

Some persons have stated that Madame de Pompadour died from the effects of poison, administered either by the Jesuits, who never ceased persecuting her with anonymous letters, or by her enemies at Versailles; but this story is not deserving of credit.  Most persons are agreed that Madame de Pompadour died simply because she was five and forty years of age; and owing as she did all her power but to the charm of her beauty, its loss she was unable to survive.  She suffered for a length of time in silence, hiding ever under a pallid smile the death she already felt in her heart.  At length she took to her bed—­that bed from which she was fated to rise no more.  She was then at the Chateau of Choisy; neither the king nor his courtiers imagined that her disease was serious, but she herself well knew that her hour was come.  She entreated the king to have her removed to Versailles; she wished to die upon the throne of her glory—­to die as a queen in the royal palace, still issuing her orders to the troop of servile courtiers who were accustomed to wait humbly at her footstool.

Like Diana de Poitiers, Gabrielle d’Estrees, and Madame de Maintenon, she died in April.  The cure of the Madeleine was present during her last moments.  As the old man was preparing to retire, after giving her the benediction, she rallied for a moment, for she was then almost dead, and said to him, “Wait a bit, Monsieur le Cure, we will go together.”  These were her last words.

Up to this time the king had testified at least the semblance of friendship and gratitude toward Madame de Pompadour, but no sooner had she breathed her last than he began to consider how he could, in the speediest manner possible, get rid of her mortal remains.  He gave immediate orders for the removal of the body to her house in Paris.  As the conveyance was about to start, the king, who was standing at one of the windows of the Chateau, seeing a violent hailstorm breaking over Versailles, said, with a smile, half sad, half ironical, “The marchioness will have bad weather for her journey!”

That same day Madame de Pompadour’s will was opened in his presence.  Although she had long since been far from his heart, he could not restrain a tear at the reading of the document.