Mme. de Pompadour made a thorough study of the politics of Europe in relation to the affairs of the nation—­a proceeding in which she was aided by her extraordinary intelligence, acute perception of difficulties and conditions, domestic and foreign; by the exercise of these qualities, she put herself in touch with the politics of France, always consulting the best of minds and winning many friends among them.  In 1749 she succeeded in ridding herself of her pronounced enemy, Maurepas, minister and confidential adviser of the king, and subsequently began her reign as absolute mistress and governor of France.

Her life then became one of constant labor, which gradually undermined her health.  Appreciating the mental indolence of Louis, she would place before him a clear and succinct resume of all important questions of state affairs, which she, better than any other, knew how to present without wearying him.  Realizing that her power depended upon her influence over the king, and that she was surrounded by men and women who were simply waiting for a favorable opportunity to cause her downfall, she was constantly on the defensive.  She considered it “the business of her life to make her yoke so easy and pleasant, and from habit so necessary to him, that an effort to shake it off would be an effort that would cause him real pain.”  Her happiest hours—­for she did not love the king—­were those spent with her brother, the Marquis de Marigny, in the midst of artists, musicians, and men of letters.

As for the queen, she was in the background, absolutely.  “All the prerogatives of a princess of a sovereign house were, at this time, about 1750, conferred by the king upon Mme. de Pompadour, and all the pomp and parade then deemed indispensable to rank so exalted were fully assumed by her.”  At the opera, she had her loge with the king, her tribune at the chapel of Versailles where she heard mass, her servants were of the nobility, her carriage had the ducal arms, her etiquette was that of Mme. de Montespan, Her father was ennobled to De Marigny, her brother to be Marquis de Vandieres.  The marriage of her daughter to a son of the king and his former mistress was planned, then with a son of Richelieu, then with others of the nobility; fortunately, the girl died.

Mme. de Pompadour gradually amassed a royal fortune, buying the magnificent estate of Crecy for six hundred and fifty thousand livres; “La Celle,” near Versailles, for twenty-six thousand livres; the Hotel d’Evreaux, at Paris, for seventy-five thousand livres—­and these were her minor expenses; her paintings, sculpture, china, pottery, etc., cost France over thirty-six million livres.  Her imagination in art and inventions was wonderful; she retouched and decorated the chateau in which she was received by the king; she made “Choisy”—­the king’s property—­her own, as it were, by all the embellishments she ordered and the expenditures which her lover lavished upon it at her request.  All the luxuries of the life at “Choisy,” all the refinements even to the smallest detail, had their origin in her inventions.  It was she who planned the fairy chateau with its wonderful furniture, her own invention.