Despite all her political duties and intrigues, she found time for art and literature.  Not one minute of the day was lost in idleness, every moment being occupied with interviews with artists and men of letters, with the furnishers of her numerous chateaux, architects, designers, engineers, to whom she confided her plans for embellishing Paris.  Being herself an accomplished artist, she was able to win the respect and attention of these men.  Her correspondence was immense and of every nature, political and personal.  She was an incessant reader, or rather student, of books on the most serious questions, which furnished her knowledge of terms of state, precedents of history, ancient and modern law; she was familiar with the contents of works on philosophy, the drama, singing, and music, and with novels of all nations; her library was large and well selected.

During the latter years of her life she was considered as the first minister of state or even as regent of the kingdom, rather than as mere mistress.  Louis XV. looked to her for the enforcement of the laws and his own orders.  She was forced to receive, at any time, foreign ambassadors and ministers; she had to meet in the Cabinet de Travail and give counsel to the generals who were her proteges; the clergy went to her and laid before her their plaints, and through her the financiers arranged their transactions with the state.

Notwithstanding all this influence and power, the record of her last years is a sorrowful one.  More than ever queen, she was no longer loved by the king, who went to Passy to continue his liaison with a young girl, the daughter of a lawyer.  When Louis XV. as much as recognized a son by this woman, Mme. de Pompadour became deeply concerned; but the king was too much a slave to her domination to replace her, so she retained favor and confidence; the following letter shows that she enjoyed little else: 

“The more I advance in years, my dear brother, the more philosophical are my reflections.  I am quite sure that you will think the same.  Except the happiness of being with the king, who assuredly consoles me in everything, the rest is only a tissue of wickedness, of platitudes, of all the miseries to which poor human beings are liable.  A fine matter for reflection (especially for anyone born as meditative as I)!...”  Later on, she wrote:  “Everywhere where there are human beings, my dear brother, you will find falseness and all the vices of which they are capable.  To live alone would be too tiresome, thus we must endure them with their defects and appear not to see them.”

She realized that the king kept her only out of charity and for fear of taking up any energetic resolution.  Her greatest disappointment was the utter failure of her political plans and aspirations, which came to naught by the Treaty of Paris.  There was absolutely no glory left for her, and chagrin gradually consumed her.  Her health had been delicate from youth; consumption was fast making inroads and undermining her constitution, and the numerous miscarriages of her early years as mistress contributed to her physical ruin.  For years she had kept herself up by artificial means, and had hidden her loss of flesh and fading beauty by all sorts of dress contrivances, rouges, and powders.  She died in 1764, at the age of forty-two.