In spite of everything, she was exactly the mistress to suit this reign, the only one who could have succeeded in turning it to account in the sense of opinion, the only one who could lessen the crying discord between the least literary of kings and the most literary of epochs.  If the Abbe Galiani, in a curious page, loudly preferring the age of Louis XV. to that of Louis XIV., has been able to say of this age of the human mind so fertile in results:  “Such another reign will not be met with anywhere for a long time,” Mme. de Pompadour certainly contributed to this to some extent.  This graceful woman rejuvenated the court by bringing into it the vivacity of her thoroughly French tastes, tastes that were Parisian.  As mistress and friend of the Prince, as protectress of the arts, her mind found itself entirely on a level with her role and her rank:  as a politician, she bent, she did ill, but perhaps not worse than any other favourite in her place would have done at that period when a real statesman was wanting among us.

When she found herself dying after a reign of nineteen years; when at the age of forty-two years she had to leave these palaces, these riches, these marvels of art she had amassed, this power so envied and disputed, but which she kept entirely in her own hands to her last day, she did not say with a sigh, like Mazarin, “So I must leave all this!” She faced death with a firm glance, and as the cure of the Madeleine, who had come to visit her at Versailles, was about to depart, she said:  “Wait a moment, Monsieur le Cure, we will go together.”

Madame de Pompadour may be considered the last in date of the Kings’ mistresses who were worthy of the name:  after her it would be impossible to descend and enter with any decency into the history of the Du Barry.  The kings and emperors who have succeeded in France, from that day to this, have been either too virtuous, or too despotic, or too gouty, or too repentant, or too much the paterfamilias, to allow themselves such useless luxuries:  at the utmost, only a few vestiges have been observable.  The race of Kings’ mistresses, therefore, may be said to be greatly interrupted, even if not ended, and Mme. de Pompadour stands before our eyes in history as the last as well as the most brilliant of all.[19]

    Causeries de Lundi (Paris, 1851-57), Vol.  II.

FOOTNOTES: 

[19] Here is an exact statement of the civil register of the State relating to Mme. de Pompadour:  Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, marquise de Pompadour, born in Paris, Dec. 29, 1721 (Saint-Eustache);—­married March 9, 1741, to Charles-Guillaume Lenormant, seigneur d’Etioles (Saint-Eustache); died April 15, 1764; interred on the 17th at the Capucines de la place Vendome.  Her parish in Paris was la Madeleine; her hotel, in the Faubourg Saint-Honore, now l’Elysee.

M. Le Roi, librarian of Versailles, has published, after an authentic manuscript the Releve des depenses de Mme. de Pompadour depuis la premiere annee de sa faveur jusqu’a sa mort.  This statement, which mentions the sums and their uses, presents a complete picture of the marquise’s varied tastes, and does not try too much to dishonour her memory.