Madame de Pompadour had accepted this ungrateful and sometimes shameful task. Born in the ranks of the middle class, married young to a rich financier, M. Lenormant d’Etioles, Mdlle. Poisson, created Marchioness of Pompadour, was careful to mix up more serious matters with the royal pleasures. The precarious lot of a favorite was not sufficient for her ambition. Pretty, clever, ingenious in devising for the king new amusements and objects of interest, she played comedy before him in her small apartments and travelled with him from castle to castle; she thus obtained from his easy prodigality enormous sums to build pleasaunces which she amused herself by embellishing; Bellevue, Babiole, the marchioness’ house at Paris, cost millions out of the exhausted treasury. Madame de Pompadour was fond of porcelain; she conceived the idea of imitating in France the china-work of Saxony, and founded first at Vincennes and then at Sevres the manufacture of porcelain, which the king took under his protection, requiring the courtiers to purchase the proceeds of it at high prices. Everybody was anxious to please the favorite; her incessantly renewed caprices contributed to develop certain branches of the trade in luxuries. The expenses of the royal household went on increasing daily; the magnificent prodigalities of King Louis XIV. were surpassed by the fancies of Madame de Pompadour. Vigilant in attaching the courtiers to herself, she sowed broadcast, all around her, favors, pensions, profitable offices, endowing the gentlemen to facilitate their marriage, turning a deaf ear to the complaints of the people as well as to the protests of the States or Parliaments. The greedy and frivolous crowd that thronged at her feet well deserved the severe judgment pronounced by Montesquieu on courtiers and courts. “Ambition amidst indolence, baseness amidst pride, the desire to grow rich without toil, aversion from truth, flattery, treason, perfidy, neglect of all engagements, contempt for the duties of a citizen, fear of virtue in the prince, hope in his weaknesses, and more than all that, the ridicule constantly thrown upon virtue, form, I trow, the characteristics of the greatest number of courtiers, distinctive in all places and at all times.” The majesty of Louis XIV. and the long lustre of his reign had been potent enough to create illusions as to the dangers and the corruptions of the court; the remnants of military glory were about to fade out round Louis XV.; the court still swarmed with brave officers, ready to march to death at the head of the troops; the command of armies henceforth depended on the favor of Madame the Marchioness of Pompadour.