Madame d'Etioles passed in the eyes of the world as a perfect model of a virtuous wife. She swore eternal fidelity to her husband, unless Louis XV. should fall in love with her,--a reservation her husband was the first to laugh at. At first this strange condition was spoken of as an excellent joke in the house; from thence it spread abroad, and finally reached Versailles. But the king, wishing to joke in return, contented himself by saving,--"I should like very much to see this husband." M. d'Etioles possessed an abandoned château in the forest of Senart; Madame d'Etioles having learned that the king frequently hunted in the forest, persuaded her husband to have the chateau newly furnished, and put into a habitable state, alleging that the physicians had recommended a change of air for her vapors. The husband, suspecting nothing, had the château re-furnished an decorated in the most superb style. Once installed in her new abode, Madame d'Etioles gave orders for the building of three or four carriages of a most fairy-like lightness and elegance of form, in which she might drive away her vapors. According to her expectations, she frequently met the king in the forest; at first Louis XV. passed her by without bestowing the slightest attention, either on her or her equipage: afterward he remarked her or her equipage; afterward he remarked her horses,--"What a pretty phaeton!" said he, on meeting her for the third time. At length he remarked the lady herself, but it was merely to bestow a passing remark upon her beauty. Madame d'Etioles, however, was not to be repelled; she continued to pass before the eyes of the royal sportsman: "sometimes as a goddess from Olympus, sometimes as an earthly queen; at one time she would appear in an azure robe seated in a rose-colored phaeton, at another in a robe of rose color in a phaeton of pale blue."[C] [Footnote C: Soulavie, _Mèmoires Historiques de la Cour de France pendant le faveur de Madame de Pompadour_.] In after days, Madame de Pompadour recalling to mind all these follies--serious though for her--said to the Prince de Soubise--"I can imagine myself reading a strange book; my life is an impossible romance, I cannot believe in it." At Etioles, private theatricals were the fashion; Madame d'Etioles was the Clairon, the Camargo, and the Dangeville of the troop, which counted among its members some of the most illustrious personages of the day. Marshal de Richelieu, who was to be found wherever gallantry flourished, was an assiduous and constant spectator at these _réunions_. Madame d'Etioles, it is said, endeavored on more than one occasion to entice the king behind the scenes; but Louis, kept constantly in view by Madame de Chateauroux, never once left the royal box.