What lay at the root of the character of Louis XV. was the habit of dissimulation, the vanity of being considered impenetrable. It was he, not Madame de Pompadour, who had created a government at constant war with the principal agents it made use of. Nor was the Austrian alliance a conception of the favorite’s. Louis XV. did not like Frederick the Great, and he was not less taken with the flatteries of the Empress Maria Theresa than Madame de Pompadour herself. If the adroit sovereign wrote the Marquise a letter in which she treated her as a dear friend, she was careful at the same time to display a passionate admiration, a sort of cult, for Louis XV. Moreover, there was an Austrian party at Versailles. The Marquis d’Argenson wrote in January, 1756: “There is a large party in our court for the court of Vienna. Austria has always had emissaries at our court. I hear these emissaries saying that the house of Austria is no longer what it was, that it has need of us, that we ought to march in close accord with it. I know these insinuations, and it was to opposing them that I owe my disgrace in 1747. They preach to us against the King of Prussia, they say he is all English, and they excite us against him in view of despoiling him, if we are able. Hence we sulk at Spain, we are irritated against Prussia, our veritable and sincere ally, and all this exasperates at court _femineo ululatu_.” The partisans of the treaty of Versailles (May 1, 1756), by which France and Austria promised each other mutual aid against their enemies, have a right to extenuating circumstances. This passage from Duclos must not be forgotten: “As soon as the treaty was known, there was a sort of inebriation which was increased by the chagrin displayed by the English; every one imagined that the union of the two first powers would make all Europe respectful. Ideas have greatly changed since then.” The Abbé de Bernis, who had quitted the Venetian embassy to take the portfolio of foreign affairs, and who was one of Madame de Pompadour’s favorites, was charged with drawing up the treaty. “Notwithstanding his first objections as a man of sense, he did not long resist the general movement which carried away all who surrounded him; he was dazzled, and thought he was contributing to the greatest political operation that had been attempted since Richelieu. At first everything seemed to succeed as well as could be desired, and the new alliance so highly vaunted at court seemed to be taken even better still by the public.”[50] The Marquise triumphed. She amused herself by engraving on an agate in onyx an allegory, which represented France and Austria joining hands above the altar of Fidelity, and trampling under foot the mask of Hypocrisy and the torch of Discord.