The Marquis d’Argenson draws the following portrait of this personage, so celebrated in the erotic annals of the eighteenth century:-- “He carries too far the opinion one ought to have of the defects of the monarchy and the feebleness of our epoch.... He has made himself talked of ever since he was twelve years old. He has been put into the Bastille three times for three causes capable of making a court hero illustrious: for having made love to the Dauphiness, the King’s mother; for a duel, and for a conspiracy against the State. His love for voluptuous pleasures has ostentation rather than actual enjoyment as its end.... He is very much the mode among women; the pretensions and jealousies of coquettes have procured him many favors. There is never any passion in him but plenty of debauchery. He has betrayed a feeble sex; he has taken the senses for the heart. He is not fortunate enough to possess a friend. He is frank through thoughtlessness, suspicious through subtlety and contempt of mankind, disobliging through insensibility and misanthropy. Such is the sorry model copied by a gay and inconsiderate nation like ours.” The Duke de Richelieu intended to reign under cover of Madame de la Tournelle, whose guide and inspirer he had become. This affair roused his enthusiasm. Pushing even to lyricism his sorry rôle of intermediary, he exclaimed, in an excess of zeal: “I mean that any one who shall enter Madame de la Tournelle’s ante-chamber shall be more highly considered than one who might have been in private conversation with Madame de Mailly.”[13] The new favorite made conditions before yielding to the King. Proud and imperious, like most beautiful and flattered women, she required guarantees, and transformed a so-called affair of the heart into a diplomatic negotiation. “Love,” says La Rochefoucauld, “lends its name to an infinite number of relations attributed to it, but with which it has no more to do than the Doge with what goes on at Venice.” Madame de la Tournelle did not love, she calculated. More peremptory than Madame de Vintimille, who had tolerated a partnership with Madame de Mailly, she determined to reign alone. What she bargained for was not simply money and consideration but the banishment of her sister. But this was not easy to be obtained. The idea of quitting Versailles afflicted Madame de Mailly. She made herself so humble, so modest, so resigned, so submissive, that Louis XV. felt unable to dismiss her. From time to time he still felt for her certain returns if not of attachment at least of compassion. He would have liked to keep near him, as a faithful servant, this poor woman, whose gentleness and kindness he could not refuse to acknowledge. But Madame de la Tournelle was inflexible. She had signified her intention not to become the mistress of the King until after Madame de Mailly should have been irrevocably driven from the court.