Before the close of the year, the affair was settled. Madame de Mailly, after many tears and supplications, recognized that she was beaten. The King paid her debts, and granted her a pension of ten thousand livres in addition to the twelve thousand she had already, and furnished a house for her in Paris, rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre, where she established herself. Thenceforward, Madame de la Tournelle fulfilled, uncontested and without a rival, the official functions of King’s mistress. VIII THE REIGN OF THE DUCHESS DE CHÂTEAUROUX If Louis XV. is a degenerate Louis XIV., his mistresses are likewise inferior to those of the great King. Madame de Mailly, spite of her mildness and her repentance, is not a La Vallière. Though Madame de la Tournelle may become Duchess de Châteauroux, she will never be a Montespan, notwithstanding her ambition and her arrogance. She is doubtless pretty; her big blue eyes, her dazzling white skin, her expression both passionate and arch, make a charming woman of her. But she is not a mistress “thundering and triumphant,” as Madame de Sevigné said of Madame de Montespan; she is not that type of favorite who is “good to display before the ambassadors.” In spite of her high birth, and her schemes for domination, there will always be something mean about her, and the same is true of Louis XV. himself. She had scarcely become the royal mistress when Cardinal Fleury died (January, 1743). When Mazarin died, Louis XIV. had said: At last I am King. Louis XV. will content himself with saying: Now I am prime minister. He need no longer dread his former preceptor’s lessons on morality and parsimony. He is the master. But he does not at once renounce his economical habits, and at first Madame de la Tournelle has trouble in extracting money from him. “It must be owned,” writes the Duke de Luynes in April, 1743, “that the present arrangement does not resemble what was announced at the commencement of Madame de la Tournelle’s favor.... They said she would make no engagement unless she were assured of a house of her own, her provisions, means to entertain people, and a carriage for her private use, being unwilling to use those of the King. It is true, she does not use these, but she has none of her own; hence, she never goes out, though she is fond of spectacles.”