’Tis a curious type this prince, so little like his father; this Christian, pious to asceticism, who sleeps on straw, drinks only water, does without fire in winter, who composes but will not print austere works, a translation of the Psalms with commentaries, part of the Old Testament and some of the Epistles of Saint Paul, a treatise against the theatre, historical and theological dissertations,--a monastic prince whom the court has inclined to the cloister, who at his death (February 4, 1752) will bequeath his library to the Dominicans, his medals to the Abbey of Sainte Geneviève, and whose funeral oration will be composed by Jean Jacques Rousseau. His son, the Duke de Chartres, is twenty years old in 1745. A brilliant and brave young prince, who has distinguished himself as colonel at the battle of Dettingen, and as lieutenant-general at the siege of Fribourg. Married in 1743 to Louise Henriette de Bourbon-Conti, he loves the world as much as his father dislikes it, and he will be one of the principal actors in the theatre of the little apartments. So long as the Dauphin has no male children, it is the Orléans branch which, according to the renunciations of the treaty of Utrecht, must ascend the throne of France in case of the death of Louis XV. and his son. But on both sides of the Pyrenees the practical value of these renunciations is contested. When Louis XV. fell seriously ill before his marriage, in 1721, Philip V. made ready to reclaim the crown of France if the young King should die. When the Dauphin, who as yet has no heir, will himself be in danger of death, Madame du Hausset will write in her Memoirs: “The King would be in despair at having a prince of the blood as his recognized successor. He does not like them, and looks at them so distantly as to humiliate them. When his son recovered, he said: ‘The King of Spain would have had a good chance.’ It is claimed that he was right in this, and that it would have been justice; but that if the Duke d’Orléans had had a party, he might have claimed the throne.” We have just outlined the portraits of the members of the royal family in 1745. We are about to study the character of the woman who, issuing from the middle classes, was to exercise a real domination over the King and all his court during twenty years. II THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MARQUISE DE POMPADOUR