Everything was greatly changed in 1748; London no longer groaned, and Vienna did not admire. There was neither repentance at Munich nor remorse at Batavia, and very little was said about the greatness of the best beloved of Kings. The situation already contained in germ the disasters of the future Seven Years’ War. France, which loves success, no longer compared Madame de Pompadour to _la belle Gabrielle_. But the favorite had one grand consolation under the rain of sarcasms and satires; her theatre of the little Cabinets of Versailles was succeeding very well; and if she was hissed as a political woman, she was warmly applauded as an actress. IV MADAME DE POMPADOUR’S THEATRE “I have seen all that is done under the sun, and beheld that all is vanity and vexation of spirit. I have said within myself: Let us take all manner of delights and let us enjoy our possessions; and I have recognized that this too is vanity. I have condemned the laughter of folly and I have cried unto joy: Why dost thou deceive us vainly?” What the Preacher thought, Louis XV. thought also. Like Solomon, he was bored. His ennui was the terror of Madame de Pompadour. The problem she had to solve was how to entertain a man who could no longer be amused. The favorite trembled. Here was her favor barely begun, and already she beheld symptoms of indifference and lassitude in her royal lover. D’Argenson writes in 1747: “The Pompadour is about to be dismissed. The King will live with his family.” The Marquise was afraid lest the sovereign, who really had a badly understood but sincere religion at bottom, might some day conclude to be truly devout. Hence she desired at any cost to divert him from serious ideas and plunge him, in his own despite, into the vortex of false pleasures whose emptiness and poverty he knew so well. Even amid the splendors of Versailles, the new Marquise regretted her successes as a private actress. The echo of the applause she had become accustomed to in the parlor theatres of M. Lenormand de Tournehem, at Étioles, and of Madame de Villemur, at Chantemerle, still resounded in her flattered ears. Those who are habituated to the emotions and vanities of the stage cannot easily do without them. Madame de Pompadour was homesick for the footlights and the boards. To play in comedy is such a fine occasion for a pretty woman to shine! To see all eyes fixed on her; to put beauty and her toilettes in the best lights; to be greeted when she appears by a murmur of admiration; to receive when the play is ended the rain of flowers and garlands that tumble at her feet; and at last, when the actress resumes the _grande dame_ and re-enters the drawing-room, to glean compliments, madrigals, and enthusiastic plaudits afresh,--what a triumph for a fashionable woman, what exquisite joy for a coquette!