Louis XV. had made his mistress what one might call a vice-queen. She had the power, luxury, riches, and adulations of royalty; everything, in fact, except its moral prestige. Surrounded by a court of ministers, prelates, and nobles, she throned it in the midst of pomp and opulence. She was the type of the woman _à la mode_, elegant, coquettish, absolute, always on show, insatiable for praise and success, thirsting for dignities, pleasures, and money; playing not merely the great lady, but the sovereign, having her courtiers, her creatures, her poets, reigning alike over the King and the kingdom. M. Arsène Houssaye has said with justice: “Louis XV. had three prime ministers: Cardinal Fleury, the Duke de Choiseul, the Marquise de Pompadour.” But the Marquise was not an ordinary prime minister; she was a prime minister doubled with a mistress. To a woman invested with this exaggerated rôle, a display of power was necessary. The favorite set herself to create around her a sort of decorum, etiquette, and factitious grandeur. Like little women who wear enormously high heels, she made herself a pedestal. Madame d’Étioles had disappeared; nothing remained but the Marquise de Pompadour. To be a marchioness did not satisfy her, and she demanded and obtained the tabouret and the honors of a duchess. She had a box at the court theatre with a grating behind which she shut herself up tête-à-tête with the King. In the chapel a gallery in the grand tribune was reserved for her and her suite. People waited on her stairway at the hour of her toilette just as they await a ministerial audience in an ante-chamber. She used to say to the ministers: “Continue; I am satisfied with you,” and to the foreign ambassadors: “Observe that on Tuesdays the King cannot see you, gentlemen, for I think you will hardly follow _us_ to Compiègne.”