One of the cabinets in her apartment was full of petitions. Solicitors approached her with respectful fear. The ducal mantle and velvet cap figured on the panels of her carriages. A nobleman carried her mantle and awaited her coming in the ante-chamber. A man of illustrious birth, a Chevalier d’Hénen, of the family of the Princes de Chimay, rode at her carriage door as equerry. She was served at table by a Chevalier of Saint Louis, her steward Colin, a napkin under his arm. Her chambermaid was a woman of quality, Madame du Hausset, who has left such curious Memoirs. The all-powerful favorite had not forgotten her family. Her father was ennobled in 1747. Her brother, Abel Poisson, became successively Marquis de Vandières, Marquis de Marigny, Marquis de Ménars. The marquisate not contenting him, he obtained a place created for Colbert, that of superintendent of crown buildings. He was as a patron of artists a Mecænas, an _arbiter elegantiarum_. The King, who treated him as his brother-in-law, gave him the blue ribbon and put him on an equality with the greatest nobles of the realm. Young Alexandrine, the daughter of Madame de Pompadour and M. de Étioles, was brought up at Paris in the convent of the Assumption. The nuns showed her the greatest attention. She was addressed by her baptismal name, as was then the custom for princesses of the blood, and she was expected to make one of the most brilliant marriages in France. Madame de Pompadour desired pomp even in death. She bought a splendid sepulchre in the Capuchin convent in the Place Vendôme, Paris, from the Trémoille family. There she built a magnificent mausoleum, where her mother was interred and where she reserved a place for herself.[35] The favorite had not simply power, but beauty; beauty, that supreme weapon. A veritable magician, she transformed herself at will. As mobile as the clouds, as changeful as the wave, she renewed and metamorphosed herself incessantly. No actress knew better than she how to compose an attitude or a countenance. In her whole person there was an exquisite grace, an exceptional charm, a taste, an elegance which amounted to subtlety. La Tour, the pastel painter, is he who has best reproduced her animated, spirituelle, triumphant physiognomy, the eyes full of intelligence and audacity, the satin skin, the supple figure, the general harmony, the charming and coquettish whole.