All the splendors of luxury were like a frame to the picture. A new Danaë, the Marquise disappeared under a shower of gold. It is known exactly what she cost France from September 9, 1745, the time when her favor began, until April 15, 1764, the day of her death. M. Le Roy has discovered an authentic document,[36] containing an account of the favorite’s expenses during this period of nearly twenty years. The total is 35,924,140 livres. In this list of expenses is found the pension granted to Madame Lebon for having predicted to the Marquise, then only nine years old, that she would one day be the mistress of Louis XV. Nothing seemed fine enough for Madame de Pompadour, either in dress, lodgings, or furniture. At Versailles she secured for herself on the ground floor, on the terrace looking toward the parterre on the north, the magnificent apartments occupied by the Duke and Duchess de Penthièvre.[37] (Part of the ministry of foreign affairs is established there at present. The minister’s study is the same as that of Madame de Pompadour. Her bedchamber is now the thirteenth hall of the marshals, her ante-chamber the hall of famous warriors.) The favorite bought a superb house in the city communicating by a passage with the apartments of the palace (it is now the hôtel des Réservoirs). In 1748 she acquired the château of Ciécy and the estate of Aunay, and in 1749 the château of La Celle, near Versailles. In 1750 she inaugurated, on the hill commanding the Seine, between Sèvres and Meudon, that enchanting abode of Bellevue, where all the arts rivalled each other to create a magic entity. The ante-chamber with statues by Adam and Falconnet; the dining-room with paintings of game and fish by Oudry; the salon decorated by Vanloo; the apartment of the Marquise, hung with Boucher’s glowing pictures; the park with its parterres of rare flowers, its fine trees, grottos, and fountains, its statues by Pigalle and Coustou, its varied perspectives, its immense horizons,--all made of Bellevue a real palace of Armida. At Versailles, the Marquise obtained from the King a portion of the little park wherein to construct a gem of architecture, which she called the Hermitage; it cloaked extreme elegance under an appearance of simplicity. It had fine Persian hangings, panelled wainscotings decorated by the most skilful painters, thickets of myrtles, lilacs, and roses. This habitation is no longer in existence; a part of its site is occupied by the rue de l’Ermitage at Versailles. The Marquise had a house at Compiègne and a lodge at Fontainebleau. At Paris she bought, for seven hundred and thirty thousand livres, the hôtel d’Evreux, which is now the Élysée. At the Trianon her apartment was on the same floor with that of Louis XV. At Clécy she received as if in a royal château. The King’s visits to this splendid residence used to last three or four days, and cost about one hundred thousand livres.