Listen to Madame du Hausset. She says in her Memoirs: “Madame experienced many tribulations amidst all her grandeurs. Anonymous letters were often written her containing threats to poison or assassinate her; but what affected her most was the dread of being supplanted by a rival. I never saw her in greater vexation than one evening on her return from the salon of Marly. On entering, she spitefully threw down her muff and mantle, and undressed with extreme haste; then, sending away her other women, she said to me after they went out: ‘I don’t believe anything can be more insolent than that Madame de Coaslin. I had to play _brelan_ at the same table with her this evening, and you cannot imagine what I suffered. The men and women seemed to take turns in coming to examine us. Two or three times Madame de Coaslin said, looking at me: “_Va tout_,” in the most insulting manner, and I thought I should be ill when she said in a triumphant tone: “I have played kings!” I wish you had seen her courtesy on quitting me!’” Thereupon Madame du Hausset inquired what the master’s attitude had been. “You don’t know him, my dear,” replied the Marquise; “if he were going to put her in my apartment this evening he would treat her coldly before people, and me with the greatest affection.” The favorite was in constant alarm and anxiety. She believed in neither the loyalty, the love, nor the friendship of the King. Thus, as has been wittily said by M. Paul de Saint-Victor: “She spent her life in the attitude of Scheherezade, sitting beside the bed where the caliph slept, his sabre at hand. Like the head of the sultana, her favor depended on a caprice of the master, on the gay or tiresome story which she was about to tell him. And what happens in the thousand and one nights of the harem from which she is excluded? Who knows whether a firman scrawled by a grisette may not exile her to-morrow to the depths of a province?” In spite of her knowledge of frivolous trifles and her array of seductions, the Marquise could not succeed in diverting Louis XV. It is again Madame du Hausset who tells us as much: “The King was habitually very dismal and liked everything which recalled the thought of death, even though he feared it very much.” This melancholy humor of the monarch distressed his mistress. “What a singular pleasure,” said she, “to occupy one’s self with things the very notion of which ought to be banished, especially when one leads such a happy life!” Madame de Pompadour did not reflect when she talked like this. She forgot that a debauchee can never be happy long. The sovereign and his favorite were both suffering from the same malady; their consciences were not at rest. To both of them might be applied the verses addressed by Lucretius to the Epicurean youth of Rome, which we translate as follows: “They inhale sweet perfumes; they deck themselves with wreaths and garlands; but from the middle of the fount of pleasures rises bitterness, and sharp thorns pierce through