the flowers; remorse rebukes them from the depths of their soul and reproaches them with days lost in idleness.” Of what use then were luxury and splendor to her? The Marquise was greeted by adulations in all her châteaux, all her houses. Nowhere did she find esteem. To tell the truth, all this array of factitious grandeur, all this pretence at decorum, was but a parody. Do what she might, the mistress of Louis XV. was in reality nothing but the first kept woman in the kingdom. Loaded and overwhelmed with proofs of royal munificence, she never called herself satisfied; ambition, like sensual pleasure, is insatiable. The love of money and the love of flattery never say: “It is enough!” The sumptuous abodes the favorite found means to acquire were, after all, but monuments of her shame. Her house at Paris (now the Élysée) was styled the palace of the queen of courtesans, _ædes reginæ meretricum_. When the equestrian statue of Louis XV., with its four allegorical figures sculptured by Pigalle, was set up in the Place Louis XV., the crowd pointing out to each other these emblems of Force, Prudence, Justice, Love of Peace, said they were the four most famous mistresses of the monarch: Mesdames de Mailly, de Vintimille, de Châteauroux, and de Pompadour, and a paper containing these verses was posted on the statue itself:-- “Grotesque monument, infâme piédestal; Les Vertus sont à pied, et le vice à cheval.”[41] The honors heaped on her family by the all-powerful Marquise were not taken seriously. When her mother, Farmer-General Lenormand de Tournehem’s mistress, died, this quatrain was circulated:-- “Ci-gît qui, sortant d’un fumier, Pour faire sa fortune entière, Vendit son honneur au fermier Et sa fille au propriétaire.”[42] When her brother, Abel Poisson, metamorphosed into Marquis de Marigny and superintendent of the crown buildings, had received the blue ribbon of the Holy Spirit, people said the fish was turning blue. In 1754 Madame de Pompadour had the misfortune of losing her only daughter, Alexandrine d’Étioles, who was only eleven years old. She would have liked to marry her to young De Vintimille, who passed as the son of Louis XV. One day she brought the two children together, as if accidentally, at Bellevue, and showing them to the King, said to him: “That would be a fine couple.” Louis XV. received this overture more than coldly. Madame de Pompadour said afterwards to Madame du Hausset: “If he were a Louis XIV., he would make a Duke du Maine of the child, but I do not ask so much as that; a position and a ducal title is very little for his son, and it is because he is his son that I prefer him, my dear, to all the little dukes of the court. My grandchildren would share a resemblance to both grandfather and grandmother, and this blending which I expect to see will one day be my happiness.”--“Tears came to her eyes in saying these words,” adds Madame du Hausset.