Madame de Mailly, the woman with whom Louis XV. had begun his scandalous life, was at this time at her last extremity. One reads in the Memoirs of the Marquis d’Argenson, under date of March 27, 1751: “Madame de Mailly, former mistress of the King, is dying. It was thought she was better, but the inflammation of the lungs is increasing, and she has a hopeless fever. The King has not even once sent openly to make inquiries, but the Marquis de Gontaud has bulletins four times a day and transmits them to the King, who is afraid of offending Madame de Pompadour. I am convinced he will be much affected by her death. The pious people, those who believe in Providence, remark that, the King having had the three sisters, they have all died young. This one, who was the first, and not incestuous, is dying piously and the death of the just: it is even through her religious practices that she contracted her malady; apparently she will have a holy death. The other two died in horrible anguish, and much younger. People reflect also that God is so desirous of the King’s conversion, that this death happens just in the Jubilee time, so as to touch His Majesty, already prepared by sermons and disposed to make his Jubilee sincerely. However, in the cabinets, divertisements and ballets are still going on secretly.” In Barbier’s journal are encountered similar reflections on the terrors of the Marquise: “Everybody,” he writes, “is carefully watching for what will happen at the Jubilee. They say Madame de Pompadour dreads the results of it. There are many at the court, not merely ecclesiastics, but men and women who are expecting this event to ruin the Marquise, whose abuse of her position has for some time gained her the hatred of all the nobles. The King can hardly remain at Versailles without making his Jubilee. Public prejudice is carried to the point of respecting the Jubilee more than the Easter duties which are of obligation. If he makes his Jubilee, he cannot well return to the château of Bellevue a fortnight later, and a month’s absence would be dangerous. There are lovers of the court who are now forming a plan to find a new mistress for the King after the Jubilee; for, melancholy as it may be, he must have some diversion; and if he should altogether fear the devil and decide on amendment, this would be not at all amusing for the nobles. This event, then, which is not far distant, is what is agitating the public high and low.”