Madame de Pompadour was ready to play all parts in order to preserve her empire. To be an actress and a political woman was not enough; she willingly consented to become by turns, and simultaneously if need were, a devotee and a procuress, to favorize now the Church and now the Deer Park, to submit to every transformation, every servitude: Omnia serviliter pro dominatione. Never did any minister cling more firmly to his portfolio, never had any ambitious man a greater thirst for power.

Louis XV. had a substratum of religion which made the favorite uneasy. The day he insisted on her reading one of Bourdaloue’s sermons she was frightened. With all her audacity she never dared to criticise the Church in the presence of the Most Christian King; for irregular as his own conduct was, he would not suffer the faith of his fathers to be insulted in his hearing. To keep her place, the Marquise would have asked nothing better than to assume the austere demeanor of a Madame de Maintenon; but she was married, unfortunately, and so was the King, and Catholicism has never compromised with concubinage or adultery. Hence Madame de Pompadour sought to avert the difficulty. She put on a half-way devotion which was wholly worldly, made for show, a sort of compromise between God and the devil, between the Church and the boudoir, the oratory and the alcove, a spurious, derisory, hypocritical devotion, examples of which are given by many women of our own century as well as of the last.

She had determined to make a figure in the Versailles chapel from the time her favor began. She meant to shine everywhere, even before the altars. It was this that made her request the Queen’s authorization to carry one of the basins at the ceremony of feet washing on Maundy Thursday, and collect the offerings at the High Mass on Easter Sunday. But easy as she was where no one but herself was concerned, Marie Leczinska became severe where God was in question: she refused.

The Jubilee of 1751 redoubled the anxieties of the Marquise. D’Argenson wrote, February 2: “People assert that the King will gain his Jubilee and make his Easter Communion. The Marquise says there is no longer anything but friendship between the King and her, and that they will put a fortnight’s retreat and truce even to this friendship.” The attitude of a repentant Magdalen would not have suited a woman like Madame de Pompadour. She was willing enough for a little devotion, but of an elegant and worldly sort, ostentatious and luxurious. The theatre, in a word, pleased her much better than the church. D’Argenson wrote again, February 6: “All Paris has been talking of the representation of Thétis et Pélée, eight days ago, at which the Marquise de Pompadour was present. The actors addressed her directly in the gallant parts, such as, ‘Reign, beautiful Thetis!’ This she received with a triumphant air which a woman of different extraction would not have assumed; for some feed their vanity on what others could not endure without shame.” But what afflicted the haughty favorite was the thought that all this success might topple over in an instant, like a house of cards. At the very time when, always an actress, even under the deceptive appearances of her so-called repentance, she was having a statue of herself as the goddess of Friendship made for Bellevue, she had several attacks of fever—people called it the Jubilee fever.

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.”

Madame de Mailly breathed her last March 30. In her will she had asked to be buried in the cemetery, among the poor, and to have a wooden cross. The Marquis d’Argenson writes: “These austerities, penances, and poverty increase the adverse opinion against her who now occupies her former place and whose conduct is so very different. It is also remarked, for the honor of religion, that Madame de Mailly, who was often subject to fits of ill temper, which was the cause of her being banished by the King, had become as mild and equable as possible. People say that if she was not holy, no other woman ever will be.”

But Madame de Pompadour was once more victorious. The King did not allow himself to be touched by the death of his former mistress, and, spite of the warnings of heaven, he did not make his Jubilee. Still the Marquise was not tranquil. D’Argenson wrote, December 11, 1752: “Madame de Pompadour has been spitting blood since her youth. Et in peccato concepit eam mater sua. She is becoming as dry as a stick, and one can see her growing thin with jealousy.” And September 17, 1753: “The King is becoming superstitiously devout, respecting the clergy more than morals. Marshal de Richelieu said to me in a jesting way: ‘The King shows angelic devotion. He won’t do anything without the episcopate in the affairs of Languedoc.’”

Madame de Pompadour no longer appealed to the senses of Louis XV. Sensuality failing her, she would have liked to be able to press religion into her service. She sought to create a new rôle for herself as favorite, more minister than mistress; to legitimate by duration as well as by a certain decorum her liaison with the King; to assume, in brief, an attitude as friend, counsellor, I might almost say matron.

Negotiating her conversion with the Jesuits as if it were a diplomatic affair, she demanded as a condition sine quâ non, that she should remain at Versailles. But here was the difficult point. The clergy, even at a period of abasement, retained their principles, and the Church would not be the dupe of a woman. But one thing, the absolution of a priest, was needful to enable her to go on playing her part as companion to the King, female minister, peacemaker between the King and the royal family, the Crown and the Parliaments, the clergy and the philosophers. All she had to do to merit and obtain this absolution was to withdraw from the court. But the Marquise would have preferred death to retreat. The atmosphere of Versailles was indispensable to her. Far from the scene of her sorry triumphs she would have expired in rage and despair. Louis XV. well knew that to dismiss her would be to kill her. Therefore he kept her near him, but solely through compassion.

Madame de Pompadour had put herself in communication with a Jesuit, Père de Sacy, whom she had formerly known, and from whom she hoped to gain, not only absolution, but permission to remain at the palace of Versailles. As, in the preceding reign, the “mistress thundering and triumphant,” Madame de Montespan, had been seen to humble herself before a simple curé, the all-powerful Marquise de Pompadour was now seen humbly soliciting a Jesuit. Père de Sacy remained firm: he would not let himself be moved by the fine protestations of the Marquise. It was in vain to show him that the communications between the apartments of the King and the favorite were now walled up; useless for the partisans of loose morality and worldly religion to say to him that he must not discourage repentance; that too much severity would spoil all; that the Church had need of Madame de Pompadour against the Encyclopedists; in a word, that there ought to be such a thing as compromising with heaven. The Jesuit rejected this theory of relaxation and culpable condescension. He reminded his pretended penitent that she had a husband still living,—a husband of whom she could not complain, and that her place was not at the palace of Versailles, but at the side of M. Lenormand d’Étioles. This annoying souvenir exasperated the favorite, infuriated by the conjugal phantom that rose before her, and thwarted all her plans. When she was convinced that, in spite of her feminine tricks, she could never bend Père de Sacy, she dismissed him;[47] and undoubtedly the admirable conduct of the Jesuits was one of the causes which brought about the expulsion of the order a few years later. Madame de Pompadour was vindictive. She never pardoned any one who had the audacity to displease her.

Could one believe it? The favorite pushed her assurance to the point of posing as a victim. To credit her, people were unjustly opposing obstacles to her conversion and that of the King. Priests who refused absolution in this way were enemies of the throne and the altar. At the same time, she shamelessly solicited a place as lady of the Queen’s palace. Marie Leczinska’s obligingness had already been carried too far. This time the good Queen made some observations. To receive to a place of honor a woman separated from her husband, a person who could not even claim to receive the benefits of the general communion, was an ignominy to which Louis XV. could not really wish to condemn a Queen of France. Accomplished intriguer as she was, Madame de Pompadour was not yet discouraged. She declared her willingness to be reconciled with her husband, at the same time secretly acquainting M. Lenormand d’Étioles that he would do well to refrain from accepting such an offer. The letter she wrote him was replete with the finest sentiments. As much as she had scandalized society by her separation, so much she promised to edify it hereafter by an irreproachable union with her husband. But this promise was only a feint. Moreover, M. d’Étioles was hardly anxious to take back his wife. He might have applied to her the idea expressed in this line of a modern tragedy:—

It was long since the woman who had ceased to bear his name and whose desertion had once rendered him so unhappy, had excited in him either anger or resentment. He had wept for Madame d’Étioles. But Madame d’Étioles had been dead more than ten years, and he did not know Madame the Marquise de Pompadour. Nor had he any desire to know her. What he was told about her in nowise tempted him. He greatly preferred a former dancer at the opera, Mademoiselle Rem, with whom he lived maritally, and for whose sake he had refused the embassy from France to Constantinople.

Madame de Pompadour triumphed. The really guilty person, said she, was her husband. He and he alone committed the sin, he who refused to open his arms to a repentant spouse. She could not re-enter the conjugal abode by force. Hence the Queen could have no complaint against her, and no opposition could be made against her obtaining, after having received absolution, that place as lady of the palace, which was the height of her desires. She formally received her Easter communion at the church of Saint Louis, Versailles. But it was not Père de Sacy who heard her confession, but another priest.

“I had been surprised,” writes Madame du Hausset, “for some time past to see the Duchess de Luynes coming secretly to Madame. Afterwards she came openly; and one evening, Madame having gone to bed, called me and said: ‘My dear, you are going to be very well contented, the Queen is giving me a place as lady of the palace; to-morrow I am to be presented; you must make me look very handsome.’ I knew that the King was not quite so much at his ease about it; he was afraid of scandal and that people might think he had forced the Queen to make this nomination. But there was nothing of that sort. It was represented to the Princess that it would be an heroic act on her part to forget the past; that all scandal would be obliterated when it was seen that an honorable position was what retained Madame at court, and that this would be the best proof that nothing but friendship existed any longer between the King and his favorite. The Queen received her very well. The pious sort flattered themselves that they would be protected by Madame, and for some time sang her praises.... This was the time when Madame appeared to me the most contented. The devotees made no scruples about visiting her and did not forget themselves when opportunity offered.... The doctor (Quesnay) laughed at this change of scenes and made merry at the expense of the devotees. ‘And yet,’ I said to him, ‘they are consistent and may be in good faith.’ ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘but they ought not to ask for anything.’”

The Marquise de Pompadour, who had had the tabouret and the honors of a duchess since 1752, received her brevet as lady of the Queen’s palace February 7, 1756. She began the next day her week of attendance on Marie Leczinska, at the state dinner in a superb costume.

D’Argenson, whose morality is often peculiar, finds the thing natural enough. He approves rather than criticises. “Sunday evening,” he writes, “the Marquise de Pompadour was declared at Versailles lady of the Queen’s palace, whence it is conjectured that she is no longer the King’s mistress. It is even said that she begins to talk devotion and Molinism, and is going to try and please the Queen as much as she has the King. All this confidence which has been evident during the three years since the King began to have new mistresses is merely the reward of the sweetness and humility with which she has accepted her lover’s infidelities. This is only precarious and mere pretence, or, rather, it comes from a sentiment of friendship, good taste, and gratitude, and a good-nature in which love counts for nothing. But these reasonable sentiments can accomplish much in a sensible and well-ordered heart like that of the King.” Here one gets the sum of the morality of the eighteenth century. What could be expected of a society in which even worthy men could use such language and show such complaisance?