Madame de Pompadour Read Online Free PDF

bourgeoise to be presented to him, and he had a mistress already. Meanwhile her parents were not finding it easy to marry her; the reputations of both left too much to be desired. Poisson was an amusing rough diamond, but he had been mixed up in shady business, some said hanged in effigy by the public hangman after his flight, and his origins were lower rather than middle class; he had never tried to seem other than he was, or bothered the least bit about appearances, and many people would not have cared to have him in the family. As for lovely Madame Poisson, she was clever and cultivated but not, alas, virtuous; alas too, this lively but doubtful couple was not even very rich. However, M. de Tournehem, who was, now took the affair in hand. He suggested to his nephew, M. Le Normant d’Etioles, that he should marry Reinette. D’Etioles did not like the idea, but Tournehem offered such excellent terms – an enormous dowry, a guarantee that the young couple should live with him for the rest of his life, all expenses, even the wages of their own servants, paid, and should inherit his fortune when he died – that d’Etioles gave way. They were married in March 1741.
    The young couple and M. and Madame Poisson lived with M. de Tournehem in the Hôtel de Gesvres, rue Croix des Petits Champs, and at the Château d’Etioles in the forest of Sénart. One of the most delicious of the many houses lived in and arranged by Reinette, Etioles did not escape the bad luck with which they have nearly all been cursed. Its owner pulled it down early in this century to avoid paying rates on it. Le Normant d’Etioles was no sooner married than he fell passionately in love with his wife and she, for her part, often said that she would never leave him – except, of course, for the King. This seems to have been a family joke; but it was more than a joke to Madame d’Etioles.
    Her daughter, Alexandrine, was born when the King was ill at Metz; somebody told her that his life was said to be in danger, whereupon she had a relapse and nearly died. (Alexandrine was her second child; a little boy had already died in infancy.) Yet if, like many women, she had dreams of a different life, her real life was most agreeable. She was young, beautiful and rich, surrounded by relations she loved, and who regarded her as the pivot of their world. She did not have to express a wish before it was granted. At Etioles a big theatre was built, with proper stage machinery, for her to act in; soon she was recognized as one of the very best amateur actresses in France. Her horses and carriages were the envy of the countryside and so were her jewels and dresses; she was of an extreme elegance, a more difficult achievement then than it is today, as the great dressmakers did not exist, and each woman invented her own clothes.
    Madame d’Etioles was a person of decided character who knew what she wanted in life, and generally got it. Now that she was married and ‘out’ in society she thought that she would like to have a
salon
and entertain the intellectuals of her day. This was a career for which her talents and fortune obviously fitted her. The intellectual life of Paris centred round those writers, known as the
philosophes
, who were presently to compile a great encyclopædia of human knowledge; a spectacular occupation and one that continually got them into trouble with the Church and the Court. They lived in a blaze of publicity, with the eyes of the world upon them, partly because of this encyclopædia and partly because Voltaire belonged to their group. Their ideas produced the moral climate in which the French Revolution finally took place; but had they lived to witness the Revolution, it would have horrified them one and all. Though they were not Christians, they were, for the most part, neither atheists nor anarchists; Voltaire believed in God and loved kings. But they did want to prevent the dead hand of the Church from producing, in France, the