readings, after which followed a visit to the king,
a little painting, the toilette, mass, and dinner. After dinner,
she retired to her apartments and passed the time making tapestry,
embroidering, and in charity work--no longer the recreation of
leisure, but the duty of charity which the poor expected. Her taste
for music, the guitar, the clavecin, all amusements in which
she delighted before her marriage, were abandoned. Under such
circumstances the mistress had full control of everything.

It was prophesied of Mlle. Jeanne Poisson, at the age of nine, that
she would become the mistress of Louis XV. (Mme. Lebon, who made this
pleasing prediction, was later rewarded with a pension of six hundred
livres.) Mlle. Jeanne was the natural daughter of a butcher, but
received a good education and, at the age of twenty, was married to Le
Normand d'Etioles, farmer of taxes. It was shortly after this that
she managed to attract the king's attention, at a hunting party in
the forest of Senart. With the assistance of her friends, she was
successful in winning the king, and, in April, 1754, at a supper which
lasted far into the early morning, reposing in his arms, she virtually
became the mistress of Louis XV. The actual accomplishment of this,
however, depended upon the disposal of her husband, which was easily
arranged by Louis, who ordered Le Normand d'Etioles from Paris, thus
securing her from any harm from him. The brothers De Goncourt write
thus of her talents:

"Marvellous aptitudes, a scholarly and rare education, had given to
this young woman all the gifts and virtues that made of a woman what
the eighteenth century called a virtuoso, an accomplished model of
the seductions of her time. Jeliotte had taught her singing and the
clavecin; Guibaudet, dancing; Crebillon had taught her declamation and
the art of diction; the friends of Crebillon had formed her young mind
to _finesse_, to delicacies, to lightness of sentiment, and to irony
of the _esprit_ of the time. All the talents of grace seemed to be
united in her. No woman mounted a horse better; none captured applause
more quickly than did she with her voice and instrument; none recalled
in a better way the tone of Gaussin or the accent of Clairon; none
could tell a story better. And there where others could vie with her
in coquetry, she carried off the honors by her genius of toilette, by
the graceful turn she gave to a mere rag, by the air she imparted to
a mere nothin