ot displayed much taste in
the adornment of her retreat. He entered the court and proceeded straight
to the door of the hermitage. At this instant a young peasant girl
advanced to meet him; as she was well made, delicate, and pretty looking,
the king began to find the hermitage more to his taste. With deep
reverence his guide begged of him to follow her to the farm.

As he approached the farm, another peasant girl, more delicate still than
the former, advanced to meet him, and, with a thousand reverences,
presented him with a bowl of milk. At the sight of this pretty milkmaid,
with her little straw hat coquettishly disposed on one side of her head,
her white corset and blue petticoat, the king was charmed. Before taking
the milk from her hands, he gazed at her a second time from head to foot.
Her arms, which were uncovered, were white as lilies; she wore suspended
from her neck a little gold cross, which seemed to lose itself in a
magnificent bouquet of flowers which she wore in her bosom; but what
above all astonished the king were two little stockingless feet incased
in a pair of the most rustic _sabots_. With a motion of innocent
coquetry, the pretty milkmaid drew one of her feet out of its wooden
prison and placed it on the _sabot_. All at once the king recognized the
marchioness, and avowed to her that for the first time in his life he had
felt the desire of kissing a pretty foot. Madame de Pompadour returned
with her royal lover to the hermitage, where he could not sufficiently
admire the refined taste which had been displayed by the fair architect
in the planning and arrangement of the building and grounds. This was the
origin of what was afterward known as the notorious Parc-aux-cerfs.

It would be a difficult matter to study the political system of Madame de
Pompadour, if, indeed, she can be said to have acted on a system. It
cannot be denied that she possessed ideas, but more frequently her mind
was a perfect chaos of caprices. It is well known, however, that the Duc
de Choiseul, who united in his own person the portfolios of three
departments of the ministry, and who disposed of all power, followed to
the letter the policy of Madame de Pompadour; namely, in reversing the
system of Louis XIV., in allying himself to Austria, and in forming a
league, or rather a family pact, between the Bourbons of France, Italy,
and Spain. The policy of Madame de Pompadour it was which annexed Corsica
to France, and, consequent