her beauty,
its loss she was unable to survive. She suffered for a length of time in
silence, hiding ever under a pallid smile the death she already felt in
her heart. At length she took to her bed--that bed from which she was
fated to rise no more. She was then at the Chateau of Choisy; neither the
king nor his courtiers imagined that her disease was serious, but she
herself well knew that her hour was come. She entreated the king to have
her removed to Versailles; she wished to die upon the throne of her
glory--to die as a queen in the royal palace, still issuing her orders to
the troop of servile courtiers who were accustomed to wait humbly at her
footstool.

Like Diana de Poitiers, Gabrielle d'Estrees, and Madame de Maintenon, she
died in April. The cure of the Madeleine was present during her last
moments. As the old man was preparing to retire, after giving her the
benediction, she rallied for a moment, for she was then almost dead, and
said to him, "Wait a bit, Monsieur le Cure, we will go together." These
were her last words.

Up to this time the king had testified at least the semblance of
friendship and gratitude toward Madame de Pompadour, but no sooner had
she breathed her last than he began to consider how he could, in the
speediest manner possible, get rid of her mortal remains. He gave
immediate orders for the removal of the body to her house in Paris. As
the conveyance was about to start, the king, who was standing at one of
the windows of the Chateau, seeing a violent hailstorm breaking over
Versailles, said, with a smile, half sad, half ironical, "The marchioness
will have bad weather for her journey!"

That same day Madame de Pompadour's will was opened in his presence.
Although she had long since been far from his heart, he could not
restrain a tear at the reading of the document.

The marchioness, in her will, had forgotten none of her friends, nor any
of her servants; the king himself was named. "I entreat the king," she
wrote, "to accept the gift I make him of my hotel in Paris, in order that
it may become the palace of one of his children: it is my desire that it
may become the residence of Monseigneur le Comte de Provence." This hotel
of Madame de Pompadour has since then been inhabited by illustrious
hosts, for it is better known at the present day under the designation of
the Elysee Bourbon, or rather the Elysee National.

Madame de Pompadour had several residences: she had received from