Reception Madame Pompadour. Lover and advisor. How the Marquise de Pompadour Conquered the King and France. Having married, Zhanna, despite her young age, managed to gather interesting people around her. In the castle of Étiol, where she settled, she used to write a lot

The main life achievement and secret of Jeanne Poisson, whom the king made the Marquise de Pompadour, was her amazing and at first glance inexplicable "longevity" at court. After all, the favorites of the century are short-lived - a rapid rise was usually followed by an equally quick oblivion. And the marquise did not leave Versailles for twenty years, remaining the closest friend and adviser of the king until her death.

Fortune-telling predicts happiness in life ...

Jeanne Antoinette Poisson was born in 1721. She had no noble roots. The girl’s mother, Louise Madeleine, was known as a lady of rather specific behavior, so doubts arise who was Jeanne’s real father: Francois Poisson, who at one time served as a lackey, then as a supplier of the provisions department, who stole and fled from justice, leaving his family, or financier Norman de Turnham, who kept Jeanne and her mother.

Despite the humble origin, the girl was given a good upbringing and education, since Monsieur Turnham had the funds for this. Jeanne was distinguished by nature with a lively mind and was gifted with extraordinary abilities: she played great music, drew, had a clear voice and a passion for poetry, which she recited beautifully.

She was very fond of books, learned knowledge well, studied for several years at the Poissy monastery. In addition, the girl was pretty. Her contemporary Leroy, Chief Jägermeister of the forests and parks of Versailles, described Jeanne with great sympathy: “... short, slender, with soft, relaxed manners, elegant. Face of an impeccable oval shape. Beautiful brown hair, rather large eyes of indeterminate color, beautiful long eyelashes. Straight, perfectly shaped nose, sensual mouth, very beautiful teeth. Charming laugh."

... When Jeanne was 9 years old, her mother took her to one of the most famous fortune-tellers of that time - Mrs. Lebon. The fortune-teller carefully looked at the fragile girl and uttered a prophecy: “This little one will one day become the king’s favorite!”

But no matter what the fortuneteller came up with, the king was far away, and Jeanne Antoinette was 19 years old. On March 9, 1741, in the church of Sainte-Ostache, she was married to Charles Le Norman d'Etiol, nephew of Monsieur de Tournam. It was not a marriage for love, however, their marriage was quite successful. The husband bowed before Jeanne and was ready to fulfill her every desire. She said that she would never leave him, except for the sake of the king himself ...

Diana the Huntress

Jeanne knew how to brilliantly present herself in high society, and soon they started talking about her. However, this charming girl was not enough to remain in the center of attention of high society. She tried to attract the attention of the king, who at that time was under the spell of the ambitious Duchess de Châteauroux.

The girl began to constantly catch the eye of Louis in the Senar forest, where he hunted, in flirtatious and refined toilets: now in a sky-blue dress and in a pink phaeton, now in all pink and in a sky-blue carriage - in the end, she was lucky to be noticed by him, especially since the king had already heard something about “little Etiol” and she aroused his curiosity. However, the mistress of Louis quickly put an end to the claims of the nee Jeanne Poisson, simply forbidding her to appear in the hunting grounds of the king. And only when Madame de Chateauroux suddenly died, Madame d'Etiol realized that the path to the heart of the king was free.

During a grand masquerade ball, which was given on February 25, 1745 in the Paris City Hall on the occasion of the marriage of the Dauphin to the Spanish princess Maria Theresa, Jeanne had the opportunity to approach the king. At the ball, Louis became interested in a charming lady in the costume of Diana the Huntress. The mask intrigued the king. At his request, the stranger opened her face. She had clearly dropped her scented handkerchief on purpose. The king immediately rushed to pick it up, returned it to her, and this was the beginning of their love affair, which they maintained through the trusted valet Louis Binet.

Soon Madame d'Etiol appeared at Versailles at the performance of the Italian comedy in a box that was near the stage very close to the box of the king, and when Louis ordered dinner to be served directly to his study, the whole court had no doubt that his only companion would be "little Etiol". Here she gave herself to him, but after this meeting, Louis's interest in her decreased.

The king told Binet that he liked Madame d'Etiol very much, but it seemed to him that ambition and selfish interest motivated her in many ways. The valet began to assure the king that Jeanne was madly in love with him, but she was in despair, as she was torn between love for the king and duty to her husband, who was full of suspicion and idolized her.

On her next appointment with Louis, Madame d'Etiol behaved more carefully and acted in the role of just a charming and virtuous woman, which the king wanted to see in her. As if in a well-played performance, she spoke with horror about her husband's revenge that awaited her and managed to convince Louis to leave her at Versailles. She also managed to get her husband out of Paris without much difficulty: as a companion of his uncle, he was sent by his representative to the provinces.

While apartments were being prepared at Versailles for de Châteauroux's successor, Jeanne remained at Etiol. The king often wrote her affectionate letters, usually ending with the words "Loving and devoted", and she immediately answered in the same spirit. Finally, in one of the letters she read: "Marquise de Pompadour." Louis issued a decree conferring on her this title, which had previously belonged to a extinct family from Limousin.

At the throne of the king

On September 14, 1745, she was presented at court. Oddly enough, but the best attitude to the new favorite was ... the wife of Louis - Maria Leshchinskaya - the daughter of the Polish king Stanislav. The queen was seven years older than her husband, extremely pious, boring and unattractive. During the first 12 years of marriage, she gave birth to ten children to the king and was completely absorbed in caring for offspring ...

The obvious superiority of the Marquise de Pompadour over the past favorites of the king in every possible way strengthened the position of Jeanne, both at court and under Louis. And she took advantage of this, not being afraid to pass for immodest. Both in the external and in the private, hidden from prying eyes, life, Madame Pompadour ruled her ball.

Jeanne carried Louis into the world of magnificent architecture, quaint palaces, under the vaults of alleys of hundred-year-old trees, where, however, everything was arranged in accordance with common sense, and each house bore the imprint of a fashionable pastoral. The marquise again and again conquered Louis with her ability to appear before him every time new and unexpected. Exquisite makeup and costumes helped her in this, a whole kaleidoscope of costumes! Either she changed into the dress of a sultana from the Vanloo paintings, or she appeared in the costume of a peasant woman ...

Especially for the king, she came up with another unusual outfit, it was called “neglije a la Pompadour”: something like a Turkish vest that hugged the neck, fastened with buttons on the forearm and fitted the back to the hips. In it, the marquise could show everything she wanted, and only hint at everything she wanted to hide.

However, the position of the Marquise at court was not so stable. Until now, the king chose his favorite from the upper strata of society. The née Poisson broke this rule. Thousands of hostile eyes followed her, and thousands of evil tongues immediately set in motion at the slightest forgetfulness, at the slightest errors in etiquette, at errors in the court language of this Grisette, as the newly-made marquise was contemptuously called behind her back.

First of all, Jeanne had to think about how, in this situation fraught with unforeseen dangers, to obtain the full support of the king in order to strengthen her position. It was the most difficult and extremely important task.

Versailles Scheherazade

Of all the mistresses of Louis, only the Marquise de Pompadour had the ability to dispel his boredom. She tried every time to be attractive in a new way and every time she came up with new entertainments for him. She sang and played especially for the king or told new jokes with her characteristic piquancy. And when some minister bothered Louis with reports, which naturally annoyed the king, she tried to send the speaker out as quickly as possible. For example, if it was Morepa: “In your presence, the king turns yellow directly. Farewell, Mr. Morepa!”

She walked with Louis through the luxurious gardens of summer castles and constantly accompanied him from Versailles to Crescy, and from there to La Selle, and from there to Bellevue, and then to Compiègne and Fontainebleau. On Holy Week, she entertained him with sacred music concerts and liturgies, in which she herself participated. And when she played on stage in the theater of Étiol or Chantemerle with Madame de Villemour, she managed to captivate Louis with her performing arts, and she even created a small theater in Versailles in one of the galleries adjacent to the Medallion Cabinet, called the "Chamber Theater".

Over time, her position was strengthened so much that she began to receive ministers and ambassadors with condescending arrogance. Now she lived in Versailles, in apartments that once belonged to the once powerful mistress of Louis XIV, the Marquise de Montespan. In the room of the Marquise de Pompadour, where she received visitors, there was only one chair - everyone had to stand in the presence of the sitting favorite.

She listened to Mass in the Chapel of Versailles on a tribune specially arranged for her on the balcony of the sacristy, where she appeared alone during big holidays. Her life was furnished with unprecedented luxury. A young nobleman from an old family carried her train, at her sign offered her a chair, and waited for her to come out in the hallway. She achieved the award of her chamberlain Collin with the Order of St. Louis. Her carriage bore the ducal coat of arms.

The Marquise owned such huge real estate, which neither before nor after her in France was owned by any royal favorite. She bought the Cressy estate in Dreux for 650,000 livres, built a luxurious castle here - construction was generally her strong point - and also re-arranged a huge park. She bought Montreton, but immediately resold it at a profit, bought the Selle a mile from Versailles on the road to Marly, and here, too, rebuilt everything that she did not like in accordance with her tastes. Each such event in itself required huge funds.

Amusements, buildings, dresses of the Marquise de Pompadour absorbed a lot of money: 1 million 300 thousand livres were worth her outfits, 3.5 million - cosmetics, 4 million - theater, 3 million - horses, 2 million - jewelry, about 1 .5 million livres - her servants; She allocated 12,000 francs for books.

“Godmother” of Voltaire, Rousseau, Napoleon…

Louis XV encouraged the development cultural life France, so the Marquise de Pompadour tried to surround herself with poets, scientists and philosophers. Out of competition among them was Voltaire, old friend awnings. Pompadour gave him a clear preference, made him an academician, chief historian of France, chief chamberlain. In turn, he wrote “Princess of Navarre”, “Temple of Glory” for court holidays, dedicated the Marquise “Tancreda” and glorified her in poetry and prose. “Pompadour, you decorate with your special court, Parnassus and the island of Geter!” he exclaimed with admiration and gratitude.

She did a lot for Rousseau, especially when he could not protect his own interests. The Marquise staged his "Siberian Soothsayer" on the stage and had big success in the male role of Colpen. However, Jean-Jacques considered her not attentive enough to him, since he was not introduced to the king and did not receive a pension. On the other hand, the Marquise arranged a pension for old Crebillon, who once gave her lessons in recitation, which was now poor and abandoned by everyone. Pompadour staged his play Catelina, contributed to the monumental publication of his tragedies in the royal printing house, and after the death of Crebillon, the construction of a mausoleum for him.

Her friends were Buffon and Montesquieu. The Marquise also helped the encyclopedists - d'Alembert (for him she secured a pension) and Diderot, whom she repeatedly called for moderation and caution.

Pompadour contributed to the opening of a military school for the sons of war veterans and impoverished nobles. When the money allocated for the construction ran out, the marquise contributed the missing amount. In October 1781, student Napoleon Bonaparte arrived at this school to study ...

Reformer in a skirt

Other equally glorious deeds are associated with the name Pompadour. She actively intervened in the internal and foreign policy France, was engaged in patronage, fought with her political opponents, and most often, successfully, because the king was always on her side.

Wanting to create serious competition for the famous and expensive Saxon porcelain, Pompadour moved factories from Vincennes to Sevres, tirelessly experimented, invited skilled artisans and talented artists, sculptors, organized exhibitions in Versailles and publicly announced: “If someone who has money does not buys this porcelain, he is a bad citizen of his country.”

Pompadour has made an invaluable contribution to cultural heritage humanity.

Diamonds, cut which is called “marquise” (oval stones), in their shape resemble the mouth of a favorite.

Champagne is bottled either in narrow tulip glasses, or in cone-shaped glasses that appeared during the reign of Louis XV - this is exactly the shape of Madame de Pompadour's chest.

A small reticule bag made of soft leather is also her invention. She fashioned high heels and high hairstyles, because she was small in stature.

Beautiful delicate roses, her favorite flower, which the Marquise planted wherever she could, were eventually called “Pompadour roses”.

The marquise held the throne for twenty years, although her position was often in danger. She was not a cheerful person, although she wanted to seem like one. In fact, Pompadour had a cold mind, an ambitious character and, moreover, an iron will, which was surprisingly combined with her weak body, tired of a serious illness ...

Last walk

On one of her trips to Choiseul, the marquise fainted, but found the strength to recover, contrary to the expectations of others. Then came a relapse, and there was no more hope. Louis ordered her to be transported to Versailles, although until now, as Lacretel wrote, only princes were allowed to die in the royal palace.

Pompadour died at 43. However, one can only be surprised that with such an anxious life, she lasted so long. In her early youth, she was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis.

When the funeral procession turned towards Paris, Louis, standing on the balcony of the palace in the pouring rain, said: “What disgusting weather you have chosen for your last walk, madam!” Behind this seemingly completely inappropriate joke was hidden true sadness.

The Marquise de Pompadour was buried in the tomb of the Capuchin monastery. Now, at the place of her burial, there is Rue de la Paix, passing through the territory of the monastery demolished at the beginning of the 19th century. Historian Henri Matrin called Pompadour "the first female prime minister."

“No one can fully appreciate what women have done for France,” said the writer and philosopher-educator Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle. And one who has lived in the world for exactly 100 years and witnessed the transformation of this state into the most authoritative and enlightened in Europe can be trusted. There is no doubt that, while paying tribute to the weak half of France, de Fontenelle also had in mind the famous marquise, who forced politicians to seriously talk about the Pompadour era.

The love of Louis XV went down in history as the uncrowned queen of France

Luois Marin Bonnet

Fortune-telling predicts happiness in life ...

Jeanne Antoinette Poisson was born in 1721. She had no noble roots. The financier Norman de Turnnam supported Jeanne and her mother and gave the girl a good upbringing and education, since Monsieur Turnham had the funds for this. Jeanne was distinguished by nature with a lively mind and was gifted with extraordinary abilities: she played great music, drew, had a clear voice and a passion for poetry, which she recited beautifully.
She was very fond of books, learned knowledge well, studied for several years at the Poissy monastery. In addition, the girl was pretty. Her contemporary Leroy, Chief Jägermeister of the forests and parks of Versailles, described Jeanne with great sympathy: “... short, slender, with soft, relaxed manners, elegant. Face of an impeccable oval shape. Beautiful brown hair, rather large eyes of indeterminate color, beautiful long eyelashes. Straight, perfectly shaped nose, sensual mouth, very beautiful teeth. Charming laugh."

Francois Boucher
... When Jeanne was 9 years old, her mother took her to one of the most famous fortune-tellers of that time - Mrs. Lebon. The fortune-teller carefully looked at the fragile girl and uttered a prophecy: “This little one will one day become the king’s favorite!”
But no matter what the fortuneteller came up with, the king was far away, and Jeanne Antoinette was 19 years old. On March 9, 1741, in the church of Sainte-Ostache, she was married to Charles Le Norman d'Etiol, nephew of Monsieur de Tournam. It was not a marriage for love, however, their marriage was quite successful. The husband bowed before Jeanne and was ready to fulfill her every desire. She said that she would never leave him, except for the sake of the king himself ...

Francois Boucher

Diana the Huntress

Jeanne knew how to brilliantly present herself in high society, and soon they started talking about her. However, this charming girl was not enough to remain in the center of attention of high society. She tried to attract the attention of the king, who at that time was under the spell of the ambitious Duchess de Châteauroux.
The girl began to constantly catch the eye of Louis in the Senar forest, where he hunted, in flirtatious and refined toilets: now in a sky-blue dress and in a pink phaeton, now in all pink and in a sky-blue carriage - in the end, she was lucky to be noticed by him, especially since the king had already heard something about “little Etiol” and she aroused his curiosity. However, the mistress of Louis quickly put an end to the claims of the nee Jeanne Poisson, simply forbidding her to appear in the hunting grounds of the king. And only when Madame de Chateauroux died suddenly, Madame d'Etiol realized that the path to the king's heart was free.
During a grand masquerade ball, which was given on February 25, 1745 in the Paris City Hall on the occasion of the marriage of the Dauphin to the Spanish princess Maria Theresa, Jeanne had the opportunity to approach the king. At the ball, Louis became interested in a charming lady in the costume of Diana the Huntress. The mask intrigued the king. At his request, the stranger opened her face. She had clearly dropped her scented handkerchief on purpose. The king immediately rushed to pick it up, returned it to her, and this was the beginning of their love affair, which they maintained through the trusted valet Louis Binet.

Soon Madame d'Etiol appeared at Versailles at the performance of the Italian comedy in a box that was near the stage very close to the box of the king, and when Louis ordered dinner to be served directly to his study, the whole court had no doubt that his only companion would be "little Etiol". Here she gave herself to him, but after this meeting, Louis's interest in her decreased.
The king told Binet that he liked Madame d'Etiol very much, but it seemed to him that she was driven in many ways by ambition and selfish interest. The valet began to assure the king that Jeanne was madly in love with him, but she was in despair, as she was torn between love for the king and duty to her husband, who was full of suspicion and idolized her.

BOUCHER, François.Portrait of Marquise de Pompadour 1759
On her next appointment with Louis, Madame d'Etiol behaved more carefully and acted in the role of just a charming and virtuous woman, which the king wanted to see in her. As if in a well-played performance, she spoke with horror about her husband's revenge that awaited her and managed to convince Louis to leave her at Versailles. She also managed to get her husband out of Paris without much difficulty: as a companion of his uncle, he was sent by his representative to the provinces.
While apartments were being prepared at Versailles for de Châteauroux's successor, Jeanne remained at Etiol. The king often wrote her affectionate letters, usually ending with the words "Loving and devoted", and she immediately answered in the same spirit. Finally, in one of the letters she read: "Marquise de Pompadour." Louis issued a decree conferring on her this title, which previously belonged to a extinct family from Limousin.

At the throne of the king

On September 14, 1745, she was presented at court. Oddly enough, but the best attitude to the new favorite was ... the wife of Louis - Maria Leshchinskaya - the daughter of the Polish king Stanislav. The queen was seven years older than her husband, extremely pious, boring and unattractive. During the first 12 years of marriage, she gave birth to ten children to the king and was completely absorbed in caring for offspring ...
The obvious superiority of the Marquise de Pompadour over the past favorites of the king in every possible way strengthened the position of Jeanne, both at court and under Louis. And she took advantage of this, not being afraid to pass for immodest. Both in the external and in the private, hidden from prying eyes, life, Madame Pompadour ruled her ball.
Jeanne carried Louis into the world of magnificent architecture, quaint palaces, under the vaults of avenues of hundred-year-old trees, where, however, everything was arranged in accordance with common sense, and each house bore the imprint of a fashionable pastoral. The marquise again and again conquered Louis with her ability to appear before him every time new and unexpected. Exquisite makeup and costumes helped her in this, a whole kaleidoscope of costumes! Either she changed into the dress of a sultana from the Vanloo paintings, or she appeared in the costume of a peasant woman ...

Natier, Jean-Marc - Portrait of Louis XV,
Especially for the king, she came up with another unusual outfit, it was called “neglije a la Pompadour”: something like a Turkish vest that hugged the neck, fastened with buttons on the forearm and fitted the back to the hips. In it, the marquise could show everything she wanted, and only hint at everything she wanted to hide.
However, the position of the Marquise at court was not so stable. Until now, the king chose his favorite from the upper strata of society. The née Poisson broke this rule. Thousands of hostile eyes followed her, and thousands of evil tongues immediately set in motion at the slightest forgetfulness, at the slightest errors in etiquette, at errors in the court language of this Grisette, as the newly-made marquise was contemptuously called behind her back.
First of all, Jeanne had to think about how, in this situation fraught with unforeseen dangers, to obtain the full support of the king in order to strengthen her position. It was the most difficult and extremely important task.

Versailles Scheherazade

Of all the mistresses of Louis, only the Marquise de Pompadour had the ability to dispel his boredom. She tried every time to be attractive in a new way and every time she came up with new entertainments for him. She sang and played especially for the king or told new jokes with her characteristic piquancy. And when some minister bothered Louis with reports, which naturally annoyed the king, she tried to send the speaker out as quickly as possible. For example, if it was Morepa: “In your presence, the king turns yellow directly. Farewell, Mr. Morepa!”
She walked with Louis through the luxurious gardens of summer castles and constantly accompanied him from Versailles to Crescy, and from there to La Selle, and from there to Bellevue, and then to Compiègne and Fontainebleau. On Holy Week, she entertained him with sacred music concerts and liturgies, in which she herself participated. And when she played on stage in the theater of Étiol or Chantemerle with Madame de Villemour, she managed to captivate Louis with her performing arts, and she even created a small theater in Versailles in one of the galleries adjacent to the Medallion Cabinet, called the "Chamber Theater".

Maurice Quentin de La Tour (1704-1788)
Over time, her position was strengthened so much that she began to receive ministers and ambassadors with condescending arrogance. Now she lived in Versailles, in apartments that once belonged to the once powerful mistress of Louis XIV, the Marquise de Montespan. In the room of the Marquise de Pompadour, where she received visitors, there was only one chair - everyone had to stand in the presence of the sitting favorite.
She listened to Mass in the Chapel of Versailles on a tribune specially arranged for her on the balcony of the sacristy, where she appeared alone during big holidays. Her life was furnished with unprecedented luxury. A young nobleman from an old family carried her train, at her sign offered her a chair, and waited for her to come out in the hallway. She achieved the award of her chamberlain Collin with the Order of St. Louis. Her carriage bore the ducal coat of arms.

Francois Boucher Marquise de Pompadour, 1750
The Marquise owned such huge real estate, which neither before nor after her in France was owned by any royal favorite. She bought the Crescy estate in Dreux for 650,000 livres, built a luxurious castle here - construction was generally her strong point - and also re-arranged a huge park. She bought Montreton, but immediately resold it at a profit, bought the Selle a mile from Versailles on the road to Marly, and here, too, rebuilt everything that she did not like in accordance with her tastes. Each such event in itself required huge funds.

Amusements, buildings, dresses of the Marquise de Pompadour absorbed a lot of money: 1 million 300 thousand livres were worth her outfits, 3.5 million - cosmetics, 4 million - theater, 3 million - horses, 2 million - jewelry, about 1 , 5 million livres - her servants; She allocated 12,000 francs for books.

“Godmother” of Voltaire, Rousseau, Napoleon…

Louis XV encouraged the development of the cultural life of France, so the Marquise de Pompadour tried to surround herself with poets, scientists and philosophers. Out of competition among them was Voltaire, an old friend of the marquise. Pompadour gave him a clear preference, made him an academician, chief historian of France, chief chamberlain. In turn, he wrote “Princess of Navarre”, “Temple of Glory” for court holidays, dedicated the Marquise “Tancreda” and glorified her in poetry and prose. “Pompadour, you decorate with your special court, Parnassus and the island of Geter!” he exclaimed with admiration and gratitude.


She did a lot for Rousseau, especially when he could not protect his own interests. Marquise staged his "Siberian soothsayer" on stage and had great success in the male role of Kolpen. However, Jean-Jacques considered her not attentive enough to him, since he was not introduced to the king and did not receive a pension. On the other hand, the Marquise arranged a pension for old Crebillon, who once gave her lessons in recitation, which was now poor and abandoned by everyone. Pompadour staged his play Catelina, contributed to the monumental publication of his tragedies in the royal printing house, and after Crebillon's death, the construction of a mausoleum for him.

Francois Boucher
Her friends were Buffon and Montesquieu. The Marquise also helped the encyclopedists - d'Alembert (she secured a pension for him) and Diderot, whom she repeatedly called for moderation and caution.
Pompadour contributed to the opening of a military school for the sons of war veterans and impoverished nobles. When the money allocated for the construction ran out, the marquise contributed the missing amount. In October 1781, student Napoleon Bonaparte arrived at this school to study ...

Reformer in a skirt

The main life achievement and secret of Jeanne Poisson, whom the king made the Marquise de Pompadour, was her amazing and at first glance inexplicable "longevity" at court. After all, the favorites are short-lived - a rapid rise was usually followed by an equally quick oblivion. And the marquise did not leave Versailles for twenty years, remaining the closest friend and adviser of the king until her death.

Other equally glorious deeds are associated with the name Pompadour. She actively interfered in the domestic and foreign policy of France, was engaged in patronage, fought with her political opponents, and most often, successfully, because the king was always on her side.
Wanting to create serious competition for the famous and expensive Saxon porcelain, Pompadour moved factories from Vincennes to Sevres, tirelessly experimented, invited skilled artisans and talented artists, sculptors, organized exhibitions in Versailles and publicly announced: “If someone who has money does not buys this porcelain, he is a bad citizen of his country.”
Pompadour has made an invaluable contribution to the cultural heritage of mankind.
Diamonds, cut which is called “marquise” (oval stones), in their shape resemble the mouth of a favorite.


Champagne is bottled either in narrow tulip glasses or in cone-shaped glasses that appeared during the reign of Louis XV - this is exactly the shape of Madame de Pompadour's chest.

A small reticule bag made of soft leather is also her invention. She brought high heels and high hair into fashion because she was small.

Boucher F. Portrait of the Marquise de Pompadour.

Beautiful delicate roses, her favorite flower, which the Marquise planted wherever she could, were eventually called “Pompadour roses”.

The marquise held the throne for twenty years, although her position was often in danger. She was not a cheerful person, although she wanted to seem like one. In fact, Pompadour had a cold mind, an ambitious character and, moreover, an iron will, which was surprisingly combined with her weak body, tired of a serious illness ...

Last walk

On one of her trips to Choiseul, the marquise fainted, but found the strength to recover, contrary to the expectations of others. Then came a relapse, and there was no more hope. Louis ordered her to be transported to Versailles, although until now, as Lacretel wrote, only princes were allowed to die in the royal palace.

Here, in a palace where, according to etiquette, only princes of the blood could die, the Marquise of Pompadour died. She died calm, and still beautiful, despite her illness.

As her end approached, the king personally told her that it was time to take communion.

She could not lie down due to shortness of breath and sat, cushioned in an armchair, suffering greatly. Before she dies, she draws a drawing of the beautiful facade of the church. St. Mary Magdalene* in Paris.

When the priest of St. Magdalene was about to leave, she said to him with a smile: "Wait a minute, holy father, we will leave together."

She died a few minutes later.

She was 42 years old and ruled France for twenty years. Of these, only the first five she was the beloved of the king.
... When the funeral procession turned towards Paris, Louis, standing on the balcony of the palace in the pouring rain, said: “What disgusting weather you have chosen for your last walk, madam!” Behind this seemingly completely inappropriate joke was hidden true sadness.


Madame Pompadour as a Vestal by Fran. David M. Stewart 1763.
The Marquise de Pompadour was buried in the tomb of the Capuchin monastery. Now, at the place of her burial, there is Rue de la Paix, passing through the territory of the monastery demolished at the beginning of the 19th century. Historian Henri Matrin called Pompadour "the first female prime minister."

Chaudon F.

Madame de Pompadour. DROUAIS François-Hubert 1763-64.

Now in pink, now in blue
Captivated Louis in the garden,
Marquise with a bright veil,
I caught my phantom in snares ...

And for so many years she was playful,
And smart and taciturn,
At masquerades in the splendor of the ball,
Suddenly Artemis came to life...

And the chest was tender ... wine glasses,
Like a dream ... And the gentlemen were thrilled ...
And they drank to health while standing,
Envying, not protesting...

And the best minds of Europe
We were friends with dear Pampadour,
Louis was not a tyrant,
He walked with her along the mountain paths ...

studied architecture,
And he listened to a smart woman ...
The marquise sends a lesson to us all,
Look for the phantom... And it's your turn....
(Nina Landysheva)

Based on materials from the Internet

——————————————————-

* The Marquise de Pompadour, like Mary Magdalene, and Saint Teresa of Avila, and Queen Louise and other famous historical figures are the earthly incarnations of Nada and her Great Spirit - the Planetary Logos of the Earth of Mary Magdalene.

Iron Mask and Count Saint Germain

Edward Radzinsky

(several chapters for introductory reading)

Chapter first

Count Saint Germain

Paris

My father lived in Paris, never having been there. He was a galloman in the USSR. Galloman from the country behind iron curtain. He lived in Stalinist Moscow, surrounded by old French books bought in second-hand bookshops. In the new Russia of workers and peasants, who did not know French at all, French books from the time of Louis and Empires were sold for a pittance - these were the surviving remnants of noble libraries.

Paris was not a city for my father. It was a dream. The dream of freedom in the country of slaves and also that someday I will see the unattainable Paris. He died without having visited Paris, which he often saw in his dreams. In these dreams, he was sitting in a Parisian cafe with a cup of coffee and writing a story.

I first came to Paris in the early eighties...

It was a hot May day... I was sitting in a cafe, there was a cup of coffee on the table, in front of me lay my father's Guide to Paris, published in 1900 during the World Exhibition. And I wrote a story.

But nothing came to mind, the Parisian story did not work. Meanwhile, noon had come, and on the face of the waiter there was a question when I would leave the cafe and give up my place with a frivolous cup of coffee to serious visitors who had come to the noon mange, sacred to the Frenchman. Mange, without which a true Frenchman not only cannot live, he cannot die. In the days of the revolution, even ruthless revolutionaries allowed condemned aristocrats to have a good meal before traveling to the guillotine. From the window of a cafe on the other side of the Seine, I saw the castle of the Conciergerie, from where these sated Frenchmen were taken to the guillotine ... The waiter continued to look gloomily. I decided to hurry up and, at worst, record in a cafe at least someone else's story, which I heard from a famous Italian screenwriter. He and several of his colleagues were supposed to write love stories of no more than ten seconds of screen time! These short stories were supposed to make a film about LOVE.

And here is what he wrote. The action took place in the apartment. A lovely woman was sitting by the phone. There was a TV in front of her. A space rocket was preparing for launch on the screen. The voice counted down the last ten seconds before the start. The beauty looked attentively at the TV and at the same time dialed a number.

“Ten… nine…” the voice on the TV counted the seconds, “eight… seven… six…” She dialed the next digits.

“Five… four… three… two… one… Start!” - sounded on TV.

- He's gone! she said happily.

Mysterious gentleman

I had finished writing someone else's fiction when a voice came from behind me, speaking in Russian: “This is not just a clever invention. This is a parable of a miserable love in a miserable age. Ten seconds is really enough to describe it.”

I turned around. He sat at the next table and smiled.

He was in a magnificent white flaky suit, in a wide straw hat, from under which protruded a black mustache, a long zigzag nose and sunken, sunken cheeks ... And he was all kind of crooked, narrow, unreliable. Despite the heat, he was wearing white gloves.

I wanted to answer him, but did not have time, because at the same moment he ... disappeared! Only gloved hands remained. This is not the most common picture when a pair of white gloves sticks out of the void. But I did not have time to be amazed, because the next moment he calmly sat in front of me on a chair.

“No, no,” he laughed, “there is nothing supernatural here. This is just a trick with which Count Saint-Germain drove the Parisians crazy in my favorite gallant century ... You are obviously worried about my gloves. You see, I participated in the excavations of Babylon. There was no need to do this. As we all know from the Bible, Babylon was cursed by the Lord. “It will never be settled, and there will be no inhabitants in it for generations of generations. But the beasts of the desert will live in it… Jackals will howl in the palaces and hyenas in pleasure houses… And I will make it a swamp,” said the God of Hosts. When I first arrived,” he continued in a strangely talkative way, “I saw the amazing accuracy of what was predicted. In front of me lay ugly hills, swamp and desert, and under them hid the cursed city. Not even grass grew there. Only the reed marshes that exuded fever. But I got permission and started digging.

His story seemed to me much stranger than his gloves. The last excavations in Babylon, as I vaguely remembered, were carried out at the very beginning of the 20th century.

- Indeed. Unlike other significant places in Iraq, where excavations take place every year, no one has officially dug at the site of Babylon since the eighteenth year. And the government refuses to give permission. There are not even tourists. However, it is easy to assume that for a lot of money I got permission and started digging in a cursed place.

“So that’s the point,” I calmed down.

And the stranger, all reading my thoughts, nodded approvingly and mockingly.

- I'm glad that everything became clearer to you. Digging there is extremely difficult. I had to pay big money to the workers, people are terribly afraid of these places ... I intended to dig ancient part Babylon. This is the city of the ruler Hammurabi, which existed half a thousand years before Moses. But it turned out that he lies under a hundred-meter layer of silt. Then I decided to dig on the site of the city of Nebuchadnezzar. But even it is covered with a thirty-meter layer of its own stones and shards. Famous towers, columns, hanging gardens turned into this garbage ... But still, something was achieved. They dug up a wonderful stele covered with cuneiform writing. Of course, I was in a hurry to read ... The stone was cleared all night. By dawn, I gently stroked with my hands the stone inscriptions of the city cursed by the Lord. I felt the carnal, passionate murmur of time. But by the evening the hand was on fire. I caught an infection that completely disfigured my hands. Be careful with places like this. However, I have to go.

He only glanced in the direction of the waiter, as he rushed headlong towards him. I saw a large bill appear in white gloves and lay down on the table.

- Thank you my friend. Keep the change. - And, rising from his seat, he said to me: - I hope we will soon continue our conversation ...

And held out a business card with a gloved hand.

On the business card I read: "Antoine de Saint-Germain."

And a phone.

He laughed.

- This pseudonym is just ... Once I rented an apartment in the Saint-Germain quarter. But now I live in the Latin Quarter, a stone's throw from Delacroix's workshop. Call me when you feel like it. I will be glad. You, as I understand it, are a writer who is very passionate about History ... Only such a person can flip through with rapture hundred years ago guidebook, being aware of the excavations in Babylon and trying to compose in a cafe with a computer on the table. But beware, my friend, of carrying both of these things in the same bag. Believe me, they hate each other - a magnificent, adventurous guide and an unreliable, brittle child of progress.

I enjoyed listening to the sounds of his speech. That Russian speech, which was preserved in the families of emigrants of the first wave. Their language, which has escaped the bullying of the newspeak of the revolution, preserves the silenced voice of our perished Atlantis.

In that first meeting, I had no doubt: he was Russian.

A faceless, strangely pale young man entered the café.

With a farewell wave to me, Monsieur Antoine Saint-Germain followed him out of the café. I saw through the window how this young man, apparently his driver, opened the car door for him.

Visiting Monsieur Antoine

The next day I called him, but no one answered. All week I tried in vain to call him. The phone number on the business card was silent. Only on Sunday I heard his voice. Without any introductions, he invited me to his place.

He lived in a house on my favorite square. This is a tiny Furstenberg square, lost in the streets of the Latin Quarter. The whole area is a small asphalt circle, on which ancient lanterns are placed, ceremoniously surrounded by trees. The windows of Delacroix's workshop look at this realm of harmony. My strange acquaintance lived in a house next to the workshop.

The same faceless young man opened the door for me. Silently led deep into the apartment. It was an implausible apartment... We walked through an endless suite of rooms filled with antique furniture. The curtains on the windows were drawn, candles were burning in bronze candelabra, mirrors and golden picture frames were flickering.

They came to the big hall. In the center stood a magnificent ebony table with legs - carved heads of Atlanteans.

The table stood in front of a huge window. It seemed to be floating over the square, illuminated by the setting October sun.

In the far corner of the hall lurked a harpsichord, which I did not immediately notice, struck by the magnificence of the table. On the wall to the right of the table hung a portrait in a massive gold frame.

The portrait was of a handsome man in a camisole and wig. With a face mocking, proud and ... familiar.

Monsieur Antoine stood at the table, stroking the gilded head of an Atlantean... This time he was in a black tuxedo and black gloves.

After greeting him ceremoniously, he began to speak:

– This table was made by the personal order of the Sun King in the famous workshop of royal furniture… As for the portrait, you were interested in it for a reason. This portrait was painted during the life of a fantastic gentleman, depicted on it ... on the eve of his official death. This is the most authentic depiction of this man. Pay attention to the unusually wide forehead of the depicted gentleman, speaking of a dangerous mind. His large nose is very reminiscent of Goethe's nose. In such a nose, the famous physiognomist Lavater saw a great ability to create. The slightly protruding lip of the master tells of voluptuousness and lust, but defeated by an indomitable will. He looks in the portrait at most forty years old, doesn't he? Although, according to his own words, he was eighty-eight years old at that time ... However, neither the date of birth nor the date of his true death are known. Do you really not understand what you are talking about? This is the one whose name I allowed myself to decorate my business card. This is the Comte Saint-Germain.

And I… saw!

I have to say, I was excited. I have long been occupied with this implausible gentleman. All the last time I have been studying the history of Catherine the Great. According to one version, this fantastic count was in Russia in 1761-1762 and secretly participated in the overthrow of the unfortunate Peter III.

I did not have time to think (as it will always be in our conversations), as Monsieur Antoine has already said:

- Exactly! Exactly! And then they first met, Count Saint-Germain and Count Alexei Orlov. Then there was a second meeting in Italy. In that second meeting, Count Saint-Germain participated in the famous Battle of Chesma under the name of General Saltykov. As he himself said, he chose this name out of respect for Prince Sergei Saltykov, Catherine's lover and father of your Emperor Paul.

“I have a different theory about Father Pavel,” I began.

“Well, what kind of “other theories” can there be,” Monsieur Antoine interrupted, “there can be no “other” ones. - And then the face of Monsieur Antoine strangely reddened, or rather, filled with blood. During our two days of communication, I saw this state of his many times. But that first time I was very frightened, it seemed to me that he had a seizure!

He whispered:

- There can be no other theories ... Hunting ... Everything happened to them on the hunt ... That day they fell behind the hunt.

And, I swear, I… saw!!! A long tunnel... The tunnel somehow thievishly flashed before me... disappeared... And already from the darkness of the disappeared tunnel... two horsemen galloped towards me... And immediately disappeared. As happens when you lose consciousness ... I flew ... into the darkness. And I heard ... I heard the monotonous voice of Monsieur Antoine.

“He and she… you don’t see them… they are behind the hunt, they are on horseback… They stopped at the old hunting lodge… He leaned towards her from the saddle… and put his arm around her waist… She did not resist, but trembled. And he, already caressing her ear with his lips, whispers pictures of happiness and how to make a secret happiness that they can safely enjoy ... right now! .. He takes out the key to the house! .. And she looks at the key ... and! ..

I saw the face of Monsieur Antoine again, it moved ... very close - heavy eyelids and icy eyes without eyelashes. And his voice whispered again:

- She will later write in the Notes: “In response, I did not utter a word ...” Such silence in the language of the gallant age was considered a call! He immediately took advantage of the INVOCATION silence… Having missed the delightful station of Exhausting Tenderness, he hurried to the Orphanage of Pleasure… They entered the house! “What happened”… that hour and a half of happiness… remained a clear hint in her “Notes”: “After an hour and a half I told him to drive away, because our… such a long conversation might become suspicious. He objected that he would not leave until I said "I love you." I said, "Yes, yes, but just get out." He spurred his horse, and I called after him: “No, no!”.

(Subsequently, I found this episode in Catherine's Notes. It turned out that Monsieur Antoine quoted almost word for word.)

gallant age

Monsieur Antoine fell silent, as if trying to compose himself. I also came to my senses.

He continued quite calmly:

- ... However, we started talking about Count Alexei Orlov. He had a magnificent face with medal features, delightfully disfigured by a deep scar. It was an age when the scars obtained in battles and fights seduced women. People in that century died from wounds much more often than from miserable old age ... The last century, when they won by personal courage.

“To get everything, you must risk everything” is the favorite slogan of the century.

The path from the huts to the palaces was short, and from the palaces to the scaffold even shorter. I really love watching this scene. Your Russian chancellor old man Osterman, sentenced to death, indifferently mounted the scaffold. He calmly took off his wig and somehow neatly, comfortably laid his head on the chopping block. Being pardoned, he got up just as calmly, asked to return the wig, straightened his hair on it, put it on and went into exile in Siberia.

Comte Saint-Germain grew up an orphan and therefore escaped the lies of the then marriage. For marriage at that time was controlled by the parents. These nefarious creatures were obliged to think about profit - financial or about the prestige of the bloodline. And an unfamiliar man was brought to the unfortunate girl who had just left the monastery. In the presence of a notary, the poor thing was announced that this stranger of a noble family was her future husband. Then the wedding and the night when she had to give herself to a complete stranger. On this first night, the groom actually raped a frightened girl who did not love him ... Having done the necessary, he proudly got out of bed in sweat, she remained lying in tears. This is where the marriage began and ended at the same time. As Prince Lozen said to his young wife: “Honey, we have fulfilled our duties and now we will not interfere with each other!”

Now she dreams of true love, which she read about in all the novels. The young husband pays tribute to the main fashion - he starts hunting for women, falling in love with new and new ones. The only one to whom he will remain indifferent to death is his wife. All she needs is an heir. Having given birth, that is, having fulfilled her duty, she, following her husband, enthusiastically entered into a love whirlwind, where all men wanted to seduce and all women wanted to be seduced ...

Ironically, marriages with old people turned out to be happy. However, the gallant age abolished age. In the days of this fiery age there were no old people, everyone remained young to the grave. Of course, wigs, blush, lace, luxury toilets helped! But the main thing was in the eternally young attitude! Grandmother George Sand explained to her granddaughter: “The revolution brought old age to the world. In my days, I simply did not meet old people ... My husband ... he was sixty-two years old, I was a little over twenty ... he watched his appearance until the last day, he was handsome, gentle, calm, cheerful, amiable, graceful and always perfumed. I rejoiced at his age. I wouldn't be so happy with him if he were young. After all, women more beautiful than me would surely separate him from me ... Now he was only mine! I am convinced that I got the best period of his life. We did not part for a minute, but I was never bored with him. He had many talents. We played a duet on the lute. He was not only an excellent musician, but, as often happened in our century, an artist, a locksmith, a watchmaker, a carpenter, a cook and an architect ... But most importantly, a great lover. He passionately loved my young body with fantasies of great experience. And further. He and his peers knew not only how to live, but also how to die. And if someone had gout, they endured any pain, but they never missed a walk with their beloved. well-mannered people in my time were required to hide their suffering. In any game, they knew how to lose with dignity. They believed that it was better to die dancing at a ball than at home surrounded by lit candles and disgusting people in black clothes. My husband skillfully enjoyed life to the end. But when the time came to part with her, his last words were: “Live long, my dear, love a lot and be happy,” Monsieur Antoine chuckled. – And therefore the destroyed Bastille is the boundary of my love for humanity. Then the time of bloody and - most importantly - boring fanatics begins. A dull, bespectacled Robespierre in a clumsily powdered wig, a white halo of powder always hung over him. Or the fat drunkard Danton, roaring curses at the aristocrats, he always smelled of sweat ... Or the paralyzed freak, the revolutionary judge Couton. In the morning, this spit of nature was taken down the stairs, put in a chair that moved with the help of levers. Moving the levers, he furiously raced his pitiful body through the frightened crowd. He was in a hurry to judge, or rather, to condemn to death the enemies of the revolution ... Yes, the revolution did away with Love and Harmony, making a symbolic sacrifice - the Queen of Gallantry, the Woman with azure eyes, Marie Antoinette. - Here Monsieur Antoine finally stopped and said: - Forgive me for this monologue, it contains the most hated to me - pathos. But Marie Antoinette was an unrequited love ... - he paused and added: - mysterious person in the world - Comte Saint-Germain ...

Monsieur Antoine was impossible to talk to. He spoke in endless monologues, completely not listening to his interlocutor. And his eyes at the same time looked somewhere up, above you. When he finally lowered his eyes and noticed you, there was immense surprise in his eyes: “How are you here? And I, I must admit, forgot about you a little. ”

But then I resolutely escaped from the flow of his words. I said:

“Listen, are you serious? Do you believe in all those tales about Comte Saint-Germain? According to all respectable encyclopedias, the Comte Saint-Germain was only a great swindler, one of the leaders of the golden age of adventurers.

Monsieur Antoine was silent for a long time, then said:

“People cannot bear the burden of the Mystery. She has an unbearable light. Remember. Comte Saint-Germain is the only person on earth after the Lord ... whose presence after death is recorded by many sources.

Immortal

"Have you heard of the Comte Saint-Germain, of whom so many wonderful stories are told?"

A. S. Pushkin. "The Queen of Spades"

- Napoleon III was fascinated, intrigued by all the wonderful things he heard about the Count of Saint-Germain. He instructed his librarian to buy up all the original documents that tell about the life of Saint-Germain, Monsieur Antoine began his next monologue. So there was a huge folder containing a large number of documents. These were the memories of the count's contemporaries (most of them were ladies who loved the count). After the fall of the emperor, the precious folder was transferred to the library of the police prefecture for safekeeping. During the Paris Commune, as it should be in a revolution, the prefecture was set on fire, and the folder was considered burnt ... But as your writer rightly stated, such manuscripts do not burn. It turned out that during the fire the voluminous folder was simply stolen. In 1979, your obedient servant and faithful admirer of the count bought it from a descendant of that thief - a Communard.

As I already said, the folder contained the memoirs of contemporaries and the only manuscript written in the count's calligraphic handwriting - two hundred pages of his translations of Dante and Horace in German and French. But I have learned well the habits of the Comte Saint-Germain. I treated the first page with a special solution of onion juice and blue vitriol. Then he lit a candle and gently heated the page... And the blue letters of sympathetic ink appeared between the lines... These were the secret "Notes of Count Saint-Germain"! They began with an appeal to the future reader ... 1979! Yes, there was this date! And “the most humble request to read the Notes, but not to publish” ... Unfortunately, these Notes are very evasive about what is still the subject of disputes among historians: about the mysterious origin of the count. The count calls himself the son of Prince Ferenc Rakoczi, the ruler of Transylvania, and that's all ... Meanwhile, there are still many legends about this prince and, most importantly, about the mother of the count. I will tell you, perhaps, the most famous. Prince Rakoczy, as a true Magyar, called all women "a warrior's rest." He believed that a real wife should have three qualities: to be beautiful, to be obedient and to be silent. He found such a woman - the daughter of the noblest Polish count 3rd. She was fabulously pretty, perfectly obedient and surprisingly silent. She bore him a charming boy who inherited her beauty. I won't tell the whole story in detail. I will only say briefly that some time after the birth of a child, young princely servants began to be found with teeth marks on their throats and sucked blood. The prince never slept well. Therefore, before going to bed, a caring wife usually prepared a herbal drink for him at night according to her recipe. After him, the prince fell asleep with a deep sleep of the baby and woke up completely rested, full of strength. But the murdered servants disturbed the prince... Further, you guessed it... One day the prince replaced the drink prepared by his wife. He was awake next to his wife, pretending to be asleep. In the middle of the night his wife left the bed. The prince followed her... He found her in the park... His beloved servant... Until his death, the prince remembered his wife's upturned face distorted by lust. Then the sparkling eyes approached the eyes of the unfortunate servant, she laughed, her teeth sank into her neck ... The angel turned into a voluptuous witch. The prince killed both. Opening her clenched mouth with a dagger, he saw two neat little fangs and understood the reason for her amazing silence. The prince himself buried her with all the rites. He drove, as expected, a Judas tree - an aspen stake - into her grave. To prevent the vampire from resurrecting. I think it's nothing more than a tasteless gothic legend. The Notes only says that the mother of Saint-Germain, the first wife of Prince Rakoczi, died quite young. Immediately after the sudden death of his wife, the prince for some reason did not want his son to live with him, in his palace. He gave the boy to the care of his friend, the last of the Medici dukes. "Notes" very sparingly tell the details of his childhood. The count writes that his father, Prince Rakoczi, fought all his life for the independence of his principality. In the end (this happened after the death of the count's mother), the prince lost the decisive battle, the Austrians seized his possessions. The prince could not bear the bitterness of defeat and soon died. After the death of his father, young Saint-Germain was brought up by the Duke of Medici, who gave him an excellent education ... Interestingly, Count Saint-Germain never called himself Prince Rakoczy. After becoming a Freemason, he often called himself Sanctus Germano - Holy Brother. And gradually began to introduce himself by this name. However, as it should be in that century, he had a dozen more names under which he traveled. More precisely, he lived on the road, for the count traveled all his life. And everywhere he did without an interpreter. Like your humble servant, the count knew many languages, including several that have disappeared. For example, the language of ancient Babylon. At the age of twenty, he undertook a far and long journey. He went to Persia, lived at the court of Nadir Shah, and this is told in the Notes, then there was India, then two and a half years in the Himalayas, from there he went to Tibet ... And after these mysterious places, the count found himself at the Austrian court - in the capital his father's enemies. Emperor Franz Stefan was wary of the son of his late enemy. But his wife, the great Austrian Empress Maria Theresa, appreciated the count. And he immediately took a special and high position at the Austrian court. His best friend Prince Ferdinand Lobkowitz became Prime Minister of Emperor Franz. It was said at court that certain Tibetan rites, which he taught Ferdinand, saved the terminally ill prince from death.

In 1755, the count was in Vienna, when Maria Theresa gave birth to a girl, Marie Antoinette, on the first floor of the Hofburg Palace.

It was her fifteenth child! The empress gave birth to eleven girls and four boys. In Paris, princes of the blood and the most noble courtiers were present at the birth of queens; in Vienna, Maria Theresa abolished this privilege. Fifteen times to give birth "in the presence" - this cannot be sustained. Now everyone dutifully waited in the Hall of Mirrors of the palace for reports of the sacrament that took place in the bedroom. The Comte Saint-Germain was among them.

The emperor left the bedroom of the woman in labor and announced the happy birth of the girl. The crowd of courtiers applauded. After that, the emperor invited the Empress ... Count Saint-Germain!

The count went into the bedroom where the empress lay. There was no newborn, she was taken to the nurse. Instead of a child, Maria Theresa brought papers. The great ruler, having given birth, immediately took up state affairs. Continuing to sign, she turned to the count:

- I heard, count, you are successfully engaged in predictions?

The most amazing thing - I ... saw! .. This time there was no tunnel ... It just floated from the wall towards me ... the fat, middle-aged face of a woman with a double chin on a huge snow-white pillow ... Then a piece of wall with a picture appeared above her face - a deer stood among the trees ... I saw: the picture was made of semi-precious stones... Then the wall moved away... and I saw a woman lying on a bed in an alcove... and a purple curtain of the alcove. And blocking the bed, a male figure stood with his back to me.

- Count Saint-Germain was silent for a long time, then he said: “Your daughter will forever remain in History. Allow me, Your Majesty, to confine myself to this answer to your question.

At that moment, I glanced absently at the portrait on the wall. I swear, the Comte Saint-Germain in the portrait ... smiled! And his hand, cut off by the frame, slowly rose from behind the frame... it was... gloved. And then I clearly saw how similar they are: Monsieur Antoine Saint-Germain and Saint-Germain in the picture. The wig and camisole prevented me from understanding this at once. I felt… fear!

“I beg you, do not invent some simple-hearted mystical stupidity,” Monsieur Antoine laughed. “It’s just that the Count is my hero. And I gradually became like him ... with delight ... This is the eternal resemblance of a dog that adores its owner, nothing more ... Yes, and we are similar ... not too much.

And I looked at the picture again. The hand of the portrait was in place... And the image behaved decently: it ceremoniously looked into the distance with blind eyes. I realized that I really liked all this. However, the similarity, of course, was, but not frightening. I've calmed down!

And Monsieur Antoine, still looking at me mockingly, continued:

- Your fellow scientists write: “Rumors about the influence of the count on the affairs of powerful Austria reached Paris, and Louis XV decided to lure the mysterious count. And invited him to come to Paris.” In fact, the acquaintance of the king and the count of Saint-Germain began with their secret correspondence, more precisely, with the most delicate letter from the count to the king.

"Everything is forbidden except pleasure"

- Comte Saint-Germain in his "Notes" very jokingly spoke about the reasons for this first, fateful letter.

Louis XV is the true king of the gallant century, not without reason he was known as the most beautiful monarch in Europe. He was five years old when the Sun King, the great Louis XIV, died, and the child became the thirty-second King of France. His uncle, Duke Philippe of Orleans, became regent for the child king. The Duke of Love is how the duke should rightly be called. It was under him that the apotheosis of the gallant age came, about which the duke himself said: "Everything is forbidden except Pleasure." And he knew how to enjoy, this incomparable inventor of the most varied love experiments, dangerous delights described in the writings of the Marquis de Sade. Enjoyed everything and everywhere - in palaces, in huts and even in monasteries, reminiscent of merry brothels. This Duke of Love explained to a cousin who had decided to have her hair cut and become an abbess: “It's not so stupid, dear! You will take a vow of poverty, but you will be incredibly rich, you will take a vow of obedience, but you will command, you will take a vow of celibacy, but you will have as many secret husbands as you want. got stuck in Paris. For example, the deification of the female breast. As the duke admirably said: "This is the cape of bliss, to which the lips and hands of every true man should immediately rush." The kiss on the bare chest in front of the duke has become as common in Paris as the handshake is now. And when the girl refused to unbutton her bodice, they immediately said about her: “The poor thing must have a board!” Suspecting the most shameful thing for the ladies of that time - a flat chest. The Duke liked to repeat: "A man loves how he kisses." By order of the duke, a detailed treatise on kisses was published - on their meaning, features and history. The most ordinary, I would say, on duty was considered a “wet kiss”, which informed the lady that the gentleman was overwhelmed with desires. Much more elegant was " French Kiss”, in which it was necessary to skillfully and for a long time connect - caress with tongues. The “Florentine” kiss was even more difficult ... Furiously, passionately clinging lips, do not forget to sweetly and gently pinch the ears of your beloved ... The following was a description of another 117 types of kisses ... By order of the Duke, the main science of his time was developed - the science of flirting for ladies ... These were scientific research how to take the most inviting pose on the sofa, how to be able to bend seductively while straightening the wood in the fireplace, and so on. It was under the duke that it became fashionable to receive admirers during the toilet, half-dressed, sitting in front of a mirror. As the Duke, that great strategist of Love, taught: "If your eyes are captured by beauty, your lips and hands must immediately begin to act." Indeed, how convenient these morning receptions were, so that he immediately went on the attack, and she fell victim to the attack ... Having sent the maid out of the room, she asks the gentleman to help fasten the naughty hook ... And now: “What are you doing ... Oh heaven! Oh my hairstyle! ”... To facilitate the success of the attack, they began to take admirers lying in the bathroom, with charms covered with a thin sheet ... It was under him, under the Duke of Love, that the famous petit maison began to be built. They were called "follies" (folies). It was a charming play on words: folies ("madness") with the Latin sud folliis, meaning "under the leaves." For these houses of love madness hid in the vicinity of the capital in the shade of trees, under dense foliage. The Comte Saint-Germain was invited to the famous petit maison of Cardinal Rohan. He was the first to describe the walls of the famous house, where convex figures demonstrated all kinds of pleasures. The invited ladies in lorgnette had to study them ... before moving to the bedrooms - to repeat. However, as Count Saint-Germain used to say, "the Duke of Orleans forgot the terrible warning of the apostle:" Everything is permissible, but not everything is permissible "". The poor man became a victim of Pleasures - he literally rotted from bad diseases ... But, even dying in agony, this Palladin of Love stubbornly called his illnesses “just thorns on the body beautiful roses and "deserved wounds of great love battles."

But the young king, who was growing up, saw the terrible end of the unfortunate knight of Love, who had rotted alive... And he was filled with horror. But as soon as the eyes of the mad regent were closed, the good people of France demanded love exploits from the new ruler - the young king. Comte Saint-Germain rightly noted that the amorous exploits of kings revived in the French people the ancient sense of Security. For even in ancient times it was believed: the more loving the leader of the tribe, the more fruitful the land became, the richer the crops and the happier the people were ... wife, a revolutionary situation immediately arose in the country! But let us return, my friend, to the young Louis XV, who did not make this mistake. He was very young when his first mistress appeared in the palace, a stranger under a thick veil. The courtiers did not burn for long with curiosity. The bribed servant of the king, as if out of embarrassment, tore off the lady's veil. What was the disappointment of the court! Under the veil hid Louise de Malli, nee de Neil, a well-known ugly woman. Louise did not wear the veil out of modesty. She rightly feared that, seeing her face, the famous court beauties would immediately rush to the bed of the king. Indeed, all the ladies who became famous for their love affairs immediately tried to seduce young king. But in vain, the young king remained deaf to their attacks ... However, as soon as the ugly virgin was released from the monastery boarding school - Native sister Louise, Ludovic immediately seduced the innocent ugly girl. Then came the turn of the third ugly sister de Neil - Diana ... Sleeping with sisters is very sexy, Count Saint-Germain in "Notes" recalls your great Don Juan Prince Potemkin, who managed to sleep with four of his nieces as they grew up. But your Potemkin's nieces were incomparable beauties. And the ladies of the Neil clan are remarkably bad. So the court beauties were lost in conjecture about the strange tastes of the king. The most incredible versions were born about the special vision of the young Louis XV ... Count Saint-Germain, who heard this whole strange story from French ambassador in Vienna, did not meditate on the mystery. He immediately understood it: frightened by the fate of his uncle, the Duke of Love, poor King Louis was simply afraid to repeat his fate. And that's why he chose excellent ugly women, who, as he naively, in his youth, believed, could not have lovers and, consequently, bad diseases. It was then that the Earl wrote a long letter to His Majesty offering his knowledge. An excellent physician himself, the Count of Saint-Germain sent the ancient Indian tincture of the Maharaja to the king by courier. Created in India, the country of exquisite pleasures of the Kamasutra, it killed any love infection. So Diana of the de Neil family became the last ugly in the bed of Louis XV. And on time! For the indignation of the court beauties of the king became universal. Literally all the ladies of the court prepared to take part in the mass assault on the royal bed. It was then, to the delight of the court, that the king, protected by the count, was able for the first time to choose the most worthy. The delightful Marquise de la Tournel became the first beauty in the royal bed. Ironically, she was from the same de Neil family! But in her person, the de Neil family completely rehabilitated itself.

... But Madame de Tournel will soon have to leave the First Bed of France, for, having gained freedom of desire, the king more and more often pleased his good people with new beauties. Until they all gave way to the most worthy. A radiance lit up, illuminating the whole gallant century! .. Her name was Jeanne-Antoinette d'Etiol.

Jeanne d'Etiol from her youth was preparing to conquer France, like that immortal Jeanne! But if Joan of Arc won glory with a valiant sword, the Marquise won her with the most beautiful body. She entered history under the name of the Marquise de Pompadour. It was at this time, at the invitation of the grateful king, Count Saint-Germain appears in Paris.

His arrival became a sensation. The count was fabulously rich, and the French, as you know, adore and respect wealth. No one knew and still does not know the sources of the count's innumerable fortune. It is only known that he literally shocked the Parisian society with huge expenses and the famous collection of precious stones. Pearls, sapphires and, of course, famous diamonds of rare size and beauty are described by many eyewitnesses. And if the count's knowledge of state security, that is, the security of a royal member, became the beginning of his friendship with Louis, then the other talent of the count made this friendship very close. These were the famous experiments of the count with precious stones, all of Paris flocked to see them ... Although much more often they took place in the presence of one king. It was during this experience that the Count repaired a flaw in Louis' favorite diamond. The king was delighted. Madame du Osse, court lady and another mistress of the count, says in her memoirs: “His Majesty looked with amazement and pleasure at the stone cured by the count. After that, he literally bombarded the count with questions about how he does it. Saint Germain, with his eternal benevolent smile, explained to His Majesty that this was unknown to him. Simply, having seen the imperfection of the stone, he sees it perfect in the next moment! It was as if his eyes were being healed by a stone ... And then he informed His Majesty that he was able to enlarge precious stones and give the desired shine at will. Then, in the presence of the king, he took a handful of small diamonds of approximately twenty-eight carats. He laid them on a special crucible. And, glowing, he created a magnificent diamond ... which, after cutting, turned into the purest water a fourteen-carat stone worth thirty thousand livres. All the transformed diamonds and the newborn stone, His Majesty kept.”

The shocked king invited Saint-Germain to live in royal castle in Chambord in magnificent chambers, where the most famous commander Prince Maurice of Saxony used to live. The king ordered that a workshop be set up in Chambord for the count's unprecedented chemical experiments. He gave him a generous pension of one hundred and twenty thousand livres, which the count spent entirely on his research. The rest was generously distributed to the servants who served during the experiments.

Monsieur Antoine rang the bell. The same faceless young man silently wheeled in a small table and silently left. On the table lay something covered with velvet. Monsieur Antoine slowly lifted the velvet with a frightening hand in a black glove, as if in a sacred ceremony ... Under it were two large mahogany caskets. With a lofty gesture of a conjurer, he opened the first one... An improbable sapphire the size of a chicken egg lay on red velvet, next to it a diamond of marvelous beauty shimmered. Monsieur Antoine's black glove hung over the diamond in the box...

- This stone is one of the ones created by the Count in Paris. It was sold to me by the descendants of Madame Osse. The Count gave her the stone after their first night. How many years have I hunted him. Touch... touch. You want to touch!.. Be bolder! Go ahead, pick up the divine stones!

I took the diamond. I have never held such a stone in my hands.

“It is a very rare diamond of this size that has no blood on it,” said Monsieur Antoine. “Usually, there is a chain of crimes behind each such large stone. Moreover, after each murder, the diamond begins to play with a new brilliance ... human blood changes the light that lives in the stone ... And one more thing. Favorite things store the electric field of their owners. And when you touch them... you connect with them, with the departed, who gave them the warmth of their hands. At this moment, you caught the departed rulers hiding from us in nature ... You just need to be able to touch things. Don't do it primitively... Touching doesn't mean only touching. On the contrary, having touched, immediately remove your hand, slowly raise it and hold your hand over the object, as if over fire. Try to catch, feel the warmth coming from the stone. In the bird language of our age, at this moment there is a connection between two computers. And there is a path THERE. The most exciting of the Games begins. Playing with Time.

The Count was endowed with the secret of Time. He was a great artist, by the way, it was he who invented luminous paints ... An invention that they are trying to attribute to someone else. But he himself could not admire the painting - neither his own nor someone else's. When he looked at the picture, it immediately disintegrated for him into strokes, which the artist, moment by moment, superimposed on the canvas. The Count, looking at the canvas, saw Time... But let's go back to Paris!

Very little time had passed after the appearance of the count in Paris, and already Frederick the Great wrote in a letter with amazement: “A new political phenomenon has appeared in Paris. This man is known as the Count of Saint-Germain. He is in the service of the French king and is in his great favor.

They often talked for a long time, count and king, while the courtiers languished in the reception room, propping up the walls of the Oval Room.

Now all the famous nobles considered it an honor to invite a friend of the king to dinner. But, as Casanova, who envied and hated Count Saint-Germain, wrote, to the amazement of those present, the Count ate almost nothing during these dinners. Yes, he had a special diet. Instead of eating, he talked. These stories of Saint-Germain were, as a rule, about events famous, but long gone. His stories were as mysterious as his chemical experiments. For the count, talking about the past, sometimes forgot ... as sometimes I, your obedient servant ... And told ... in the present tense! As if he had been there recently ... The thing is that the Count of Saint-Germain, like your humble servant, saw what he was telling. It had an effect on the listeners. The Count wrote mockingly in one of his letters: “Hearing me describe the past, dear Parisians believe that I am a thousand years old and I have been in it! I am in no hurry to dissuade them, because they are so eager to believe that someone can live much longer than established by inexorable nature.

The count was also a great composer. Usually, when talking with guests, he sat down at the harpsichord ... and, continuing the conversation, began to improvise. It was as if he was recording his conversation with music for Eternity.

Queen of Spades

And Monsieur Antoine sat down at the harpsichord...

- a few left musical compositions composed by the Count himself. By the way, one bound in red leather has been preserved in the collection of your great Tchaikovsky, who appreciated his music.

I finally asked him:

- Why "your"? Are you not Russian?

“I have no honor,” he said hurriedly and added, without giving me the opportunity to ask the next question (how many times I wanted to find out who he was, but each time for some reason put off asking): “This is the work of the earl on the verses of the Scot Hamilton O, wouldst thou know what sacred charms ("Oh, would you know sacred charms"). - And Monsieur Antoine began to play and softly, very melodiously sang in English, but immediately interrupted the singing and said: - It was after the performance of this romance that conversation took place. Your Pushkin described this story in The Queen of Spades… This story really happened. And the card loss, and the three cards reported to the rescue, were! But all this happened by no means with a Russian lady, invented by your great poet, but with another beauty, however, who also had direct relationship to your homeland ... At that time, among the closest friends of the count was the princess of Anhalt-Zerbst who was visiting Paris! Yes, mother of your future empress great Catherine. And after the performance of this romance, Count Saint-Germain noticed something unusual. Beauty, who used to be noisily admiring his music, this time listened absent-mindedly and was unusually pale. They retired, and she told him about her grief. Pretty woman adored cards and in Once again lost to smithereens. Her husband was not rich. The prince served under Frederick the Great as an ordinary commandant of Stettin. Unfortunately, this was, alas, not her first loss in Paris. And the husband rebelled, flatly refused to pay. All she had to do was pawn her favorite diamond necklace. But it did not pull the right amount. In short, she asked the count for a loan.

And Monsieur Antoine stopped playing. He leaned back in his chair. And... how his face changed!

Yes, I asked for a loan.

And I… I… saw!.. She was sitting in an armchair, fanning herself with a fan. I saw a handkerchief covering a high chest ... peacock feathers of a fan covering her face ... The golden handle of a fan shone in the candles ... He was sitting next to her. His hand found hers. And somewhere far away the sound of a male voice was heard, and ...

And immediately everything disappeared. Monsieur Antoine sat back in his chair.

He said:

- In response, the Count of Saint-Germain said to her: “I love you. I am ready to give you not only a miserable amount, but my life in addition. However, if I give money, I will do the worst service. For you will act like all crazy players. Instead of repaying the debt, immediately rush to play again ... and, believe me, you will lose. So I'll do it differently."

As he writes in Notes, the count revealed to her three winning cards. But he explained: these cards can only be won once and only while he is in the gambling hall ... But as soon as she wins back, the count will leave, and she must follow him. “And then I will take an oath from you never to play again,” the count finished. She threw herself on his neck. On the same evening, she won back and took an oath. She never played again! Years passed, but the count did not forget his beloved... He remembered them all... Believe me, it was not easy... if you know how many years he lived and how many ladies loved him. The count corresponded frequently with the princess. I keep one of her letters to him. In it, Catherine's mother tells the count the message of her daughter, who by that time had become the wife of the heir to the throne. Young Catherine fearfully describes to her mother a seizure that happened to Empress Elizabeth.

My God, how I waited to see again now ... but nothing! I saw only Monsieur Antoine, who spoke in detail and boringly:

- It happened in the church in Peterhof ... During the mass, the Russian Empress Elizabeth became ill, and she left the church ... She took a few steps and fell on the grass. The retinue remained in the church, and the unfortunate empress lay unconscious and without any help, surrounded by frightened peasants. Finally, the courtiers appeared, brought a screen and a sofa. A doctor came running, they bled ... And on a sofa they carried the empress to the palace. This time they were leaving her… But now Catherine was afraid of the imminent death of the empress, her husband's hatred and the threat of being tonsured into a monastery when he became emperor. She wrote to her mother about all this. And then Count Saint-Germain asked me to tell Catherine the following: she does not need to be afraid of anything. Already in the summer of next year, the decisive hour for her will come, and at that time he himself will appear in Russia.

deer park fairies

“And he will indeed appear as predicted. But more on that later. And then in Paris came the heyday - the apogee of the power of the Marquise de Pompadour. The Count called her the Incomparable. The incomparable took possession not only of the royal bed, but also of the heart of the king. The marquise interfered in politics, patronized the arts, science ... and the Comte Saint-Germain. She became a frequent guest at his experiments at the Château de Chambord. It must be said that the count greatly expanded the collection of diamonds of the Incomparable. But the years passed, the marquise did not grow younger, and new fighters appeared at the court, fully armed with victorious youth. Their daring attacks on His Majesty's bed began.

And one day Madame de Pompadour called Saint-Germain to her. She received the count lying in the bath. This bathroom is still in Versailles. I sometimes go there ... to touch the bath and her other things ... They whisper ... “So ...” - the Marquise said with a sigh to Saint-Germain ...

Here Monsieur Antoine stopped.

– Do you already see? Is not it?

I saw! .. She was reclining on a sofa in a magnificent dress. A tiny foot in a purple shoe was visible. Nearby stood an armchair upholstered in tapestry - a shepherd and a shepherdess kissing. She smiled and spoke ... And, as always, at the sound of a voice, everything disappeared.

“You failed to enter THERE. Your brain has deceived you. He simply showed you the familiar ceremonial portrait of Madame de Pompadour. Too bad you couldn't see her real face then. Inexorable time crept up to the beauty and drew ... treacherous lines near her eyes. But she decided to fight. That morning, she said to the count: “How a merciless luminary shines through the window ... Not so long ago I adored its rays ... they caressed, but now they give out. Today I can still receive you during the day, illuminated by the sun. But, alas, tomorrow…” And she humbly asked Saint-Germain for the elixir of immortality. Such were the rumors about the power of the count! The count explained to her that he did not have one: “This is all idle gossip. Even the Greek gods did not possess it, even they died. True, after a thousand years, but still obeyed the law of our pitiless Nature. Although in the forests of Hellas sometimes a trumpet is heard for a moment of the resurrected Pan ... and then the gods on Olympus wake up. But also only for a moment. You are so beautiful, madam, that I, your faithful servant and adorer, am simply obliged to send you something, at least like an elixir. This is an ancient ointment created in Tibet. It will not make your beauty immortal, but it will keep it for a while ... At the same time, you will have to follow my diet.

The next morning, the Count brought Madame de Pompadour his famous medicinal ointment and his strict dietary rules. The action turned out to be fantastic, the marquise returned to her twenty years ... However, the count could no longer protect her for a long time. For the marquise at that time made a fatal decision.

At the same time, our Comte Saint-Germain often performed political assignments the marquise and the king ... The maid of honor of Marie Antoinette, Countess d'Adhémar, another beloved of the count, recalls in her memoirs: “I was then a very young maid of honor, without memory in love with the count. I remember that often during the long audience of the count with the king (usually the marquise was also present), I would wait for the count, walking around the halls. But the count quickly left the king's office. All he had time to do was shake my hand passionately. He jumped into the carriage waiting for him at the palace and rushed to the border. Analyzing the list of capitals that Saint-Germain visited in one trip, I have to note: the speed with which the count moved looks implausible. He seemed to be moving his body from city to city. It was then that the Count of Saint-Germain successfully carried out a number of the most secret diplomatic missions of the king. In particular, he persuaded the Turks to start a war with your Catherine.

During these absences of the count, the same insane fear of contracting a bad disease took possession of the king. But to leave love amusements was beyond his strength. It was enough for him to look behind a lady's corsage or see a woman's leg on a swing, as this unfortunate (or very happy) literally burned. But he was used to extinguishing the flame immediately. "The impulse does not endure a break" - was his favorite saying.

And then the faithful Madame de Pompadour figured out how to combine the constant desire of this Martyr of Love with his security. Virgins!.. They are not only guaranteed to be safe, but these barely blossoming roses were supposed to support the fire in, alas, the cooling blood of the aged monarch. The Marquise herself looked for these young mistresses for him, like your Potemkin - young lovers for your aging Catherine. So they both came up with the idea of ​​maintaining their influence in the royal bed they had abandoned.

Deer park - old name remote quarter in Versailles. It was created on the site of an ancient forest park, where deer once lived in abundance. Here, in Deer Park, several charming petite maisons for the king's folly were hastily built ... Several thirteen-year-old fairies settled in these houses. Louis visited them incognito, under the name of a gentleman from the retinue of the Polish king. The shadows of deer - the former horned inhabitants of this place - gave rise to many jokes. However, not only Madame Pompadour, this great Muse of all the then poets of France, was a royal pimp ... The fathers of young fairies became pimps with pleasure and voluntarily.

Here is what an old warrior wrote to Louis, having learned about the royal harem ... I held this letter in my hands, but the owner did not agree to sell it to me. Now it is kept in the Paris Archives.

“Driven by an ardent love for the royal person, I have the honor to be the father of a lovely girl, a real miracle of Freshness, Beauty and Health. I would be happy if His Majesty would deign to violate her virginity. Such a favor would be my reward for my long and faithful service in the king's army."

Unlike the famous court mistresses of the king, the gentle inhabitants of the Deer Park remained nameless. Their inexperience, long fuss with deprivation of virginity, tears, pains and fears irritated the monarch. So a bitten fruit was rarely served to the royal table a second time. Yesterday's chosen ones of the king were usually quickly given in marriage, and the caring king provided a dowry. Perhaps only one was honored with repeated visits to the king - the Irish O'Murphy.

She was thirteen when Casanova found her. Sister-actress traded her virginity. When Casanova washed the beggar girl, he realized that he was not mistaken. She had a divine body and a delightful face. But, as this cheerful libertine often used to say, “love, like war, must feed itself” ... So he immediately intended to sell her for a royal bed. At night, Casanova devoted her to the subtleties of love, leaving the main prize untouched. He could not slip a bitten apple into crowned Adam ... Subsequently, artists painted it a lot. Boucher immortalized her naked body: she lies on her stomach, flaunting an incomparable ass, a pose that drove men crazy. One of these portraits Casanova sent to the king. And immediately the young charmer found herself in the Deer Park. When the little one first saw Louis, she ... burst out laughing. The bewildered king asked:

- Why are you laughing?

“Because you are like two drops of water a six-franc ecu!”

The simple-hearted O'Murphy remembered this coin with the image of the king well - she received it after every night with Casanova ...

So she immediately exposed the royal incognito. But soon the fool grew bolder and became impudent. As a blooming youth, she somehow mercilessly asked the monarch:

“How are your old ladies, sire?”

- Who are you talking about? the king was surprised.

“About Her Majesty and your Marchioness.

The king silently left the room. O'Murphy was sent out of Deer Park the same day. The king deeply respected his wife, He loved the incomparable marquise. He removed her from the bed, but not from the heart. But the Incomparable indeed began to age rapidly. Rubbing stopped helping. For, having become a matchmaker, the Incomparable became disgusting to herself. Now, by her order, all the mirrors in her rooms at Versailles were carefully hung with black cloth. Called to help, Saint-Germain announced with a sigh that, alas, he could do nothing, because her soul had grown old! Madame de Pompadour understood the verdict ... She preferred to hurry. She was found dead among the mourning mirrors. At court, everyone was sure that the marquise died from poison. In fact, she just managed to fall asleep... for good. How to get such a beneficial dream? Count Saint-Germain taught her this.

It was pouring rain that day. The count arrived at the palace immediately after the marquise had closed her eyes. But, according to etiquette, a dead body could not remain in the royal palace ... So, hastily covering it with a sheet, they carried it away from the palace. Yesterday's uncrowned Queen of France, whose benevolent gaze was caught by the princes of the blood, whose beauty poets sang, was hastily carried away like a dead dog. Only Comte Saint-Germain followed the stretcher. The once wet sheet in the bathroom hugged her perfect body. And now, in the pouring rain, the sheet outlined her dead flesh in the same way. The king, standing at the window, followed the litter with his eyes, familiar body and the count following him. And he even waved his handkerchief after him. "That's all I could do for her," Ludovic sighed. He tried to forget the marquise. The gallant king hated to think about trouble, he believed that wrinkles appeared from this. The only one who took care to order a mass for the uncrowned queen of France was the crowned queen - Her Majesty Maria Leshchinskaya.

Intrigue in the gallant age

- After the death of Madame Pompadour Saint-Germain was left without the main patroness. Of course, a powerful enemy immediately showed up. The king's first minister, the Duke of Choiseul, always acted in alliance with Madame de Pompadour. And while the uncrowned queen was alive, the first minister was the kindest acquaintance of Saint Germain. He good-naturedly put up with the dangerous proximity of the count to the king, with the diplomatic missions of the king, which Saint-Germain carried out without consulting the first minister. But immediately after the death of the Marquise Choiseul began to act. At first he convinced the king that the earl was England's most dangerous spy. But the brilliance of the diamonds created by the count overshadowed the naive intrigue.

And Choiseul came up with a truly wise move. The most shameful thing for the frivolous French is to become ridiculous. Choiseul hired a certain actor who knew how to perfectly imitate voices.

Here Monsieur Antoine's heavy eyelids opened, and a fire flared in his icy eyes, and he said with amazing hatred:

“That vile comedian, that contemptible buffoon, dared to walk around the salons of Paris, posing as Saint Germain. Those who did not know the count with laughter took the stories of the amusing scoundrel at face value. He quickly turned the count's monologues into a caricature - his travels into the past ... In the count's voice, the despicable jester declared: “How, how, Jesus and I were very close. But he was too romantic and was very fond of exaggerating. As I now hear, he tells this amusing story about seven loaves, with which he allegedly fed thousands. I already warned him then that with such inventions he would certainly end badly ... ”To this day, historians believe that the influence of the count was ruined by this intrigue of the duke. In fact, all the duke's tricks were in vain. Saint Germain's relationship with the king was ruined by a certain conversation. This conversation concerned the fate of the strangest, most mysterious prisoner in the history of the Bastille. His fate haunts me for a long time. That is why I came to Paris ... And now, after a too long playful introduction, we will finally move on to the main thing.

And Monsieur Antoine began to tell.

Iron mask. Introduction to the mystery

- This most famous prisoner of the Bastille died in prison at the very beginning of the 18th century. France was then ruled by the grandfather of Louis XV - the great king Louis XIV. In the rainy November 1703 of the 19th, it was not so usual for Parisians to snow and rain in Paris. On the night of November 20, the cemetery at St. Paul's Church was cordoned off by the royal guards. A cart with a rich coffin drove up, accompanied by guards. This coffin was brought from the Bastille. They put him in a previously dug hole, hastily buried him, without placing any tombstone over him. The burial was personally commanded by the then governor of the Bastille, Mr. Saint-Mar.

Soon a very knowledgeable person, the widow of the brother of Louis XIV, Princess Charlotte of the Palatinate, reported in a letter to her aunt, the Duchess of Hanover, that a very strange prisoner had died in the Bastille. The prisoner wore a mask over his face. Under fear of merciless punishment, it was impossible even to speak with him to the jailers who served in the Bastille ... Charlotte wrote that she first heard about the masked prisoner several years before his death. Even then, descriptions of the mysterious prisoner were circulating in the palace, making the hearts of the court ladies beat ... They said that he was superbly built, he had beautiful curls, black, with abundant silver gray hair. He wore lace, a magnificent doublet, and the most exquisite food was delivered to his cell. And it was as if the then governor of the Bastille, Mr. Saint-Mar, served him during the meal.

Charlotte's husband the Duke of Orleans (father of the Duke of Love) was then still alive. And at the request of Charlotte, he visited the Bastille ... But when he tried to find out from the governor of the Bastille, Saint-Mar, about his prisoner, he only silently bowed to the brother of the king. Then he said that he had no right to talk about this subject. The curiosity of his wife sent the Duke of Orleans to the king. But when he asked his brother about the prisoner, Louis XIV frowned and immediately deliberately rudely interrupted the conversation.

Throughout the 18th century, people talked and argued about the mask in all European courts. The Austrian Princess Marie Antoinette, who married the Dauphine, inquired about this secret from her husband just a few days after her arrival in France. She demanded that he speak to the king about the prisoner.

Marie Antoinette was sixteen years old when Saint Germain, who had once been present at her birth, saw her again in Paris. She had magnificent ash-blond hair, azure eyes of a naiad, a sensual, slightly protruding lower lip of the Habsburgs, a thin aquiline nose, and unusually white skin. She moved with a kind of feline grace, her tender chest voice and lovely laugh moved. Antoinette's husband is the heir to the throne... The Dauphin narrowed his watery blue eyes short-sightedly. He was fat and extremely clumsy. They were strikingly mismatched—Grace and Borov.

A week after her arrival in Paris, the clumsy husband, fulfilling the request of his wife, went to his grandfather the king to ask about the mysterious prisoner.

Louis XV immediately cut off the Dauphin's questions. He shrugged his shoulders in displeasure, said briefly: “I'm tired of explaining myself about this. I once told your late father that there is no secret... He was not a very distinguished man, but, unfortunately, he knew too many state secrets. And that's it!" The king asked the Dauphin never to ask him about it again ... But Antoinette did not believe it. It was then that she decided to seek help from the all-knowing Count Saint-Germain. Like Madame Pompadour, she used his makeup. During the count's next visit to the palace, she asked him to find out about the prisoner. However, the ladies then did not ask, they ordered. The count hastened to carry out the order. He writes in "Notes" how he then met with a descendant of the governor of the Bastille, Saint-Mar, "a man who knew the secret."

Monsieur Saint-Mar, before becoming commandant of several prisons where the most important state criminals were imprisoned, began his career as a musketeer serving in a company under Charles de Batz de Castelmaur, famous in Dumas' Three Musketeers under the name of d'Artagnan.

Musketeer Saint-Mar

“It was he, the former musketeer Saint-Mar, who was entrusted with the mysterious prisoner. For three decades, Saint-Mar was with him, transporting the mysterious prisoner to new and new prisons ... He himself served during meals, guarded him day and night, and finally came up with the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bputting on him an ill-fated mask. As I said, the mask was never made of iron. It was made of the most delicate thin black velvet and was fastened to the face with special fasteners that opened before eating. Soon after the death of the mysterious prisoner, Saint-Mar also went to the Lord.

So, the count met with the son of Saint-Mar. But it turned out that he did not know anything ... although he tried many times to find out the secret. The father never allowed either him or his sister to visit the cell where the mysterious prisoner sat.

He saw the prisoner himself only once, in the Bastille, when, at the request of his mother, he had to convey something to his father. He was waiting for his father outside the door of the cell where the prisoner was sitting. Father came out, and for a moment through open door he saw a man sitting at the table. The man was wearing a black mask that covered his entire face. The father sternly interrupted all inquiries about the prisoner. Even being on his deathbed, Saint-Mar remained inexorable. Despite the pleas of his son, he did not reveal the secret ... He only said: "The oath on the Bible, which I gave to my king, is sacred."

The only thing that the Comte Saint-Germain learned after talking with the son of Saint-Mars was exact location where the prisoner's grave was.

The count went to the church of Saint-Paul. He spent the whole day at the grave.

In his "Notes" this is said very briefly ... However, much later, the count made an interesting entry. He writes that “the dead continue to “live” for a long time, or rather, their consciousness lives (if we use our primitive earthly concepts), despite the ongoing process of decomposition of the body. Moreover, for those people who did not prepare for death, whose life was interrupted violently and suddenly ... this “life in the coffin” takes place for quite a long time ... In their minds they continue to live and even fulfill what was interrupted by the murder. What does this record of the count have to do with his visit to the grave, we can only guess. But only one thing is known for certain: having returned from the cemetery, the count shut himself up in his house near the Luxembourg Palace, - here Monsieur Antoine lowered his voice. - He arranged the Masonic symbols on the table and spent two days in the office.

It got dark outside the window. The lanterns were lit in the square. The same servant brought a bronze candelabrum, placed it on the harpsichord and lit the candles. In their flickering light, Monsieur Antoine's face became unsteady ... I felt more and more that I was dreaming all this! But he continued to speak in a hollow voice:

The frightened Antoinette told her husband about the curse. The Dauphin, such a sweet, amorphous calf, reassured her. But she demanded that he speak with the king again and finally find out the truth about who this formidable prisoner was. But the main thing is why he cursed the family. The Dauphin spoke to the king again. He spoke ingenuously about Saint Germain's visit and about the curse. But again, the Dauphin could not ask his grandfather about who this Iron Mask was. The king was suddenly furious. He interrupted him and ordered the Dauphin "never again to start a conversation about the prisoner ... and immediately stop receiving the scoundrel Comte Saint-Germain." What Minister Choiseul was unable to do with his denunciations happened in an instant.

After the departure of the Dauphin, the king immediately summoned the Duke of Choiseul. He asked him to reiterate the evidence that the Comte Saint-Germain was a spy and a heretic. When Choiseul had just begun to speak, the king interrupted him impatiently. “I wholeheartedly agree with you,” Ludovic said. And he ordered that an order be drawn up for the immediate arrest of Count Saint-Germain. It was ordered in the morning without trial or investigation to send the count to the Bastille. Galactic Calendar for 06/16/2013 Spirituality Lesson

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The trendsetter of the Rococo era, the first female prime minister, the Marquise de Pompadour, was born in France at the end of 1721. The little girl at birth was named Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson. She was of low origin: her father, Francois Poisson, served as a lackey, and when he went bankrupt, he was forced to flee to Germany so as not to be hanged. The girl's mother, Louise Madeleine, who was known for her beauty and feminine charm, quickly found a guardian for the children in the person of the syndic Lenormand de Tournhem.

The financier treated so carefully adopted daughter that others had doubts about the true origin of Jeannette. He provided the girl with an excellent education for those times: she studied singing, drawing, dancing and manners. At the age of nine, Jeannette was taken to the salon to the fortune-teller Mrs. Lebon, who uttered a prophecy that influenced the girl's biography. Madame Le Bon announced that Jeanne was destined to become the king's favorite. Since then, this destination has become a girl's dream.

Personal life

At the age of 19, Jeanne Antoinette married, at the urging of her stepfather, his nephew Charles Guillaume. He was not much older than the girl, but he inherited a decent fortune. After the wedding in the church of St. Eustathius, the newlyweds moved to Etiol, the husband's family castle, which was located near Versailles. Three years later, the first-born appeared in the family - the daughter of Alexandrina, who soon died. The same fate awaited all the other children of the couple: they died in infancy. It is not known whether this fact upset Jeannette or not - she was all absorbed in the fulfillment of her dream.

The favorable location of Madame d'Etiol's estate played into her hands in achieving her goal. Often Louis XV passed by their house, and young Jeannette at these moments tried to get closer to the road so that the king could admire her beauty. Once, during a thunderstorm, the returning heir to the throne even paid a visit to the castle of the couple d'Etiol. As a token of gratitude for the hospitality shown by the owner of the house, Louis gave him the horns of a freshly killed deer, which turned out to be very symbolic.

But all attempts to meet Jeanne ended in failure. Even her daily promenade in charming outfits through the Senar forest, which she arranged in the hope of seeing the king hunting, ended in failure: she was noticed by the permanent favorite of Louis, the Duchess de Châteauroux. The lady had a sharp temper and mercilessly cracked down on all rivals. Therefore, Jeannette had to stop her attempts so that no trouble would happen.

But luck ultimately turned out to be on the side of Madame d'Etiol. The previous mistress died suddenly from a complication of pneumonia, and her place was vacant. The opportunity presented itself to see the king in person. A yew masquerade ball was announced, which took place in the Paris City Hall in connection with the wedding of the heir and the Spanish princess Maria Theresa. Jeannette, taking advantage of her status, boldly went to meet fate.

All participants of the event were wearing masks, including Ludovic. Jeannette chose the costume of Diana the Huntress. A talented girl adjusts everything in such a way as to find herself opposite the king as often as possible and thereby intrigue him. He tried several times to see her face, but Zhanna played for time until the last moment. When, finally, the mask was removed, the inflamed Louis was delighted with the beauty of the stranger. On the same evening, their first joint dinner took place. In the morning, the king said goodbye to his mistress, believing that it was a one-night stand. The beauty, meekly obeying, left the royal chambers.

This behavior intrigued Louis: before that, none of the girls did this. And he decided to continue the novel. Jeannette acted out her next visit to the royal chambers with all her inherent acting talent. She presented her visit as an escape from the hands of an angry jealous husband, and asked the adored king for protection. Discouraged, Louis XV, seeing the genuine suffering of a woman, granted her patronage. After some time, he bought her the title of Marquise de Pompadour and a castle near Versailles. After that, Jeannette became the official royal favorite.

Louis XV

Louis XV was known as a bored heir to the throne, who did not like to deal with state affairs, so he rarely attended ministerial meetings. His wife was former princess Polish Maria Leshchinskaya. Parents married the Dauphin when he was only 15, and the bride was 22. Over the long years of marriage, about 10 children were born in the royal family, and then doctors forbade the queen to enter into intimacy with a spouse. And Louis XV turned his eyes to the pretty ladies-in-waiting. Only with women did the king feel truly free. His pious wife, showing prudence, did not interfere in her husband's private life. With her usual dignity, she continued to reign on the throne.

If, with her patron, the newly-minted marquise learned to find mutual language, then with the courtiers it turned out to be more difficult. For a long time they did not recognize any rights for her and called her “grisette” disparagingly behind her back. But kind communication with Queen Mary unexpectedly brought patronage from her side to the Marquise de Pompadour. And such tricks as the arrangement of the Marquise's office in Versailles, in which there was only one chair for his mistress, taught the aristocrats to treat her courteously.

Jeannette immediately realized that she could not keep Ludovic's attention for a long time by love tricks alone. And she used the entire arsenal of methods known to her.

The Marquise first of all organized a salon in which she proposed to gather high society and invite advanced people of the time: scientists, poets, playwrights, artists and musicians. Louis liked this idea, and he gladly participated in the entertaining discussions that took place within the walls of this society. Gradually, the salons of the Marquise de Pompadour became interested in knowing. Many aristocrats seemed to benefit from the opportunity of personal acquaintance with the royal person.

Such meetings were attended by progressive personalities of that time. Funds flowed from the royal treasury for science, art, and theater. And in the Chamber Theater donated by the Marquis de Pompadour, in which she herself played with pleasure, the first production of the comedy "Tartuffe" was held. With the assistance of Jeannette, the French Scientific Encyclopedia also saw the light.

Achievements

The king, seeing the enterprise and diplomacy of his girlfriend, attracts her to the decision government issues. With the light hand of Jeannette, France terminated its alliance with Prussia and entered into a partnership agreement with Austria. With the assistance of the Marquise, a military school was opened for the noble offspring. This institution in a few years will become the "alma mater" for the future emperor. The Marquise de Pompadour encouraged her patron to completely ban the activities of the Jesuits in France.

Jeanne contributed to the creation of a porcelain factory in the city of Sevres, she introduced a special cut of precious stones, as well as the use of tulip glasses for champagne. It is believed that the mold for these glasses was a cast of the breast of a French beauty. Women can still be grateful to the Marquise de Pompadour for her invention of the reticule - a small handbag for small ladies' needs.

Appearance

Memories of contemporaries appearance Marquises de Pompadour differ in their essence. Some attributed to her only charm and artistry, others sincerely admired her beauty. One thing is known, that if the marquise had beauty and freshness, she owed this to her talent to hide her soreness. WITH early age Jeannette was diagnosed with tuberculosis. But the innate sense of taste allowed the Marquise not only to look great, but also to become a trendsetter.

She pioneered the idea of ​​wearing heels to make up for her short stature, and was the first woman to wear stockings. Her high hairstyle for many years became a sign of the times, which is captured in many ladies' portraits of that era. And photos of images of the awning itself can now be found on the Internet in large numbers.

Last years

Of course, the Marquise, like all the ladies of her position, had ill-wishers, but she knew how to neutralize them competently. Behind the outer shell of a carefree feminine person was a prudent mind and pragmatism. In addition, for many years Jeannette struggled with her cold female temperament, for this, absorbing a large amount of celery and truffles - products recognized in the 18th century as powerful aphrodisiacs. But, having lived with Louis XV for several years in close relations, the marquise calmly gave way to new young mistresses, without losing the favor and friendship of the king.

The slowly progressing illness forced Jeanne to take extreme measures and hold on with all her might. But after a series of attacks, the Marquise died in the private royal chambers. She was 43 years old and died on April 15, 1864.

Doctors ruled that the cause of death was lung cancer. The funeral was modest. The body of the Marquise de Pompadour now rests in the family crypt of the Capuchin monastery, next to the graves of mother and daughter.

Movies

Cinematography really became interested in the life story of the legendary trendsetter as recently as 2006. The historical series "Jeanne Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour" was filmed by French film director Robin Davies. The leading roles of the 2006 film starred French screen stars Helene de Fujrol, Charlotte de Turcheim, Rosemary La Volle. This was the first experience of the most reliable reflection of the stay of the Marquise de Pompadour at the court of the Bourbon dynasty.

3 gourmet recipes in the style of the Marquise de Pompadour and a bit of history

December 29, 1721 was born Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, who went down in history as the Marquise de Pompadour. The famous mistress of Louis XV was strong not only in the art of love, but also in cooking

The daughter of a quartermaster, accused of embezzlement and leaving his family to the mercy of fate, a fortuneteller predicted an almost royal life. But the path to the dream was not easy for Jeanne Poisson. First, she had to marry Charles Guillaume Etiol in order to restore the honor of the family. Madame Etiol meets King Louis XV at a costume ball in February 1745, and in July she receives title of marquise and estate of Pompadour.

For almost 20 years, the Marquise de Pompadour has been the favorite and true friend of the king. In order not to bore her lover, she comes up with more and more entertainment for him. He invites famous playwrights and philosophers to his living room, constantly trying on new images from a rural shepherdess to an oriental odalisque. For example, she introduced into fashion dresses and ribbons made of fabric with a small flower, an apron trimmed with lace, a high hairstyle that opens the forehead. The Marquis does not forget that "the way to a man's heart lies through his stomach."

In the 18th century, cooking became fashionable at the French court. Court ladies try their talents in it. And the royal chefs strive not only for the abundance of dishes, but also for the refinement of taste and quality of products.

The Marquise de Pompadour preferred dishes from expensive products, but simple, refined and exciting.

Among her favorite foods are truffles, celery, chocolate, asparagus.

Here is what he wrote about the properties of celery gourmet Alexandre Grimaud de la Renière:
“Although boiled celery loses some of its healing virtues, we must not forget that the plant is aromatic, good for the stomach, appetizing, hot, and therefore very stimulating. To clear our conscience, we must warn timid readers about this last property of celery: it is better for them not to eat celery at all, or at least use it with the greatest caution. Simply put, celery is ordered for bachelors ".

According to him, it differs in similar properties and asparagus:
“At the end of April, in Paris, to the delight of those who, bored with potatoes and last year's beans, yearn for greenery, the first asparagus appears.
Asparagus in Paris is always very expensive and available only to the rich: this food is not at all satisfying and slightly exciting, but very tender..

According to one version, Madame Pompadour ate a bowl of truffle soup with celery for breakfast every day. And she preferred white Dutch asparagus, with purple tips.

Festive recipes in the style of the Marquise de Pompadour

TRUFFLE SOUP WITH CELERY

Ingredients:

3 cups celery juice
half a cup dry white wine
half a cup concentrated beef broth
4 yolk
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 thinly sliced ​​truffle Truffles can be bought in Moscow at a price of 650 euros per 1 kg. If you choose a truffle weighing 50 grams for soup, then it will not cost you so much);
Salt and pepper to taste

How to cook:

Combine celery juice, beef broth and wine and bring to a boil.

Beat the yolks, pour the hot broth into them, stirring constantly.

Pour the mixture into a saucepan, add the truffle, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Simmer over medium heat for 5 minutes without letting the soup boil.

Serve immediately after being ready.

ASPARAGUS A LA POMPADOUR

Sauce Ingredients:

1 a teaspoon of flour
100 gbutter
2 yolk
4 tablespoons of lemon juice
Pinch nutmeg

How to cook:

Peel and boil a bunch of asparagus in boiling salted water.

Thinly slice the asparagus diagonally into pieces no longer than your little finger. Take only the best parts, dry on a warm napkin.

Prepare the sauce. In a water bath (previously it was recommended to use a silver saucepan for it, but a regular one is also suitable) melt a piece of butter, add flour, a pinch of nutmeg, egg yolks, lemon juice.

Dip the asparagus into the prepared sauce and cover the pan with a lid.

ICE CREAM A LA POMPADOUR

Ingredients:

vanilla ice cream 1 kg
Biscuit 350 g
Liqueur "Cointreau" 250 ml
small strawberry 500 g
White wine 250 ml;
Sugar 2-3 tbsp. spoons
Whipped cream optional

How to cook:

Take a form with a diameter of 22-24 cm, lay the bottom with foil and put it in the refrigerator for a while.

Add a few teaspoons of liqueur to the ice cream and mix, cut the biscuit into pieces.

Remove the form from the refrigerator, put half of the ice cream on the bottom, put pieces of biscuit poured with liquor on top, put another layer of ice cream and biscuit on top.

Cover with foil and refrigerate for an hour.

Rinse strawberries in wine, sprinkle with sugar, soak for 15 minutes in liquor. Put the ice cream from the refrigerator on a dish and decorate with a pyramid of strawberries and whipped cream.

March 13th, 2010

"No one can fully appreciate
what women did for France, ”the writer and
philosopher-educator Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle. And for those who have lived
in the world for exactly 100 years and witnessed the transformation of this state into
the most authoritative and enlightened in Europe, you can trust. Undoubtedly
and that, in paying tribute to the weaker half of France, de Fontenelle had
in mind and the famous Marquise, who forced politicians to seriously talk about
the Pompadour era.

F. Bush. Madame de Pompadour

Only the power concentrated in the hands of the most influential mistress of Louis XV forced her too zealous opponents not to delve into the details of her origin. And this was extremely annoying for a woman striving for perfection in everything. Although information has come down to us that the father of Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson was a lackey, who had become a quartermaster, stealing and leaving his family.

A selfish marquise could easily disown such a parent, but then she would have to admit that she was completely an illegitimate child. The fact is that the nobleman-financier Norman de Turnnam was also called her father. It was assumed that it was he who gave the girl, who was born in 1721, an excellent education and in every possible way took part in her fate. And not in vain...

Jeanne was clearly gifted with extraordinary abilities: she drew beautifully, played music, had a small but clear voice and a real passion for poetry, which she perfectly knew how to recite. Surrounding invariably expressed delight, giving Mademoiselle Poisson the necessary self-confidence. The fortune-teller, who predicted a 9-year-old girl a love affair with the king, only confirmed her chosenness and exclusivity. The future marquise paid a pension to this kind woman until the end of her days.

At the age of 19, Jeanne went down the aisle with the nephew of her patron, and possibly her father. The groom was short and completely ugly, but rich and passionately in love with the bride. So the maiden Poisson parted with her unenviable surname and became Madame d'Etiol. Her family life flowed serenely, two years later she gave birth to a daughter, Alexandra, which, however, could not obscure in her mind the dreams of the king, which were stuck in her pretty head like a nail.

Any appearance in the boudoirs of numerous friends, as well as in the living rooms of high society, where the name and wealth of her husband opened the way for her, Jeanne used to her advantage. Rumors, gossip, and sometimes true information - everything went into the treasury of her ideas about the life of the king and his court.

She already knew that at that moment the king was busy with the Duchess de Châteauroux. And then the main features of her character began to appear - perseverance and purposefulness. She began to travel regularly to the Senar forest, where the king used to hunt. However, it was by no means the king who had to catch the eye of her, but the ambitious Duchess de Château, who quickly declassified the purpose of her forest walks. And Jeanne was forbidden to appear in these places. Such a flick on the nose sobered the applicant for some time, but the cards did not seem to lie. The Duchess de Châteauroux, at the age of twenty-seven, died suddenly of pneumonia, and Madame d'Étiol took this as a call to action.

Francois Droi. Portrait of Madame de Pompadour

On February 28, 1745, in the Paris City Hall, which still stands in the same place to this day, during a masquerade ball, Jeanne met the king face to face for the first time. However, at first she was wearing a mask, but the monarch, intrigued by the behavior of the stranger, asked her to reveal her face. Probably, the impression was more than favorable ...

Louis XV was called a man with an "extremely complex and mysterious character" and an "early tired" king. It was said of him that his "modesty was a quality that turned into a defect in him."

And since Louis felt most liberated in the company of women, in France the king was considered a "lustful sinner."

Louis XV was born in 1710. At the age of five, after the death of the great-grandfather of King Louis XIV, he inherited the throne. When he was 9, the Russian emperor Peter arrived in Paris to negotiate "on wooing for the king of our daughters, and especially for the middle one", Elizabeth. Versailles was not delighted with the prospect of marrying Louis to the daughter of "portomoi". The origin of the wife of the Russian Emperor Catherine was well known. And the marriage did not take place. The beautiful and lively Lisetka, as Peter called his middle daughter, stayed at home and obviously did not lose, becoming the Russian Empress.

At the age of 11, Louis was found a suitable bride - Maria Leshchinskaya, daughter of the Polish king Stanislav. When the king turned 15, they were married. His wife was seven years older than him, extremely pious, boring and unattractive. According to some reports, in the first 12 years of marriage, she bore Louis ten children. The king, who had been an exemplary husband all these years, was so fed up with politics, economics, and his own family that he began to do mainly what gave him real pleasure - fine arts and no less elegant women.

By the time of the meeting at the masquerade ball with Jeanne d'Etiol, this " the most beautiful man in his kingdom”, nicknamed Louis the Fair, turned 35 years old.

Although the appearance of this woman, so artistically gifted, is hardly possible to unequivocally characterize. Here, as the classic rightly noted, "everything is not what it is, but what it seems." That is why the descriptions of the appearance of the future Marquise de Pompadour varied so much. Here much, of course, depended on the attitude towards her. One of the detractors did not find anything special in her: "She was a blonde with a too pale face, somewhat overweight and rather poorly built, although endowed with grace and talents."

But the chief huntsman of the forests and parks of Versailles, Monsieur Leroy, who described the king's girlfriend as a real beauty, noted a beautiful complexion, thick, lush hair with a chestnut tint, a perfectly shaped nose and mouth, literally "created for kisses." He was especially admired by his large, incomprehensible color eyes, which left the impression of "some kind of vague point in a restless soul." Poetic. And it completely coincides with the portraits of Francois Boucher, to whom the future marquise provided constant patronage.

It is possible that it was precisely the patronage of the Marquise that influenced the fact that in the portraits by Boucher she appears as the goddess of beauty, and at the same time fertility, with a fresh, ruddy and rather well-fed face of a paisan, while history brought to us the facts testifying to , what poor health this woman was and what incredible efforts it required from her to maintain the illusory glory of a flowering beauty.

Nancy Mitford Madame de Pompadour.

One way or another, but her “incomprehensible color eyes” turned out to be opposite the royal ones not only at the masquerade ball, but also at the presentation of the Italian comedy that followed it. Jeanne had to work hard to get a seat next to his box. As a result, the king invited Madame d'Etiol to dinner, which was the beginning of their relationship.

Although after the meeting the king declared to a confidant, bribed by the prudent Jeanne, that Madame d'Etiol, of course, is very sweet, it seemed to him that she was not entirely sincere and clearly not disinterested, and it was also noticed that the crown prince, who saw "this lady in the theatre, found it vulgar...

From all this, it became clear that Jeanne's progress towards her cherished goal would not be problem-free. The next date she managed to achieve with great difficulty. She played her part in this last attempt with the excitement of desperation. The king was offered a simply melodramatic plot: the unfortunate woman made her way into the palace apartments, risking falling at the hands of a jealous husband, only to look at the adored person. And then - "let me die ..."

The king did not shout "bravo", he did better, promising Jeanne that upon his return from the theater of operations in Flanders he would make the victim of jealousy into official favorites.

Francois Bush. Portrait of the Marquise de Pompadour

Madame d'Etiol was delivered royal messages, meaningfully signed: "Loving and devoted." Aware of Ludovic's minute habits and preferences, she answered him in a light, piquant style. The Abbé de Berni, a connoisseur of belles-lettres, was entrusted to read her letters and bring them to the final shine. And then one day she received a royal dispatch addressed to the Marquise de Pompadour. Jeanne, at last, received the title, although extinct, but of an old and respectable noble family.

On September 14, 1745, the king introduced the newly-made marquise to his confidants as his girlfriend. One may be surprised, but the most loyal attitude towards her was ... the wife of the king, accustomed by that time to literally everything. The courtiers were quietly indignant. Since the time of Gabrielle d'Estre, who became the first official favorite of the monarch, Henry IV of Navarre, in the history of France, this place of honor has been occupied by a lady of good surname. They were also invited to love and favor almost a plebeian. The Marquise was immediately given the nickname Grisette, with a clear hint that in their eyes she is not much different from the persons who earn their living by tailoring cheap clothes and walking along the evening Parisian streets.

Jeanne understood that until the king was entirely in her power, the title of favorite could hardly be retained for a long time. And she could become irreplaceable for him only if she could change the very quality of his life, get rid of the melancholy and boredom that had recently become Louis' constant companions. So, Jeanne had to become a kind of Versailles Scheherazade.

This transformation took place quickly. The Marquise de Pompadour made a bet on the fine arts, so loved by Louis. Now every evening in her living room the king found an interesting guest. Bouchardon, Montesquieu, Fragonard, Boucher, Vanloo, Rameau, the famous naturalist Buffon - this is far from full list representatives of the artistic and intellectual elite who surrounded the Marquise. Voltaire was on a special account. Jeanne met him in her youth and considered herself his student. Along with the works of Corneille, the Marquise was engaged in the publication of his works.

It was with the assistance of the Marquise Pompadour that Voltaire gained fame and a worthy place as an academician and chief historian of France, having also received the title of court chamberlain.

Voltaire dedicated "Tancred" to the Marquise, one of his most famous works. In addition, especially for her palace holidays, he wrote the “Princess of Navarre” and the “Temple of Glory”, thus glorifying his patroness both in poetry and in prose.

When the Marquise died, Voltaire, one of the few, found kind words for the deceased: “I am deeply shocked by the death of Madame de Pompadour. I owe her a lot, I mourn her. What an irony of fate that the old man, who ... is barely able to move, is still alive, and the lovely woman dies at 40 years old in the prime of the most wonderful glory in the world.

Such an exquisite society entertained the king, revealing to him more and more new facets of life. In turn, the guests of the Marquise - people who are undoubtedly talented - in the eyes of society raised their social status thus gaining substantial support. From the very beginning of her favor, the marquise felt a taste for patronage and did not change this addiction all her life.

In 1751, the first volume of the French Encyclopedia, or Explanatory Dictionary of Sciences, Arts and Crafts, saw the light, opening new era in the knowledge and interpretation of nature and society. The author of the idea and editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia, Denis Diderot, a staunch opponent of absolutism and churchmen, did not become an outcast in the eyes of the Marquise Pompadour, she helped him publish his works. At the same time, she repeatedly tried to protect him from persecution, urging Diderot to be more careful, although her efforts in this direction were absolutely fruitless.

Another representative of the glorious galaxy of figures of the French Enlightenment, Jean Leron d'Alembert, she helped financially, and shortly before her death she managed to get him a lifetime pension. Among the wards of Madame Pompadour, according to some contemporaries, was the famous creator of the monument to Peter I in St. Petersburg - the sculptor Falcone.

The famous freethinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau, although he was offended by the marquise for not introducing him to the king, was still grateful to her for her help in staging his Siberian Soothsayer on stage, where the marquise performed with great success in the male role of Collin.

In general, the theater is the area that would turn out to be her true vocation, if fate had turned differently. A large and extremely diverse actress, both comedic, dramatic, and grotesque, capable of singing and dancing, obviously died in it.

The passion for transformation beyond recognition and the creation of stunning toilets that determined the style of an entire era, endless searches and innovations in the field of hairdressing and makeup - all this is seen not only as a desire to keep the fickle king, but also as an urgent need for the marquise's richly gifted nature.

She used every opportunity that came her way to gain viewers and listeners. As contemporaries testified, she played both in well-equipped theaters and on small stages in the mansions of the French nobility.

The next estate bought by the marquise was called Sevres. Having no sympathy for anything German and indignant at the dominance of Saxon porcelain, she decided to create her own porcelain production there.

In 1756, two magnificent buildings were built here: one for the workers, the other for the enterprise itself. The Marquise, who often visited there, supported and encouraged the workers, found experienced craftsmen, artists, and sculptors. The experiments went on day and night - the Marquise was impatient and did not like delays. She herself participated in solving all problems, helped in choosing shapes and colors for future products. The resulting rare pink porcelain was named "Rose Pompadour" after her. In Versailles, the Marquise arranged a large exhibition of the first batch of products, she sold it herself, declaring publicly: "If someone who has money does not buy this porcelain, he is a bad citizen of his country."

In the Palace of Versailles, the Marquise conceived and implemented the Chamber Theater. In January 1747, its opening took place: Molière's "Tartuffe" was given. There were almost fewer actors on the stage, together with the marquise involved in the performance, than the audience in the hall: only 14 people were invited. Each entrance ticket was obtained at the cost of incredible efforts and even intrigues. The success of the performance exceeded all expectations. The king was delighted with Joan's game. “You are the most charming woman in France,” he told her after the performance.

Those who had the pleasure of attending the marquise's singing performances claimed that "she feels the music perfectly, sings very expressively and with inspiration, probably knows at least a hundred songs."

The obvious superiority of the Marquise Pompadour over the past favorites of the king and the ladies of high society in every way strengthened her position both at court and under Louis. And she took advantage of this, not being afraid to pass for immodest. However, this quality was not there anyway. strong point her nature. Both in the external and in the private, hidden from prying eyes, life, Madame Pompadour ruled her show.

She was very scrupulous in matters of etiquette and ceremonial. Important visitors - courtiers and ambassadors - were received by her in the luxurious front hall of Versailles, where there was only one chair - the rest of those present were supposed to stand.

She ensured that her daughter was addressed as a person of royal blood - by name. The marquise reburied her mother's ashes with great honors in the very center of Paris - in the Capuchin monastery on Place Vendôme. On this place, specially bought by the marquise, a luxurious mausoleum was built. The relatives of the marquise, as well as all those whom she favored, waited in the wings: some of them married a well-born groom, someone got married to a rich bride, were given positions, life annuities, titles, awards.

And in the end - undisguised, and sometimes public condemnation of her extravagance. It was estimated that she spent 4 million on her entertainment activities, and her "boastful patronage" cost the treasury 8 million livres.

Construction was the second, after the theater, the passion of the Marquise. She owned so much property that hardly any other royal favorite could even dream of. Each of her new acquisitions meant a thorough restructuring, if not demolition, and always in the taste of the hostess. Often, the marquise herself sketched the contours of the future building on paper. Moreover, in these projects, the attraction to the architectural forms of rococo was invariably combined with common sense and practicality.

If the Marquise did not have enough money for the next construction venture, she sold the already erected building and enthusiastically began to implement new idea. Her last acquisition was the Menard castle, which she never managed to use in its converted version.

The principle of elegant simplicity and maximum closeness to the living world of nature was put by the marquise into the planning of parks. She did not like large, irregular spaces and excessive pomposity. Thickets of jasmine, whole edges of daffodils, violets, carnations, islands with pavilions in the core of shallow lakes, rose bushes of the marquise's favorite "shade of dawn" - these are her landscape preferences.

The royal palaces and country residences of Louis also underwent changes in accordance with her tastes. Versailles did not escape this either, where the marquise, not far from the royal park, ordered the construction of a small cozy house with a park and a temple with a white marble statue of Adonis.

A visit to the famous Institute of Noble Maidens, located in Saint-Cyr, led the marquis to create in Paris a Military School for the sons of war veterans and impoverished nobles, which was obtained from the king, who did not show much enthusiasm for this undertaking, permission.

Construction began in one of the most prestigious areas of the capital - near the Champ de Mars.

The project of the building was commissioned by the first-class architect Jacques-Ange Gabriel, the creator of the famous Place de la Concorde. The construction, which began in 1751, was interrupted due to insufficient state subsidies. Then the marquise invested the missing amount from her own savings. And already in 1753, classes began in the partially rebuilt school premises. Later, the tax that Louis imposed on lovers helped card game wholly spent on the completion of construction.

From 1777 to this educational institution began to accept the best students of provincial military schools, including in October 1781, 19-year-old cadet Napoleon Bonaparte arrived for training.

Already on her 30th birthday, the Marquise de Pompadour felt that Louis' love ardor was drying up. She herself understood that a long-standing lung disease was doing its devastating work. Her former beauty faded, and it was hardly possible to return it.

The cooling of the august person at all times meant the irretrievable departure of the former favorite into the shadows and further oblivion, if not disgrace.

The Marquise de Pompadour was only 5 years the mistress of the king, and another 15 - a friend and closest adviser on many issues, sometimes of national importance.

The cold mind of the marquise and her iron will gave her a way out. In the silence of two unremarkable Parisian streets, she rented a house with five rooms, hidden by a dense canopy of trees. This house, called "Deer Park", became the meeting place of the king with the ladies invited ... by the marquise.

The king appeared here incognito, the girls mistook him for some important gentleman. After the fleeting passion of the king for another beauty disappeared and remained without consequences, the girl, having provided a dowry, was given in marriage. If the case ended with the appearance of a child, then after his birth, the baby, together with the mother, received a very significant annuity. The Marquise continued to be the official favorite of His Majesty.

But in 1751, a real danger appeared in the face of a very young Irish woman, Marie-Louise o'Murphy, who shamelessly encroached on the laurels of the Marquise Pompadour.

Half of Europe watched the development of this intrigue. The papal ambassador reported to Rome that Pompadour's days were numbered: "Apparently, the main sultana is losing her position." He made a mistake. Louis left the Marquise all her privileges. And more than once she came out the winner in martial arts with young beauties, however, as well as with her very experienced political opponents. Although the situation escalated significantly after the diplomatic negotiations between the Marquise de Pompadour and the Austrian Archduchess Maria Theresa, which led to a change in allied relations between the two countries. In 1756, France, a traditional ally of Prussia, sided with Austria. In addition, Louis, under pressure from his mistress, who vehemently hated the Jesuits, banned the activities of their order in France.

Changes of this kind affected the interests of high-ranking officials too clearly for the Marquise to feel invulnerable. And she understood it. The food prepared for her was carefully checked - of all the ways to eliminate objectionable poisoning remained still difficult to prove.

The unexpected death of her only daughter, whom the marquise hoped to marry to the illegitimate son of the king, brought her, who had rare endurance, to the brink of insanity. Suspecting the intrigues of enemies, the Marquise demanded an autopsy, but it did not give any results.

Hardly experiencing this grief, the Marquise, as never before, acutely felt her loneliness. Her closest friend turned out to be a spy for her opponents. The king became more and more of a condescending friend.

The mental crisis forced the marquise to think about the possible removal from the court. She even wrote a letter to her husband, asking for forgiveness for the offense inflicted on him and clearly groping for ways to return to her long-abandoned family home. D'Etiol answered without delay that he readily forgave her, but there was no more to be said...

By 1760, the amounts allocated by the royal treasury for the maintenance of the marquise decreased by 8 times. She sold jewelry and played cards - she was usually lucky. But the treatment required a lot of money, and they had to be borrowed. Already being seriously ill, she even got a lover. But what is the Marquis of Choiseul compared to a king!

The marquise, who was still accompanying Louis everywhere, suddenly lost consciousness on one of the trips. Soon everyone realized that the end was near. And although only royalty had the right to die in Versailles, Louis ordered her to be transferred to the palace apartments.

On April 15, 1764, the royal chronicler recorded: "The Marquise de Pompadour, the queen's lady-in-waiting, died about 7 pm in the king's private quarters at the age of 43."

When the funeral procession turned towards Paris, Louis, standing on the balcony of the palace in the pouring rain, said: “What disgusting weather you have chosen for your last walk, madam!” Behind this seemingly completely inappropriate joke was hidden true sadness.

The Marquise de Pompadour was buried next to her mother and daughter in the tomb of the Capuchin monastery. Now, at the place of her burial, there is Rue de la Paix, passing through the territory of the monastery demolished at the beginning of the 19th century.