Madame de Pompadour passed her last days in a state of deep dejection.  As she was now in the decline both of her favor and of her reign, she no longer had friends; even the king himself, though still submitting to her guidance, loved her no more.  The Jesuits, too, whom she had driven from court, overwhelmed her with letters, in which they strove to depict to her the terrors of everlasting punishment.[E] Every hour that struck seemed to toll for her the death-knell of all her hopes and joys.  On her first appearance at court, proud of her youth, her beauty, and her brilliant complexion, she had proscribed rouge and patches, saying that life was not a masked ball.  She had now reached that sad period of life when she would be compelled to choose between rouge or the first wrinkles of incipient old age.  “I shall never survive it,” she used to say, mournfully,

[Footnote E:  The fear of losing her power, and of becoming once more a bourgeoise of Paris, perpetually tormented her.  After she had succeeded in suppressing the Jesuits, she fancied she beheld in each monk of the order as assassin and a poisoner.—­Memoires historiques de la Cour de France.]

One night, during the year 1760, she was seized with a violent trembling, and sitting up in bed, called Madame du Hausset.

“I am sure,” she said, “I am going to die.  Madame de Vintimille and Madame de Chateauroux both died as young as myself:  it is a species of fatality which strikes all those who have loved the king.  What I regret least is life,—­I am weary of flatteries and insults, of friendships and hatreds; but I own to you that I am terrified at the idea of being cast into some ditch or other, whether it be by the clergy, by Monseigneur the Dauphin, or by the people of Paris.”

Madame du Hausset took her hands within her own, and assured her that if France had the misfortune to lose her, the king would not fail to give her a burial worthy of her rank and station.

“Alas!” rejoined Madame de Pompadour, “a burial worthy of me!—­when we recollect that Madame de Mailly, repenting of having been his first mistress, desired to be interred in the cemetery of the Innocents; and not only that, but even under the common water-pipe.”

She passed the night in tears.  On the following morning, however, she resumed a little courage, and hastened to call to her aid all the resources of art to conceal the first ravages of time; but in vain did she seek to recover that adorable smile which twenty years before had made Louis XV. forget that he was King of France.