"Pompadour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Marquise de Pompadour directed me to present your majesty with her most obedient and submissive greetings, and to assure you of her ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... in which Madame de Pompadour reigned in France, and Madame Pean in Quebec, rings and public robbery flourished in Canada; but among high officials, all were not corrupt. There were some memorable exceptions. One of these exceptions was the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... unconsciously she had caught the adoring look in the eyes of Miss McCook, the teacher, and that lady, happening upon the sketch later, had dealt with Fanny in a manner seemingly unwarranted. In the same way it was not only the exterior likeness of the man which she was catching now—the pompadour that stood stiffly perpendicular like a brush; the square, yellow peasant teeth; the strong, slender hands and wrists; the stocky figure; the high cheek bones; the square-toed, foreign-looking shoes and the trousers ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... subtlety of mind, their forte and privilege, justifies the painted mask that Artifice bids them wear. Behind it their minds can play without let. They gain the strength of reserve. They become important, as in the days of the Roman Empire were the Emperor's mistresses, as was the Pompadour at Versailles, as was our Elizabeth. Yet do not their faces become lined with thought; beautiful and without ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... in the Rue Coquilliere, Louis the Fifteenth being King of France—or rather the Pompadour holding sway thereover—there lived a witty, amiable fellow who plied the art of painting portraits in oils and pastels after the mediocre fashion that is called "pleasing." This Louis Vigee and his wife, Jeanne Maissin, moved in ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall
... to be choking him. The Pompadour was protected by a Derby of the Fried-Egg species. It was the kind that Joe Weber helped to keep in Public Remembrance. But in 1886 it was de Rigeur, au Fait, ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... appeared that my presence was the ground for a heavy German joke in connection with the youngest of the aborigines. He was a very plump and greasy looking aborigine with a doll-like rosiness of cheek and a scared and bristling pompadour and very small pig-eyes. The other aborigines clapped him on ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... advantage can result from it; but L. N. is sufficiently well acquainted with France to know that the glitter of such a course would probably content her. All this would be easy to understand if Maria Theresa reigned at Vienna, Frederic at Berlin, and Mme. de Pompadour at Versailles; in a word, if we were in the eighteenth instead of the nineteenth century. But being, as we are, in the nineteenth century, the designs which are ascribed to the Emperor are to be condemned ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... George! I have seen nothing like her in my time," lisped a superb coxcomb, attired in a splendid civilian's suit of Pompadour and silver, to a young cornet of the Life Guard who ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... satisfied?")—this, asked, in nauseous adulation, and nauseous self-abasement, by Voltaire of Louis XV., so little like Trajan in character—is monumental. The occasion was the production of a piece of Voltaire's written at the instance of Louis XV.'s mistress, the infamous Madame de Pompadour. The king, for answer, simply gorgonized the poet with a stony ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... be true: he is noble, gallant, polite, rich, and all-powerful at Court. He is reported to be prime favorite of the Marquise de Pompadour. What more do I ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the travellers, all possible honour was given them, and the concerts in the French capital brought the Mozarts a substantial sum and they were received very kindly in a visit to the Court of Versailles; of which visit little Nannerl said later, that her only recollection was of the Marquise de Pompadour standing Wolfgang on a table, that he wanted to kiss her, and when she ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... tittered; the sophomore with the bristling pompadour uttered a bark of amusement. Meeting Bob's questioning glance, Lorelei seconded the invitation with a nod and a quick look of appeal, whereupon his demeanor changed and he drew a chair between her and Nobel Bergman, forcing the latter to move. His action was pointed, almost rude, but ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... shopkeeper's wife does not vote, but it is for her interest that the politician canvasses by the coarsest flattery. France suffers no woman on her throne, but her proud nobles kiss the dust at the feet of Pompadour and Dubarry; for such flare in the lighted foreground where a Roland would modestly aid in the closet. Spain (that same Spain which sang of Ximena and the Lady Teresa) shuts up her women in the care of duennas, and allows ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the capitulation, were made prisoners of war. Whether the court of France had any reason to find fault with the conduct of the mareschal d'Etrees, or whether its monarch was blindly guided by the counsels of his favourite the marquese de Pompadour, who, desirous to testify her gratitude to the man who had been one of the chief instruments of her high promotion, was glad of an opportunity to retrieve his shattered fortunes, and, at the same time, to add to her own already immense treasures, we shall not pretend to determine; though ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... at this time might also have disenchanted these worshippers at the shrine of French civilization. A king absolutely indifferent to conditions in his kingdom, immersed in debasing pleasures, while Madame de Pompadour actually ruled the state—this is not the worst they would have seen! Destitute of shame, of pity, of patriotism, and of human affection, what did it mean to the king that his people were growing desperate under the enormous taxation made ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... history were nearly all inspired by women in whom the vulgar mind would have found defects,—Cleopatra, Jeanne de Naples, Diane de Poitiers, Mademoiselle de la Valliere, Madame de Pompadour; in fact, the majority of the women whom love has rendered famous were not without infirmities and imperfections, while the greater number of those whose beauty is cited as perfect came to some tragic ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... reckoned on the charms of habit to keep him by her; she was always ready to open her salons and display the luxury of her dinners and suppers for his friends, and to further his projects. She desired to be for him what Madame de Pompadour was to Louis XV. All actresses envied Florine's position, and some journalists envied that ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... the days of Pompadour and Du Barry, until modern American politics were invented, has a state been ruled from such a place as Number 7 in the Pelican House—familiarly known as the Throne Room. In this historic cabinet there were ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... women, and children, do you think drowned themselves in the Seine last year? Upwards of two hundred. This is really shocking, and a stop should be put to it by authority. It absolutely makes me shudder and reflect; but apres nous le deluge was La Pompadour's maxim, and should ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... intrigue, and adventure in the time of Louis XV. and Mme. de Pompadour, when the French colonies were making their great struggle to retain for an ungrateful court the fairest jewels in the colonial diadem ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... advice to his successor, to abstain from war. We are told that the obedient legatee accepted the caution as his motto, and had it hung upon his bedroom wall, where it served him as an excellent excuse for doing nothing at all. His government was notoriously in the hands of his mistresses, Pompadour and the others, and their misrule was to the full as costly to France as the wars of the preceding age. They drained the country quite as deeply of its resources and renown; they angered ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... at Versailles had seen many astonishing sights in the centuries gone by; and doubtless that night the shades of Richelieu, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Marie Antoinette, Marie Theresa, Madam Pompadour, looked down on one of the strangest incidents in all history, a German Emperor receiving his crown in the very palace of the old French kings, who in their turn, had waged some twenty hard wars upon Germany, and more than once had placed some part of German soil in pawn. Who read the proclamation ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... woman who had been even finer than himself. And she was still fine, with her black hair dressed in a prominent pompadour, and her figure curbed by the tightness of her Sunday gown. Under her polished hair Mrs. Randall's face shone with a blond pallor. It had grown up gradually round her features, and they, becoming more and more insignificant, were now merged in its general expression of good ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... genius beyond my laws, the born darling of the Graces, who in every circumstance, in every age, like Aristippus, would have socially charmed; would have been welcome to the orgies of a Caesar or a Clodius, to the boudoirs of a Montespan or a Pompadour; have lounged through the Mulberry Gardens with a Rochester and a Buckingham, or smiled from the death-cart, with a Richelieu and a Lauzun, a ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the matter seems to be to choose the reprehensible—such, for instance, as Mlle. Mars, Madame de Pompadour, Madame du Barri, and La Montansier, women in the career of whom no doubt there were many dramas, similar, however, to the dramas in the lives of other women of their class less famous and infamous. When, however, they are put upon ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... in the antiquities of Paris. If she went to the Musee Cluny in the morning, we might be sure we should see no more of her for that day at least. She absolutely took rooms at Versailles for two weeks that she might study up the locale of the Pompadour, whom she regards as a female Richelieu, and she also found a rich field of investigation in the lives of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... memory, and all those interwoven threads of silk were but the continuity of the same silent passion. And then one morning the Viscount had taken it away with him. Of what had they spoken when it lay upon the wide-mantelled chimneys between flower-vases and Pompadour clocks? She was at Tostes; he was at Paris now, far away! What was this Paris like? What a vague name! She repeated it in a low voice, for the mere pleasure of it; it rang in her ears like a great cathedral bell; it shone before her eyes, ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... not have been some Maintenon who received the suggestion from her confessor, or, more probably, some ambitious woman who wished to rule her husband? Or, more undoubtedly, some pretty little Pompadour overcome by that Parisian infirmity so pleasantly described by M. de Maurepas in that quatrain which cost him his protracted disgrace and certainly contributed to the disasters of Louis ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... of high dignity and sweet cordiality. She was a majestic figure in spite of her short stature and increasing curves, for the majesty was within and her head above a flat back had a lofty poise. She wore her prematurely white hair in a tall pompadour, and this with the rich velvets she affected, ample and long, made her look like a French marquise of the eighteenth century, stepped down from the canvas. The effect was by no means accidental. Mrs. McLane's grandmother had been French and she ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... stood, penniless, upon the threshold it was to cross it as haughtily as she had done as a bride. The stiff folds of her black silk showed no wavering ripple, the repose of her lips betrayed no tremor. The smooth, high pompadour of her black hair passed as proudly beneath the arched doorway as it had done in the days of her wifehood ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... period of Louis XV. and strictly exact to it. Here we see the carved wooden bedstead painted white, with the arched head-board surmounted by Cupids scattering flowers, and the canopy above it adorned with plumes; the hangings of blue silk; the Pompadour dressing-table with its laces and mirror; together with bits of furniture of singular shape,—a "duchesse," a chaise-longue, a stiff little sofa,—with window-curtains of silk, like that of the furniture, ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... enters subordinately into the two other tertiaries, citrine and olive; goes largely into the composition of the various hues and shades of the semi-neutral marrone or chocolate, and its relations, puce, murrey, morelle, mordore, pompadour, &c.; and is more or less present in browns, grays, and all broken colours. It is likewise the second power in harmonizing and contrasting other colours, as well as in compounding black and all other neutrals, ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... Studio'll have next—maybe a sidewalk canopy and a carriage caller. Swifty Joe's gettin' ambitious. Me gettin' mixed up with that Newport push has gone to Swifty's head like a four-line notice does to the pompadour of a second row chorus girl. First off he says it's a shame I ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... school-house, on the morning after the funeral, in order to explain the situation to their teacher and evince her personal interest. Miss Burke was a pretty girl two or three years younger than herself. She looked capable and attractive; a little coquettish, too, for her smile was arch, and her pompadour had that fluffy fulness which girls who like to be admired nowadays are too apt to affect. She was just the sort of girl whom a man might fall desperately in love with, and it occurred to Mary, as they conversed, that it was not likely she would ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... a shop-girl because you have the habit. There is no type; but a perverse generation is always seeking a type; so this is what the type should be. She has the high-ratted pompadour, and the exaggerated straight-front. Her skirt is shoddy, but has the correct flare. No furs protect her against the bitter spring air, but she wears her short broadcloth jacket as jauntily as though it were Persian ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... twenty-two Sarrasine was forcibly removed from the salutary influence which Bouchardon exercised over his morals and his habits. He paid the penalty of his genius by winning the prize for sculpture founded by the Marquis de Marigny, Madame de Pompadour's brother, who did so much for art. Diderot praised Bouchardon's pupil's statue as a masterpiece. Not without profound sorrow did the king's sculptor witness the departure for Italy of a young man whose profound ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... with a made soil and transplanted shrubs, while the grass seems as if it must be made to grow by some chemical process. He admired not only the decoration, the gilding, the carving, in the most expensive Pompadour style, as it is called, and the magnificent brocades, all of which any enriched tradesman could have procured for money; but he also noted such treasures as only princes can select and find, can pay for and give away; two pictures by Greuze, two by Watteau, two heads by Vandyck, two landscapes by ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... drawn over her almost golden yellow hair, and her neck, arms, and hands are profusely covered with jewels. Her bodice of bright purple is trimmed with costly fur, and the robe is of azure velvet. In her hand she carries a sort of pompadour of brown leather, of the most elegant form and finish. Her eyes and mouth are not pleasing, notwithstanding their great beauty—in the mouth, particularly, one can discover ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... Mme. Pompadour, of whom he made a portrait statue. She employed him to do many works for her. His best monument in Paris is that of the Comte d'Harcourt, in ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... Percy had been loath to buy the clock when they got their furniture, and he had hated it ever since. Stella had changed very little since she came into the flat a bride. Then she wore her hair in a Floradora pompadour; now she wore it hooded close about her head like a scarf, in a rather smeary manner, like an Impressionist's brush-work. She heard her husband come in and close the door softly. While he was taking off his hat in the narrow tunnel of a hall, she ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... on passing from the darkness of the dungeon to the light of day. The good Abb finally procured liberty for his captive, who became secretary to M. de Broglie's brother, and subsequently, on the death of Madame de Pompadour, commissioner of war. Terrible were the sufferings which the unhappy Deforges endured on ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... her. But was it possible that the tall, handsome young lady with the sleek brown pompadour and a nose unmistakably and plebeianly Grant, who sat by the window doing something to a heap of lace and organdy in her lap, was the little curly-headed, sunburned sister of thirteen whom he remembered? The young man leaning against the sideboard must be Leo, of course; a fine-looking, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Wednesday in February Anthony had gone to the imposing offices of Wilson, Hiemer and Hardy and listened to many vague instructions delivered by an energetic young man of about his own age, named Kahler, who wore a defiant yellow pompadour, and in announcing himself as an assistant secretary gave the impression that it was a tribute to ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... from 1749 to 1787, Chevalier, declared, obviously on the evidence of tradition, that all the Mask's furniture and clothes were destroyed at his death, lest they might yield a clue to his identity. Louis XV. is said to have told Madame de Pompadour that the Mask was 'the minister of an Italian prince.' Louis XVI. told Marie Antoinette (according to Madame de Campan) that the Mask was a Mantuan intriguer, the same person as Louis XV. indicated. Perhaps he was, it is one ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... du Hausset, chamber-woman to Madame du Pompadour, there are some amusing anecdotes of this personage. Very soon after his arrival in Paris, he had the entree of her dressing-room; a favour only granted to the most powerful lords at the court of her royal lover. Madame was fond ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... education, the science of gauging people and events by their relative importance defies study most insolently. For three or four generations, society has united in withering with contempt and opprobrium the shameless futility of Mme. de Pompadour and Mme. du Barry; yet, if one bid at an auction for some object that had been approved by the taste of either lady, one quickly found that it were better to buy half-a-dozen Napoleons or Frederics, or Maria Theresas, or all the ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... Eugenie feel herself with the saints, on this October afternoon! She sat, to begin with, on the threshold of Madame de Pompadour's apartment; and in the next place, she had never been more tremulously steeped in doubts and yearnings, entirely concerned with her friends and her affections. It was a re-birth; not of youth—how could that be, she herself would have asked, ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... woman, and the bridegroom pays one of the drummers, who, according to ancient custom, attend with their thundering gratulations the day after a wedding. A performer on the bass viol, and a herd of butchers armed with marrow-bones and cleavers, form an English concert. (Madame Pompadour, in her remarks on the English taste for music, says, they are invariably fond of every thing that is full in the mouth.) A cripple with the ballad of Jesse, or the Happy Pair, represents a man known by the name of Philip in the Tub, who had visited Ireland ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... were already assembled round the drawing-room fire, impatiently waiting the hour of dinner, when Lady Maclaughlan and her three friends entered. The masculine habiliments of the morning had been exchanged for a more feminine costume. She was now arrayed in a pompadour satin negligee, and petticoat trimmed with Brussels lace. A high starched handkerchief formed a complete breast work, on which, amid a large bouquet of truly artificial roses, reposed a miniature of Sir Sampson, a la militaire. A small fly cap of antique lace was ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... proportion, with huge articulations at the elbows and knees. His neck was long and thin and his head large, his face was sallow and covered with pimples, his ears were big, red and stuck out stiff from either side of his head. His hair he wore "pompadour." ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... the Swiss commonwealth we should be able to recall no female name that lent lustre to any epoch. We should contrast this poverty with the riches of the French monarchy, adorned with the memories of Agnes Sorel, of Diane de Poitiers, of Madame de Montespan, of Madame de Pompadour, following one another in brilliant succession, and sharing not only the glory but the authority of the line of princes whose affections they ruled. Of course, we should have to use an ironical gravity in concealing their real quality and the character of the courts where ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... by his wits as journalist, doctor, mesmerist, and diplomat; effected an entrance to many high social circles and was presented to Catharine of Russia, Louis XV, Frederick the Great, Rousseau, Voltaire, and Madame de Pompadour; arrested in Venice as a spy in 1755, imprisoned and escaped; afterward honored by Italian princes and decorated by the Pope; became librarian to Count Waldstein in Bohemia in his fifty-seventh year; his "Memoirs" notable as a picture of manners and morals at ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... up the tail of her black lace gown. Mrs. Edes doted on black lace. Her small, fair face peered with a curious calm alertness from under the black plumes of her great picture hat, perched sidewise upon a carefully waved pale gold pompadour, which was perfection and would have done credit to the best hairdresser or the best French maid in New York, but which was achieved solely by Mrs. Wilbur Edes' own native ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... later generations parts of this ancient structure persisted in surviving. Only a few years ago the heavier timber still hanging together was called "The King's Wood-yard." But nothing now remains of it, and imagination only summons the haunting spirit of this creature of La Pompadour, whose mischievous influence lost Louis XV his colonial empire, and whose infamies sealed the fate of ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... have a supreme disgust for the man who at the hustings has no opinion beyond or above the clamour round him. How such a fellow would have kissed the ground before a Pompadour, or waited for hours in a Buckingham's antechamber, only to catch the faintest beam of ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... be "all there," and trust to finding out the routine of a New York shop-girl's life from one of themselves. She hoped the sardine would be engaged—nice, trim little sardine with smooth black pompadour, small white face, jewel-bright eyes, pugnacious nose, determined chin! A ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... and a beautiful woman. Her vivacity remained and much of her beauty, so that it was difficult to believe her snow-white hair to be a product of nature. Again and again I found myself regarding it as a powdered coiffure of the Pompadour period and wondering why Madame ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... forehead. In some faces of this type the face is brutalized in appearance by this arrangement. The expression and whole quality of the countenance can be greatly improved by arranging the hair as shown by No. 9, which is the soft Pompadour style. The Duchess of Marlborough, formerly Consuelo Vanderbilt, frames her naive, winsome face, which is of the Japanese type, in a style somewhat like this. Her dark hair forms an aureole above her brow, and brings into relief the dainty, ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... enough; and, of course, everybody was constrained in the presence of Madame de la Baudraye, who produced a sort of terror among the woman-folk. As they admired a carpet of Indian shawl-pattern in the La Baudraye drawing-room, a Pompadour writing-table carved and gilt, brocade window curtains, and a Japanese bowl full of flowers on the round table among a selection of the newest books; when they heard the fair Dinah playing at sight, without making the smallest demur before seating herself at the piano, the idea they ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... this respect by Voltaire, who idolises him as a moralist and poet. But it carries little weight in the mouth of the cynic who could fawn with more than courtierly complaisance on a Frederick or a Catherine, and weave graceful flatteries for the Pompadour, and who "dearly loved a lord" in his practice, however he may have sneered at aristocracy in his writings. But if we put ourselves as far as we can into the poet's place, we shall come to a much more lenient conclusion. He could no doubt appreciate thoroughly the advantages of a free republic ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... their scandalous behavior in public; sort of market-women disguised as fashion-plates—half apple-venders, half coquettes, who tap men on the cheek with their scented gloves and intersperse their conversation with dreadful oaths from behind their bouquets and Pompadour fans! ... these creatures talked in shrill tones, laughed out loud enough to be heard by every one around—joined in the chorus of the Choir of Antigone with the old men of Thebes!... People in the gallery ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... next morning when Aunt Maria appeared at the early breakfast with a pompadour. Her thin frizzes were carefully puffed over a mystery which she had ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... hands into the pockets of my dressing-gown, which, by the by, is far the handsomest piece of old brocade I have ever seen,—-a large running pattern of gold hollyhocks, with silver stalks and leaves, upon a rich, deep, Pompadour-coloured ground,—and, walking slowly backwards and forwards in my room, I continued,—"There never was, there never can have been, so happy a fellow as myself! What on earth have I to wish for more? Maria adores me—I adore ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... particularly admired. A very pleasant picture of the musical family was painted in Paris, of which an engraving is given in the Biography. Mozart's sister relates, that when they were at Versailles, Madame de Pompadour had her brother placed upon a table, and that as he approached to salute her, she turned away from him; upon which he said indignantly, "I wonder who she is, that she will not kiss me—the empress has kissed me!" At Versailles ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... himself he was bombarded with anonymous letters and warnings, calling Lola by every evil name that occurred to the writers. She was La Pompadour and the Sempronia of Sallust in one, a "voluptuous woman," and a "flame of desire." There were also tearful protests from the higher clergy, who, headed by Archbishop Diepenbrock, were positive that the "dancing woman" was an emissary of Satan (sometimes they said ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... grim conditions to keep friends with himself." On the bench an enormous woman with a hat that looks like a schooner atop of a great pompadour wave and on the very same bench a mummied old Chinese as thin as a wafer. An aeroplane hums above and Stevenson's little boat looks envious. Where did Captain Montgomery of the sloop Portsmouth stand when he planted the flag in 1848? The Mission bell, so many miles to Dolores, so many miles ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... that," chuckled Gladwin. "It would take a deal of this gold and silver junk to buy a Rembrandt or a Corot. There are a couple of Cellini medallions, though, just below that miniature of Madame de Pompadour that a good many collectors would sell ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... a sovereign like Louis the Fifteenth or the Emperor Paul would have been pulled down before his misgovernment had lasted for a month. We find that all the fame and influence of our Edward the Third could not save his Madame de Pompadour from the effects ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... d'esprit of Voltaire's "La Toilette de Madame de Pompadour," in which he wittily exalts the moderns above the ancients, and ridicules their ignorance of the luxuries and comforts of life: but Voltaire had not seen the museum of Portici. We can add few distinct articles to the ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... uttering a fatal accusation about a "trammelled soul." Such a warning calls for a taking of stock. And this is what I found: Because of the flappers and the way they run shop, the whole technique of the man game has changed. My method, alas, had become as out of style as a pompadour Gibson hat. Where once girls pretended to know less and to have experienced less than they actually had, now they pretend to more. Therein lie all the law and the social profits. Therefore Rule One of these dauntless rebels reads: It is not ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... the poet's story told. His story? Who believes me shall behold The Little Girl, tricked out with ringolet, Or fringe, or pompadour, or what you will, Switch, bang, rat, puff—odzooks, man! I know not What women call the hanks o' hair they wear! But that same curl, beau-catcher, love-lock, frizz. (Perchance hot-ironed—perchance 'twas bandolined; Mayhap ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... an imitation Louis Quatorze chair beside a fountain in imitation of one in the apartment of the Pompadour, and ordered what he knew would be an execrable imitation of an American cocktail. While waiting for the cocktail and Lady Woodcote's luncheon party, Philip, from where he sat, could not help but overhear the conversation of Faust and of the man with him. The latter ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... bristle-tailed manakins. We saw also the curious black umbrella-bird; which is so called from having a hood like an umbrella spread over its head. Flocks of paroquets were seen, and bright blue chatterers; and now and then a lovely pompadour, having delicate white wings and claret-coloured plumage. Monkeys of various sorts were scrambling among the boughs, coming out to look at us, and chattering loudly as if to inquire why we had come into their domains. Now and then we caught sight of a sloth ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... want from me?" Mrs. Feinermann gasped. Her hat was awry, and what had once been a modish pompadour was toppled to one side and shed hairpins with every palsied nod of her head. "I ain't done nothing!" ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... Felicite de Brehan, daughter of the comte de Plelo, coupled with his connexion with the Richelieu family, gave, him an important place at court. He was a member of the so-called parti devot, the faction opposed to Madame de Pompadour, to the Jansenists and to the parlement, and his hostility to the new ideas drew upon him the anger of the pamphleteers. In 1753 he was appointed commandant (governor) of Brittany and soon became unpopular in that province, which had retained a large number of privileges called "liberties.'' ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... period of woman's activity—a period influenced mainly by Louise of Savoy, whose relations to France were as disastrous as were those of any mistress. The influence exerted by her may in some respects be compared with that of Mme. de Pompadour; though, were the merits and demerits of both carefully tested, the results would hardly be in favor of Louise. Strong in diplomacy and intrigue, she was unscrupulous and wanton—morally corrupt; she did nothing to further ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... where Louis the Great basked in the somewhat chary smiles of his latest (and last) favorite, his grandson, the fifteenth of his name, was to install the fascinating Madame de Pompadour. The very apartments once dedicated to the use of Madame de Maintenon, and later to Queen Marie Leczinska, became the living-rooms of the reigning mistress of ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... The great prince treated all his political opponents in this way, and aroused deadly enemies against himself. He joked at the table, and put in circulation stinging verses and pamphlets about Madame de Pompadour in France and the Empresses Elizabeth and Maria Theresa. Similarly, he sometimes caressed, sometimes scolded and scratched his poetical ideal, Voltaire; but he also proceeded in this way with people whom he really esteemed highly, in whom he put the greatest confidence, and whom he ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... follows: "Could you tell me something of the location of the porcelain works in Sevres, France, and what the process is of making those beautiful things which come from there? How is the name of the town pronounced? Can you tell me anything of the history of Mme. Pompadour? Who was the Dauphin? Did you learn anything of Louis XV whilst in France? What are your ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... Treron Pompadoura. The Pompadour pigeon. "The Prince of Canino has shown that this is a totally distinct bird, much smaller, with the quantity of maroon colour on the mantle greatly reduced."—Paper by Mr. BLYTH, Mag. Nat Hist. p. ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... the highest functionaries of the state, but a friend of Louis XVIII, and necessarily a little bit Pompadour. ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... began, as I have said, at the mistress-ridden Court of Louis XV, and it has unfortunately kept the stamp of its origin. At that Court art, to suit the tastes of the Pompadour and the Du Barri, became consciously frivolous, became almost a part of the toilet. The artist was the slave of the mistress, and seems to have enjoyed his chains. In this slavery he did produce something charming; he did invest that narrow ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... excellent apricot-brandy. Small, thin, restless, she presented a parched appearance, with bright, round, beady eyes continually roving in search of information from beneath the straggling fringe of a crumpled Pompadour transformation, for those horrors had recently become fashionable, and the whole world of women were vying with one another in the simulation of the criminal type of ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... gloomily. 'If I had not seen you at work, if I did not know the fertility of your mind, I own I should tremble for the consequence. But it is in this field that men must recognise their inability. All the great negotiators, when they have not been women, have had women at their elbows. Madame de Pompadour was ill served; she had not found her Gondremark; but what a mighty politician! Catherine de' Medici, too, what justice of sight, what readiness of means, what elasticity against defeat! But alas! madam, her Featherheads were her own children; and she had that ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... no doubt, of Valerie—a low easy-chair and a man's smoking-chair, and a pretty toilet chest of drawers in rosewood, the mirror handsomely framed a la Pompadour. A lamp hanging from the ceiling gave a subdued light, increased by wax candles on the table ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Queen Marie Leczinska is famous for the splendour of her volumes bound by Padeloup. Even the libraries of the daughters of Louis Quinze, three diligent and well-instructed princesses, are only known apart by the colours of the moroccos employed by Derome. The dull contents of the Pompadour's shelves would hardly be noticeable without her 'three castles,' or the 'ducal mantle,' by Biziaux; and no one but Louis Quinze himself would have praised the intelligent choice of Du Barry, or cast a look upon her collection of odd volumes ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... in her husband's love than ever, and with long years of splendour and happiness before her. That his fancy, ever wayward, flitted to other women as fair as herself, did not trouble her a whit. Like Madame de Pompadour, she was prepared even to encourage such rivalry, so long as the first place (and this she knew) in her husband's heart was unassailably ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... in others—they are all liars; the many who imagine a vain thing and pretend to be what they are not liars everyone of them. It is bound to be so in the great cities, and it is a mark of decay. The skirts of Elegabalus, the wigs and rouge pots of Madame Pompadour, the crucifix of Machiavelli and the innocent smile of Fernando Wood stand for something horribly and vastly false in the people about them. For truth you ve got to get back into the woods. You can find men there a good deal as God made them' ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... pompadour like a penwiper, round eyes, and a wide smile. He trotted out to Lana in the reception-room and gave her comradely greeting. "Any other night but this, Lana Corson, and I'd have been up to your house to pat Juba ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... a man'll get tired of himself, even, if he's condemned to it too continual, and think of that blondinetted typewriter for a steady diet—to a man like Morris! Imagine her when her hair dye started to give out—green streaks in that pompadour! So, knowin' my man, I'd take courage an' I'd think, 'Seein' me cut off, he'll soon be wantin' me more than ever'—an' so he does. It's got so now that, glance up at that hotel any time I will, I can generally find him on the lookout, an' many's the time I've ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... mother of Francis I. Voltaire said that Christina of Sweden was the only sovereign of her time who maintained the dignity of the throne against Mazarin and Richelieu. Frederick the Great said that the Seven Years' War was waged against three women,—Elizabeth of Russia, Maria Theresa, and Mme. Pompadour. There is nothing impotent in the statesmanship of women when they are admitted to exercise it: they are only powerless for good when they are obliged to obtain by wheedling and flattery a sway that should be recognized, responsible, ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... I only want to say that Cheesehurst-by-the-Sea would be a nice place if a person could wear armor plate to avoid the mosquitoes. I have rubbed my complexion with peppermint, and I have worn smoke-sticks in my hair till I burned my pompadour, but the mosquitoes still look upon me as their meal ticket. I expect to insult everybody present and leave for home ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... criticism of art has been so slight, and where production has been so noble, so bounteous, so superb, published the story of what Italy had shown to them. Madame de Pompadour designed to make her brother the Superintendent of fine arts, and she despatched Cochin, the great engraver of the day, to accompany him in a studious tour through the holy land of the arts. Cochin was away nearly two years, and on his return produced three little volumes ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... that there was no safety in flight. Down the shore he stood, without a hat, his hair blown pompadour by the wind. ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... friend to him, capable of understanding many things, always at his beck and call, always cheerful, always bright and witty. Although she had overstepped the thirties by a year, she had lost nothing of her youth, vivacity and great personal charm, for she possessed the secret of Madame de Pompadour's fascination, that 'beaute sans traits' which lights up with unexpected graces. Moreover, she possessed that rare gift commonly called tact. A fine feminine sense of the fitness of things was an infallible guide to her. In her relations with a host of acquaintances ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... thing. It is made up of clothes, smiles, a pompadour, things of which space and prudence forbid the enumeration here. These things by themselves do not constitute a girl which is obvious; nor is any one girl without these things which is not ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... not that Louis XIV. and Louis XV. were kings of any virtue or religion. Both were men of exceedingly immoral habits. We have elsewhere described Louis XIV., but Louis XV., the Well-beloved, was perhaps the greatest profligate of the two. Madame de Pompadour, when she ceased to be his mistress, became his procuress. This infamous woman had the command of the state purse, and she contrived to build for the sovereign a harem, called the Parc-aux-Cerfs, in the park of Versailles, which cost the country at least a hundred millions ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... the ways of economy take some time to acquire. In the opposite corner of the carriage sat an elderly woman, obviously English, obviously also of the grande dame species, with aquiline features, white hair dressed pompadour fashion, and an expression compounded of indifference and quizzical good humour. The good humour was in the ascendant as she watched the kindly Belgians crowd round her fellow-passenger, envelop her in their arms, murmur tearful farewells, ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... ornamented with plaques of the beautiful and choice pate tendre, the delicacy of which was admirably adapted to enrich the light and frivolous furnishing of the dainty boudoir of a Madame du Barri or a Madame Pompadour. ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... significance. Take, for instance, the death of John Goderic, in the film version of Gilbert Parker's The Seats of the Mighty. The major leaves this world in the first third of the story. The photoplay use of his death is, that he may whisper in the ear of Robert Moray to keep certain letters of La Pompadour well hidden. The fact that it is the desire of a dying man gives sharpness to his request. Later in the story Moray is hard-pressed by the villain for those same papers. Then the scene of the death is flashed for an instant on the screen, ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... New York, and half a dozen enormous winter and summer places, looked no more like a boniface than he did like a little girl on communion Sunday. He was a small, wispy, waspish fellow with a violently upright, raging pompadour, a mustache which, in spite of careful attempts at waxing, persisted in sticking straight forward, and a sharp hard nose which had apparently been tempered ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... soft with entreaty beneath their black lashes, as occasion might demand. Her hair, too, was brown, and shadowed her face in a wavy mass held most objectionable by her aunts. That a girl barely fourteen should have decided views on the subject of dress, and insist upon wearing what she called a pompadour and having her belts extremely pointed in front, was surprising to Aunt Virginia, shocking to ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... salon, under a reading lamp, sat a man whose iron-gray hair was patched with cowlicks. Combs and brushes produced no results, so the owner had had it clipped to a short pompadour. It was the skull of a fighting man, for all that frontally it was marked by a high intellectuality. This sort of head generally gives the possessor yachts like Wanderer II, tremendous bank accounts; the type ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... all parties, and disgusted with all, Paine moved to a remote quarter of Paris, and took rooms in a house which had once belonged to Mme. de Pompadour. Brissot, Thomas Christie, Mary Wolstonecraft, and Joel Barlow were his principal associates. Two Englishmen, "friends of humanity," and an ex-officer of the garde-du-corps lodged in the same building. The neighborhood was not without its considerable persons. Sanson, most celebrated ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... been Louis the Fifteenth, or it may have been Madame de Pompadour, who said, "After me the deluge;" but whichever it was, very much that thought was in Mr. Buchanan's mind in 1861 as the time for his exit from the White House approached. At the North there had ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... older than Peter—must have been: I never knew exactly. It would not have been wise to ask her, and nobody else knew but Peter, and he never told. And yet there was no mark of real old age upon her. She and Peter were alike in this. Her hair, worn Pompadour, was gray—an honest black-and-white gray; her eyes were bright as needle points; the skin slightly wrinkled, but fresh and rosy—a spare, straight, well-groomed old lady of—perhaps sixty—perhaps sixty-five, depending on her dress, ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... assistance of a Spanish army. The Duchess of Maine had fired the train, without the knowledge, she said, and probably against the will, too, of her husband, more indolent than she in his perfidy. Some scatter-brains of great houses were mixed up in the affair; MM. de Richelieu, de Laval, and de Pompadour; there was secret coming and going between the castle of Sceaux and the house of the Spanish ambassador, the Prince of Cellamare; M. de Malezieux, the secretary and friend of the duchess, drew up a form of appeal from the French ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... ought to be the S.E. trades), and the weather has been, beyond all description, lovely ever since. Cool, but soft, sunny and bright—in short, perfect; only the sky is so pale. Last night the sunset was a vision of loveliness, a sort of Pompadour paradise; the sky seemed full of rose-crowned amorini, and the moon wore a rose-coloured veil of bright pink cloud, all so light, so airy, so brilliant, and so fleeting, that it was a kind of intoxication. It is far less grand than northern colour, but so lovely, ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... edge of the withering forest. They were conscious that the place was worthy of its name, Fontainebleau. The name is evocative of stately days and traditions, and Mildred fancied herself a king's mistress—La Pompadour. The name is a romance, an excitement, and, throwing her arms ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... Cranbrook was seated—or rather buried—in a deep Roman easy-chair, whose faded tapestries would have been esteemed a precious find by a relic-hunter. Judging by the baroque style of its decorations, its tarnished gilding, and its general air a la Pompadour, it was evident that it had spent its youthful days in some princely palace of the last century, and had by slow and gradual stages descended to its present lowly condition. A curious sense of the evanescence of all earthly things stole over the young ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... No. 3 is for calling and all entertainments where the bonnet stays on; it has a baby bang edge a trifle curled and a substantial cushion atop to hold the hat pins; while No. 4, the one she wore on our arrival, is an elaborate evening toupie with a pompadour rolling over on itself and drooping slightly over one eye while it melts into a butterfly bow and handful of puffs on the crown that in turn end ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... Eden, a pretty, gentle woman with a face of dreaming tragedy (it was she who had defended Rosalind outside the gate); Miss Valentina Gilchrist, a middle-aged woman who displayed a large grey pompadour above a rosy face with turned-back features which, when she was not excited, had an incredulous quizzical expression (Miss Gilchrist was the one who had said they had been led into a trap); Miss Ethel Farmer, fair, attenuated, scholastic, wearing pince-nez with an air of not seeing you; ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... "Madame de Pompadour's brother received Letters of Nobility from his Majesty, and was appointed superintendent of the buildings and gardens. He often presented to her Majesty, through the medium of his sister, the rarest flowers, pineapples, and early vegetables ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... assembled for breakfast there was Cousin Egmont sitting beside Dr. Grayson at the table, notebook in hand, looking about him in a loftily curious way. He was a small, slightly built youth, sallow of complexion and insignificant of feature, with pale hair brushed up into an exaggerated pompadour, and a neat little moustache. In contrast to Dr. Grayson's heroic proportions he looked like a Vest Pocket Edition alongside of ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... favour of Madame de Pompadour by procuring for her some letters which Louis XV. had written to his cousin Madame de Choiseul, with whom the king had formerly had an intrigue; and after a short time as bailli of the Vosges he was given the appointment of ambassador ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... beauty," were no longer disfigured by stiff, outstanding bretelles and ruffled-lace sleeves, but revealed in all their delicate charm by the close-fitting plain dark net. And above them rose the head of such unsuspected loveliness of contour, which rats and puffs and pompadour had once deformed grotesquely, but which the wonderful new hair-dressing accentuated in a transfiguring degree. The poise of Mary Alice's head, the carriage of her shoulders, were fine. But she had never known, before, that those were big points of beauty. ...
— Everybody's Lonesome - A True Fairy Story • Clara E. Laughlin
... blue; the paper, in imitation of a Pompadour chintz, represented a trellis overgrown with morning-glories. A huge table, taking up two-thirds of the room, was her ironing-table. It was covered with thick blanketing and draped with a strip of cretonne patterned with ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... received at the court, and the boy is said to have expressed his surprise when Mme. Pompadour refused to kiss him, saying: "Who is she, that she will not kiss me? Have I not been kissed by the queen?" In London his improvisations and piano sonatas excited the greatest admiration. Here he also published his third work. These journeys ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... away by the Continental style. For women, high heels and high caps had run riot, and hoops and flowing trains of brocades and velvets and glistening silks. And now the wife of the First Consul of France was the Empress Josephine, and the Empire style had swept away the pompadour and everything else. It had the advantage of being more simple, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... or was he a lord? He is a kind of overcoat sleeve now. Who was Mr. Mackintosh? Was it Lord Brougham, too? Gasolene has extinguished his immortality. Gladstone has become a bag, Gainsborough is a hat. The beautiful Madame Pompadour, beloved of kings, is a kind of hair-cut now. The Mikado of Japan is a joke, set to music, heavenly music, to be sure, but with its tongue in its angelic cheek. An operetta did that. You cannot think of the Mikado ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... each gave an order for a 'Pompadour, which seemed, on the whole, to merit the palm. It was certainly the last ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... Count St. Germain, and put forth the astounding pretensions that soon gave him celebrity over the whole continent. The celebrated Marquis de Belleisle made his acquaintance about that time in Germany, and brought him to Paris, where he was introduced to Madame de Pompadour, whose favor he very quickly gained. The influence of that famous beauty was just then paramount with Louis XV, and the Count was soon one of the most eminent men at court. He was remarkably handsome—as an old portrait at Friersdorf, in Saxony, in the rooms he once occupied, sufficiently indicated; ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... letters before her, and a sheet of foolscap scrawled over with names. She had been planning her campaign for the season—so many dinners, so many dances, alternate Thursdays in May and June; and a juvenile fancy ball, at which a Pompadour of seven years of age could lead off the Lancers with a Charles the Twelfth of ten, with an eight-year-old Mephistopheles and a six-year-old Anna ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... le Marquis, and also of Madame la Marquise de Pompadour, are beneath my feet in the valise, Monsieur Renard. I have the sword between my legs," replied Henri, the costumer coming to the surface long enough to ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... Annie Lee, has grown to look curiously like her husband. Her face has become longer, sharper, more aggressive. She wears her yellow hair in a high pompadour, and is bedecked with rings and chains and "beauty pins." Her tight, high-heeled shoes give her an awkward walk, and she is always more or less preoccupied with her clothes. As she sat at the table, she kept telling her youngest daughter to "be careful now, ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... Saxon dinner service and a set of Dutch furniture from Amsterdam; Mme. Hanska sent him some porcelains from Germany; he sent to Tours for a writing desk and a commode of the Louis XVI period, he bought a bed supposed to have belonged to Mme. de Pompadour and which he intended for his guest chamber, besides a parlour set in carved woodwork, "of the last degree of magnificence," and a dining-room fountain made by Bernard Palissy for Henry II or Charles IX. Little by little he accumulated these marvels, destined ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... the fact in good time, and as she did not wish to give up the principal character which she played in society there so easily, she reflected as to what means she could employ to bind him to her in another manner. It is well known that the notorious Marchioness de Pompadour, who was one of the mistresses of Louis XV. of France, when her own charms did not suffice to fetter that changeable monarch, conceived the idea of securing the chief power in the State and in society ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Emperor, Severus, declares that he has held every position in life from the lowest to the highest, and found no good in any. Look into the history of France, and see what the world gave to Madame de Pompadour at the last. She had sacrificed virtue and honour for the glitter of the court of Louis XV. And now in the latter days she tells us that she has no inclination for the things which once pleased her. Her magnificent house in Paris was refurnished in the most lavish ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... help to banish this triste mood of ennui. Eh, bien! I soon had a very fine bird. Ah, Monsieur, I cannot tell you what a fine bird was that fellow,—Don Juan his name,—such an arch-rascal! such a merry eye he had! such a proud, Pompadour throat! such volumes of song! such splendid powers of mimicry! I kept him with me a week to test his gifts, and I began to envy Cornelia her treasure,—he was so tame, so bold, so intelligent. In that week, by whistling to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... Gaston, the brother of Louis XIII, and a portrait bust of Madame de Sevigne, whose charming face seems to belong to Blois, although she has said little about this chateau in her letters. Here also are portraits of Madame de Pompadour, Vigee Lebrun, as beautiful as any of the court beauties whom she painted, and a charming head of Mademoiselle de Blois, the daughter of Louise de La Valliere, whom Madame de Sevigne called "the good little princess who is so ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... this country, elderly women are not expected to go in low neck unless they wish to, so that the chaperon can wear a dress such as she would wear at a dinner—either a velvet or brocade, cut in Pompadour shape, with a profusion of beautiful lace. All her ornaments should match in character, and she should be as unlike her charge as possible. The young girls look best in light gossamer material, in tulle, ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... about this domesticating of their art? We are not told of the wry face they made when, with ideals in their souls, they were set to compose chair-seats for the Pompadour. Her preference was for Boucher. Perhaps his revenge showed itself by treating the bourgeoise courtisane to a bit of coarseness now and ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... once more to determined action. They have been found, in times of trouble, giving to statesmen sound counsel, which, followed, has led to beneficial results; and, alas! they have, equally with men, been found capable of base intrigue. Cleopatra was fully on a par with Marc Antony, Madame de Pompadour ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster |
