Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/714

700 unhappy, and should rather be pitied!" D'Estiolles being informed of it left the kingdom."

In the mean time, no pleasures were thought such, that had not the stamp of the new favourite's contrivance, or the sanction of her approbation. The king found her necessary to the pleasure of his life, and thought no mark of his favour too great; accordingly, he soon gave her a marquisate, with the title of La Pompadour; and created Poisson, who was her brother by the mother's side, marquis of Vandiere. She now purchased a palace at Paris, called the Hôtel d'Evreux, near the Thuilleries, which she pulled down, and rebuilt almost from the ground. This caused great heart-burning among the Parisians; and their rage was not a little exasperated by the circumstance of a large parcel of ground being, on this occasion, taken in, towards enlarging her gardens, out of the Course; a place so called from its serving for the nobility and gentry to take the air in coaches. She also procured a superb hotel at Versailles, not for herself, for she had apartments in the palace, but for her numerous retinue. The king, besides, gave her the royal palace of Cressy for life; but the people were justly incensed at such a misapplication of a part of the royal domain. He also built her a magnificent pleasure-house, called Belle Vue, from the spot on which it is built, just between Paris and Versailles: here too, in order to form the gardens, several proprietors of lands were despotically compelled to part with them, much against their will, and at a fixed price.

Such high marks of distinction, bestowed with such unbounded profusion, could not but create to the person on whom they were conferred a number of enemies. The dissatisfaction was general; but it soon became evident, that the way to ruin, let the rank and services of