If at the cost of unnumbered thousands of francs, Madame de Pompadour
urged on her royal lover and contrived new outlets for his craze for
building, it was because she was adroit enough to enliven by this means
an existence that often palled upon him. If, throughout the long
series of decisions and contradictions regarding changes in the
chateau, the Monarch commanded one day that a library and marble bath
be added to the apartments of his daughter, and on another that useful
halls, staircases and offices be removed; if he ordered the
construction of a great Opera House with a facade like a temple, and,
in another mood, made away with insignificant rooms that consumed no
more space than would have filled a remote corner of this great hall of
the theater--the motive was ever the same: to banish for the time-being
the hovering specter of boredom and melancholy. "Louis XV," comments
the author of "France Under Louis XV," "was not a man that sought
relief from ceremony and adulation in any useful work; but, on the
other hand, this dull grandeur was not dear to his heart; he did not
derive from it the majestic satisfaction that it furnished to his
predecessor. From youth to age the King was bored; he wearied of his
throne, his court, himself; he was indifferent to all things, and
unconcerned as to the weal or the woe of his people."
One of the Salons on which he lavished all the art of his epoch was the
reception-room of the royal Adelaide.
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