The Secret Memoirs of Madame la Marquise de Pompadour, collected
and arranged by Jules Beaujoint (Remington and Co.), is neither fish nor fowl. In other words, it is neither sufficiently piquant from the anecdotical, nor sufficiently serious from the historical, point of view. It is composed of autobiographical notes, which, according to the Introduction to this volume, were entrusted by the Pompadour before death to a porter, Mesnard by name, to be given to her brother, the Marquis de Marigny. The Marquis died in 1781, and the manuscript of these notes was sold with the other contents of his library. The purchaser published the Secret Memoirs originally in Holland. It was hardly worth while to republish them here a hundred years later. Even with M. Beaujoint's cement of historical narrative, they are neither exhilarating nor instructive reading. The truth, no doubt, is that Madame de Pompadour, while an ambitious woman, and perhaps,. after her own fashion, devoted to Louis XV., was not able in the true sense of the word. She was a prophetess, however. Her last words in this volume are,—" The State is hurrying onwards to a revolution."
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