PLATE I.—MADAME DE POMPADOUR. Frontispiece
(In the National Gallery of Scotland)

Edinburgh is fortunate in possessing this, one of the world-famous examples of Boucher’s exquisite portraiture. He painted with rare charm more than once this wonderful woman, “the king’s morsel,” Jeanne Poisson, Madame Lenormant d’Etioles, who became the notorious Marquise de Pompadour. He gives us perhaps too dainty a butterfly; for, of a truth, this woman’s prettiness masked an iron nerve, an unflinching courage, and a capacity and talents which must have reached to fame in any human being whose frame they illumined. Nor is there hint of those hard qualities that robbed her of mercy, nor allowed her to bend an ear to suffering.