She was King Louis XV’s courtesan and enjoyed broad access and influence at the court of Versailles. She granted audiences to ambassadors and was involved in the dispensation of favors, exercising wide decision‑making power. [More information: e.g., Wikipedia, etc.]
Madame de Pompadour writes:
“He enriched the king’s cabinet with his paintings by Velázquez and Murillo, and presented the Marquis with the most priceless and beautiful gemstones. For this singular man was reputed fabulously rich and bestowed diamonds and jewels with astonishing liberality.”
“A profound knowledge of all languages, ancient and modern; a prodigious memory; erudition, glimpses of which could be caught amid the caprices of his conversation, which was always entertaining and at times highly engaging; an inexhaustible ability to vary the tone and topics of his talk; to be ever fresh and to infuse the unexpected into the most trivial discourse—these made him an excellent interlocutor. At times he would recount anecdotes of the court of Valois, or of princes even more remote, with such precision in every detail that he almost created the illusion he had been an eyewitness to what he narrated. He had traveled the whole world, and the king listened with interest to his accounts of journeys through Asia and Africa, and to his stories of the courts of Russia, Turkey, and Austria. He seemed to have a more intimate knowledge of the secrets of each court than the king’s own chargé d’affaires.” Germain.”)
(Source: Isabel Cooper‑Oakley, “The Count of St. Germain.”)
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