Madame Pompadour (1721-1764) by Nancy Mitford

Very little of Paris as we know it today existed in the 1720s; no Place de la Concorde, Madeleine, or Rue de Rivoli, the louvre half its present size, no Ecole Militaire, or Pantheon, no bridge between the Pont Royal and the Pont de Sevres, no big thoroughfares or boulevards. The layout was that of an overgrown village; narrow streets surrounded the houses of the rich merchants and of the ennobled lawyers known as the noblesse de robe, very much despised by the noblesse d'epee, the old feudal families