glect
and almost intolerable insult.

[Footnote 151: It extended as far as the entrance to the quadrangle
opposite the Pont des Arts. Blondel's drawings show a double line of
trees, north and south, enclosing a Renaissance garden of elaborate
design: a charming _bosquet_, or wood, filled the eastern extremity.]

The immoral Duke of Bourbon was followed by Cardinal Fleury, and at
length France experienced a period of honest administration, which
enabled the sorely-tried land to recover some of its wonted
elasticity. The Cardinal was, however, dominated by the Jesuits, and
both Protestants and Jansenists felt their cruel hand. During the
persecution of the Jansenists in 1782 a deacon, named Paris, died and
was canonised by the popular voice. Miracles were said to have been
wrought at his sepulchre in the cemetery of St. Medard; fanatics flung
themselves down on the tomb and writhed in horrible convulsions. So
great was the excitement and disorder that the Archbishop of Paris
denounced the miracles as the work of Satan, and the Government
ordered the cemetery to be closed. The next morning a profane
inscription was found over the entrance to the cemetery:--

"_De par le roi defense a Dieu
De faire miracle en ce lieu._"[152]

[Footnote 152: "By order of the king, God is forbidden to work
miracles in this place."]

Before Louis sank irrevocably into the slothful indulgence that
stained his later years, he was stirred to essay a kingly _role_ by
Madame de Chateauroux, the youngest of four sisters who had
successively been his mistresses. She fired his indolent imagination
by appeals to the memory of his glorious ancestors, and the war of the
Austrian succession being in progress, Louis set forth with the army
of the great Marshal Saxe for Metz, where in August 1744 he was
stricken down by a violent fever, and in an access of piety was
induced to promise to dismiss his mistress and return to his abused
queen. As he lay on the brink of death, given up by his physicians
and prepared for the end by the administration of the last sacraments,
a royal phrase admirably adapted to capture the imagination of a
gallant people came from his lips. "Remember," he said to Marshal
Noailles, "remember that when Louis XIII. was being carried to the
grave, the Prince of Conde won a battle for France." The agitation of
the Parisians as the king hovered between life and death was
indescribable. The churches were thronged with sobbing