nish ambition. "I requickened a corpse," he used to say.
His views were extensive and daring, but often chimerical; he had reduced
to a nullity the sovereign whom he governed for so long, keeping him shut
up far away from the world, in a solitude which he was himself almost the
only one to interrupt. "The queen has the devil in her," he used to say;
"if she finds a man of the sword who has some mental resources and is a
pretty good general, she will make a racket in France and in Europe."
The queen did not find a general; and on the 17th of February, 1720,
peace was signed at the Hague between Spain and the powers in coalition
against her, to the common satisfaction of France and Spain, whom so many
ties already united. The haughty Elizabeth Farnese looked no longer to
anybody but the Duke of Orleans for the elevation of her children.

So great success in negotiation, however servile had been his bearing,
had little by little increased the influence of Dubois over his master.
The Regent knew and despised him, but he submitted to his sway and
yielded to his desires, sometimes to his fancies. Dubois had for a long
while comprehended that the higher dignities of the church could alone
bring him to the grandeur of which he was ambitious; yet everything about
him seemed to keep them out of his reach, his scandalous life, his
perpetual intrigues, the baseness, not of his origin, but of his
character and conduct; nevertheless, the see of Cambrai having become
vacant by the death of Cardinal de la Tremoille, Dubois conceived the
hope of obtaining it. "Impudent as he was," says St. Simon, "great as
was the sway he had acquired over his master, he found himself very much
embarrassed, and masked his effrontery by ruse; he told the Duke of
Orleans that he had dreamed a funny dream, that he was Archbishop of
Cambrai. The Regent, who saw what he was driving at, answered him in a
tone of contempt, 'Thou, Archbishop of Cambrai! thou hast no thought of
such a thing?' And the other persisting, he bade him think of all the
scandal of his life. Dubois had gone too far to stop on so fine a road,
and quoted to him precedents, of which there were, unfortunately, only
too many. The Duke of Orleans, less moved by such bad reasons than put
to it how to resist the suit of a man whom he was no longer wont to dare
gainsay in anything, sought to get out of the affair. 'Why! who would
consecrate thee?' 'Ah! if that's all,' replied Dubois, ch