es towards
the door, the Marquis of La Fare, captain of the Regent's guards, shows
himself between the door and the marshal, arrests him, and demands his
sword. Le Blanc hands him the order from the king, and at the same
instant Count d'Artagnan, commandant of the musketeers, blocks him on the
opposite side to La Fare. The marshal shouts, remonstrates; he is
pitched into a chair, shut up in it, and passed out by one of the windows
which opens door-wise on to the garden; at the bottom of the steps of the
orangery behold a carriage with six horses, surrounded by twenty
musketeers. The marshal, furious, storms, threatens; he is carried into
the vehicle, the carriage starts, and in less than three hours the
marshal is at Villeroi, eight or nine leagues from Versailles." The king
wept a moment or two without saying a word; he was consoled by the return
of the Bishop of Frejus, with whom it was supposed to be all over, but
who was simply at Baville, at President Lamoignon's; his pupil was as
much attached to him as he was capable of being; Fleury remained alone
with him, and Marshal Villeroy was escorted to Lyons, of which he was
governor. He received warning not to leave it, and was not even present
at the king's coronation, which took place at Rheims, on the 25th of
October, 1722. Amidst the royal pomp and festivities, a significant
formality was for the first time neglected; that was, admitting into the
nave of the church the people, burgesses and artisans, who were wont to
join their voices to those of the clergy and nobility when, before the
anointment of the king, demand was made in a loud voice for the consent
of the assembly, representing the nation. Even in external ceremonies,
the kingship was becoming every day more and more severed from national
sentiment and national movement.

The king's majority, declared on the 19th of February, 1723, had made no
change in the course of the government; the young prince had left Paris,
and resumed possession of that Palace of Versailles, still full of
mementoes of the great king. The Regent, more and more absorbed by his
pleasures, passed a great deal of time at Paris; Dubois had the
government to himself.

His reign was not long at this unparalleled pinnacle of his greatness; he
had been summoned to preside at the assembly of the clergy, and had just
been elected to the French Academy, where he was received by Fontenelle,
when a sore, from which he had long suffered,