reached all at once a
serious crisis; an operation was indispensable, but he set himself
obstinately against it; the Duke of Orleans obliged him to submit to it,
and it was his death-blow; the wretched cardinal expired, without having
had time to receive the sacraments.

The elevation and power of Dubois had the fatal effect of lowering France
in her own eyes; she had felt that she was governed by a man whom she
despised, and had a right to despise; this was a deep-seated and lasting
evil; authority never recovered from the blow thus struck at its moral
influence. Dubois, however, was more able and more farsighted in his
foreign policy than the majority of his predecessors and his
contemporaries were; without definitively losing the alliance of Spain,
re-attached to the interests of France by the double treaty of marriage,
he had managed to form a firm connection with England, and to rally round
France the European coalition but lately in arms against her. He
maintained and made peace ingloriously; he obtained it sometimes by
meannesses in bearing and modes of acting; he enriched himself by his
intrigues, abroad as well as at home; his policy none the less was
steadfastly French, even in his relations with the court of Rome, and
in spite of his eager desire for the cardinal's hat. He died sadly,
shamefully, without a friend and without regret, even on the part of the
Regent, whom he had governed and kept in hand by active and adroit
assiduity, by a hardihood and an effrontery to the influence of which
that prince submitted, all the while despising it. Dubois had raised up
again, to place himself upon it, that throne of premier minister on which
none had found a seat since Richelieu and Mazarin; the Duke of Orleans
succeeded him without fuss, without parade, without even appearing to
have any idea of the humiliation inflicted upon him by that valet, lying
in his coffin, whom he had raised to power, and whose place he was about
to fill for a few days.

[Illustration: Death of the Regent---107]

On the 2d of December, 1723, three months and a half after the death of
Dubois, the Duke of Orleans succumbed in his turn. Struck down by a
sudden attack of apoplexy, whilst he was chatting with his favorite for
the time, the Duchess of Falarie, he expired without having recovered
consciousness. Lethargized by the excesses of the table and debauchery
of all kinds, more and more incapable of application and work, the prince