ble myself very little about it; but if your
Majesty pleased, you might tell us more about it than anybody." "No,"
said the king; "I shall have nothing to do with it; I shall look on from
Mont-Pagnotte" (a post of observation out of cannon-shot). "Ah, sir,"
replied Souvre, "your Majesty will be very cold there, and very ill
lodged." " How so?" said the king. "Sir," replied Souvre, because your
ancestors never had any house built there." "A very pretty answer," adds
the advocate Barbier; "and as regards the question, nothing can be made
of it, because the king is mighty close."

A powerful intrigue was urging the king to war. Cardinal Fleury,
prudent, economizing, timid as he was, had taken a liking for a man of
adventurous, and sometimes chimerical spirit. "Count Belle-Isle,
grandson of Fouquet," says M. d'Argenson, "had more wit than judgment,
and more fire than force; but he aimed very high." He dreamed of
revising the map of Europe, and of forming a zone of small states,
destined to protect France against the designs of Austria. Louis XV.
pretended to nothing, demanded nothing for the price of his assistance;
but France had been united from time immemorial to Bavaria: she was bound
to raise the elector to the imperial throne. If it happened afterwards,
in the dismemberment of the Austrian dominions, that the Low Countries
fell to the share of France, it was the natural sequel of past conquests
of Flanders, Lorraine, and the Three Bishoprics. Count Belle-Isle did
not disturb with his dreams the calm of the aged cardinal; he was modest
in his military aspirations. The French navy was ruined, the king had
hardly twenty vessels to send to sea; that mattered little, as England
and Holland took no part in the contest; Austria was not a maritime
power; Spain joined with France to support the elector. A body of forty
thousand men was put under the orders of that prince, who received the
title of lieutenant-general of the armies of the King of France. Louis
XV. acted only in the capacity of Bavaria's ally and auxiliary.
Meanwhile Marshal Belle-Isle, the King's ambassador and plenipotentiary
in Germany, had just signed a treaty with Frederick II., guaranteeing to
that monarch Lower Silesia. At the same time, a second French army,
under the orders of Marshal Maillebois, entered Germany; Saxony and
Poland came into the coalition. The King of England, George II.,
faithful to the Pragmatic-Sanction, hurrying over to