ount Solms, "that I merely tell you about the
impotent efforts of the French ministry's envy just to have a laugh at
them, and to let you see in what visions the consciousness of its own
weaknesses is capable of leading that court to indulge." "O! where is
Poland?" Madame Dubarry had said to Count Wicholorsky, King Stanislaus
Augustus' charge d'affaires, who was trying to interest her in the
misfortunes of his country.

The partition of Poland was barely accomplished, the confederates of
Barr, overwhelmed by the Russian troops, were still arriving in France to
seek refuge there, and already King Louis XV., for a moment roused by the
audacious aggression of the German courts, had sunk back into the
shameful lethargy of his life. When Madame Louise, the pious Carmelite
of St. Denis, succeeded in awakening in her father's soul a gleam of
religious terror, the courtiers in charge of the royal pleasures
redoubled their efforts to distract the king from thoughts so perilous
for their own fortunes. Louis XV., fluctuating between remorse and
depravity, ruled by Madame Dubarry, bound hand and foot to the
triumvirate of Chancellor Maupeou, Abbe Terray, and the Duke of
Aiguillon, who were consuming between them in his name the last remnants
of absolute power, fell suddenly ill of small-pox. The princesses, his
daughters, had never had that terrible disease, the scourge and terror of
all classes of society, yet they bravely shut themselves up with the
king, lavishing their attentions upon him to the last gasp. Death,
triumphant, had vanquished the favorite. Madame Dubarry was sent away as
soon as the nature of the malady had declared itself. The king charged
his grand almoner to ask pardon of the courtiers for the scandal he had
caused them. "Kings owe no account of their conduct save to God only,"
he had often repeated to comfort himself for the shame of his life. "It
is just He whom I fear," said Maria Theresa, pursued by remorse for the
partition of Poland.

Louis XV. died on the 10th of May, 1774, in his sixty-fourth year, after
reigning fifty-nine years, despised by the people who had not so long ago
given him the name of Well-beloved, and whose attachment he had worn out
by his cold indifference about affairs and the national interests as much
as by the irregularities of his life. With him died the old French
monarchy, that proud power which had sometimes ruled Europe whilst always
holding a great position therein.