ifficult to rival; and this was
the King himself, whom the whole nation was called upon to obey. If
Louis XIV. was a Nebuchadnezzar, unapproachable from pride, Louis XV.
was a Sardanapalus in effeminacy and insouciant revelries. The shameless
infamies of his life were too revolting to bear more than a passing
allusion; and I should blush to tear away the historic veil which covers
up his vices from the common eye. I shrink from showing to what depths
humanity can sink, even when clothed in imperial purple and seated on
the throne of state. The countless memoirs of that wicked age have
however, exposed to the indignant eye of posterity the regal
debaucheries of Versailles and the pollutions of the Pare aux
Cerfs,--that infamous seraglio which cost the State one hundred millions
of livres, at the lowest estimate. And this was but a part of the great
system of waste and folly. Five hundred millions of the national debt
were incurred for expenses too ignominious to be even named. The King,
however, was not fond of pomp; it was fatiguing for him to bear, and he
generally shut himself from the sight and intercourse of any but
convivial friends,--no, not friends, for to absolute monarchs the
pleasures of friendship are denied; I should have said, the panderers to
his degrading pleasures. Never did the Papal court at Avignon or Rome,
even in the worst ages of mediaeval darkness, witness more scandalous
enormities than those which disgraced the whole reign of Louis XV.,
either in the days of his minority, when the kingdom was governed by
the Duke of Orleans, or in his latter years, when the Duke of Choiseul
was the responsible adviser of the crown. The Palais Royal, the Palais
Luxembourg, the Trianon, and Versailles were alternately scenes of
excesses which would have disgraced the reigns of the most degenerate of
Saracenic caliphs. So vile was the court, that a celebrated countess one
day said, at a public festival, that "God, after having formed man, took
the mud which was left, and made the souls of princes and footmen."

And the King hated business as much as he hated pomp. Unlike his
predecessor, he left everything in the hands of his servants. Nothing
wearied him so much as an interview with a minister, or a dispatch from
a general. In the society of his mistresses he abnegated his duties as a
monarch, and the labors of his life were employed in gratifying their
resentments and humoring their caprices. Their complaints were