national administration might not
be utterly bankrupt. "Never," said the Comte de Maistres, during the
Terror, "did a great crime have so many accomplices: there are doubtless
some innocent sufferers among the victims, but they are very much fewer
than is generally supposed."

The marriage of the dauphin, afterward Louis XVI, with the Austrian
archduchess, Marie-Antoinette, in May, 1770, was attended with a
frightful catastrophe during the celebration of the event, on the
evening of the 30th, on the Place Louis XV, now Place de la
Concorde,--hundreds of persons being crushed to death, trampled under
foot, killed with swords, or with the fireworks which burst in their
midst. It was an ill omen for the future. The accession to the throne of
this youthful pair, in 1774, was hailed with pleasing anticipations by
the nation, wearied with the excesses of the late reign. "What joy,"
said Michelet, "to see seated at last on the purified throne of Louis XV
this virtuous, this excellent young king and this charming queen! Who
would not have hoped for everything? A grand movement of art adorned
this coronation, illuminated the scene. And the queen was the centre of
all. One woman only seemed to exist." The graceful, youthful figure of
Marie-Antoinette, dauphine, has recently been made the subject of
special research by M. Pierre de Molhac, and the intimate relations
between court intrigues and the gravest measures of foreign diplomacy
are exemplified in the pressure put upon her by her mother,
Marie-Therese, to treat with more consideration the king's mistress,
Madame du Barry, who, the dauphine wrote to her mother, "is the silliest
and most impertinent creature imaginable." The consent of Louis XV to
the partition of Poland was purchased by the promise of his
daughter-in-law to assume the same attitude toward Madame du Barry that
her mother had formerly condescended to with respect to Madame du
Pompadour. "Louis XV was touched in the most sensitive part of his heart
by the tact of his old friend; his silence concerning Poland was paid
for in advance."

Amid the general extravagance and corruption of the upper classes of
society some attempts were made to preserve the traditions of the famous
Hotel de Rambouillet, _le berceau de la societe polie_, where talent,
learning, and wit were the qualities that secured distinction, and not
pride of birth. Under Louis XIV, this _salon_ was renewed in the fine
hotel of the Marquise de Lam