d away to Pluto and to Lethe. One or two stragglers, like Menage
and Chapelle, lingered to wonder at the complete change of taste. The
age had ripened fast. Not many years before, Barbin the bookseller
ordered his hacks to _faire du St. Evremond_. St. Evremond was still
living in England, dirty and witty; and Barbin still kept his shop, but
gave no more orders for wares of that description. Many of the greatest
names of the era were already carved on tombs: La Rochefoucauld, Pascal,
Corneille, Moliere. Bossuet was a man of sixty; La Fontaine a few years
older; Boileau and Racine close upon fifty. When Regnard died, in 1710,
the eighteenth century had begun. Fontenelle, Le Sage, Bayle, men of
nearly the same age as himself, belong to it.

In 1686 King Louis had reached the full meridian of his _Gloire_,
_Grandeur_, _Eclat_. No monarch in Europe was so powerful. He had
conquered Flanders, driven the Dutch under water, seized Franche-Comte,
annexed Lorraine, ravaged the Palatinate, bombarded Algiers and Genoa,
and by a skilful disregard of treaties and of his royal word kept his
neighbors at swords' points until he was ready to destroy them. The
Emperor was afraid of him, Philip of Spain his most humble servant,
Charles II. in his pay. He had bullied the Pope, and brought the Doge of
Genoa to Paris to ask pardon for selling powder to the Algerines and
ships to Spain. He was _Louis le Grand, le roi vraiment roi, le
demi-dieu qui nous gouverne, Deodatus, Sol nec pluribus impar_. Regnard
witnessed the cloudy setting of this splendid luminary. After the secret
marriage with Mme. de Maintenon, in 1686, Fortune deserted the King. He
was everywhere defeated, or his victories were Cadmean, as disastrous as
defeats. The fleet that was to replace James II. on his throne was
destroyed at La Hogue by Russell. The Camisards defied for years the
army sent against them. Rooke took Gibraltar. Peterborough defeated the
Bourbon forces in Spain. Blenheim, Oudenarde, Ramillies, Malplaquet,
brought ruin upon France before Regnard was withdrawn from the scene.

Meanwhile the Eighteenth Century, with its godlessness and its
debauchery, was born. Hypocrisy watched over its infancy. When Louis
reformed, and took a pious elderly second wife, it was the fashion to be
religious; and whoever wished to stand well at court followed the
fashion. "You who live in France have wonderful advantages for saving
your souls," wrote St. Evremond from London. "Vic