oo often by private solicitation or the interest of
some of the mistresses of the King or his ministers. Their abuse rose to
the highest pitch, under the administration of the Duke de la Villiere.
The Marchioness Langeac, his mistress, openly made a traffic of them,
and never was one refused to a man of influence, who had a vengeance to
satiate, a passion to gratify. The Comte de Segur gives the following
characteristic anecdote, illustrating the use made of these instruments
of tyranny, even upon the inferior classes of society.

"I have heard related the sad mishap which occurred to a young
shop-mistress, named Jeanneton, who was remarkable for her beauty. One
day the Chevalier de Coigny met her radiant with smiles, and in the
highest spirits. He inquired the cause of her extreme satisfaction. 'I
am truly happy,' she replied,--'My husband is a scold, a brute; he gave
me no rest--I have been with M. le Comte de Saint Florentin; Madame
----, who enjoys his good graces, has received me in the kindest manner,
and for a present of ten _Louis_ I have just obtained a _lettre de
cachet_ which will deliver me from the persecution of that most jealous
tyrant.'

"Two years afterwards, M. de Coigny met the same Jeanneton, but now sad,
pale, with downcast look, and a care-worn countenance. 'Ah! my poor
Jeanneton!' said he, 'what has become of you? I never meet you any
where. What has cast you down, since we last met?' 'Alas! sir,' replied
she, 'I was very foolish to be then in such spirits; my villanous
husband had that very day taken up the same idea as I; he went to the
minister, and the same day, by the intervention of his mistress, _he
brought an order to shut me up_; so that it cost our poor _menage_
twenty _louis_ to throw us at the same time reciprocally into
prison.'"--(Vol. ii. p. 489.)

M. De Tocqueville sums up in these eloquent words which close his work,
the tendency and final result of the government of the Regent Orleans
and Louis XV.:--

"The high society was more liberal than the bourgeois: the bourgeois
than the people. The Revolution commenced in the head of the social
system; from that it gained the heart, and spread to the extremities. It
became a point of honour to be in opposition. It was a mode of shining
and acquiring popularity; a fashion which the young seized with avidity.
The words Liberty and Representative Government were continually in the
mouths of those who were, ere long, to ascribe to them a