hanged condition in the Court in which piety and religious observance
displaced licentious and voluptuous pleasure. And, along with this
"wisdom of a repentant age," as Saint-Amand observes, "this reaction of
austerity against pleasure, there was still the contrast of youth." It
was the Duchess of Burgundy who was the living embodiment of this
protest of joy against sadness, of springtime against cold winter, of
licentiousness against the exacting restrictions of etiquette. Affairs
in the Court had reached a turning point, and it was the logical mind
of Madame de Maintenon that saw it. When Madame de Montespan was in
the ascendancy, the Court had reached a condition of voluptuous
indulgence that could not continue long. The Princess Palatine, wife
of the brother of Louis XIV, wrote: "I hear and see every day so many
villainous things that it disgusts me with life. You have good reason
to say that the good Queen is now happier than we are, and if any one
would do me, as to her and her mother, the service of sending me in
twenty-four hours from this world to the other, I would certainly bear
him no ill will."

However we may question the soul sincerity of Madame de Maintenon, to
her at least we must give credit for checking the corrupt tendencies of
the Court and, with correcting finger, pointing the way toward better
things. After Louis XIV, as Saint-Amand points out, the conditions of
the Court of France were reflected even more vividly in the characters
of the women of Versailles. "With compression and reserve," he
observes, "there followed scandal. During the regency and the reign of
Louis XV the morals of the Court fast deteriorated. A new epoch
opened--troublous, lewd, dissolute. And was not the Duchess of Berry
eccentric, capricious, passionate, the very image of the time? The
favorites of Louis XV indicate to us in their own sad history the
conditions of debasing humiliation and moral decadence of monarchical
power. At first Louis XV chose his favorites from among ladies of
quality--after that, from the middle classes, and, finally, from the
common women of the people." He did not stop at the low-born shop girl
or the frequenter of evil resorts.

Louis began with the Duchesse de Chateauroux, the exquisite, who
lasted, as we might say, but a day. From that he turned to the
Marquise de Pompadour, a descent sufficiently significant, but it was
only the beginning of decadence. The King's feeling for t