works, and by wars conducted on a gigantic scale,
that Louis had brought distress on his people. The Regent aggravated
that distress by frauds of which a lame duck on the stock-exchange would
have been ashamed. France, even while suffering under the most severe
calamities, had reverenced the conqueror. She despised the swindler.

When Orleans and the wretched Dubois had disappeared, the power passed
to the Duke of Bourbon; a prince degraded in the public eye by the
infamously lucrative part which he had taken in the juggles of the
System, and by the humility with which he bore the caprices of a loose
and imperious woman. It seemed to be decreed that every branch of the
royal family should successively incur the abhorrence and contempt of
the nation.

Between the fall of the Duke of Bourbon and the death of Fleury, a few
years of frugal and moderate government intervened. Then recommenced the
downward progress of the monarchy. Profligacy in the court, extravagance
in the finances, schism in the church, faction in the Parliaments,
unjust war terminated by ignominious peace,--all that indicates and all
that produces the ruin of great empires, make up the history of that
miserable period. Abroad, the French were beaten and humbled everywhere,
by land and by sea, on the Elbe and on the Rhine, in Asia and in
America. At home, they were turned over from vizier to vizier, and from
sultana to sultana, till they had reached that point beneath which there
was no lower abyss of infamy,--till the yoke of Maupeou had made them
pine for Choiseul,--till Madame du Barri had taught them to regret
Madame de Pompadour.

But unpopular as the monarchy had become, the aristocracy was more
unpopular still; and not without reason. The tyranny of an individual
is far more supportable than the tyranny of a caste. The old privileges
were galling and hateful to the new wealth and the new knowledge.
Everything indicated the approach of no common revolution,--of a
revolution destined to change, not merely the form of government,
but the distribution of property and the whole social system,--of a
revolution the effects of which were to be felt at every fireside in
France,--of a new Jaquerie, in which the victory was to remain with
Jaques bonhomme. In the van of the movement were the moneyed men and the
men of letters,--the wounded pride of wealth, and the wounded pride of
intellect. An immense multitude, made ignorant and cruel by oppression,
was