eetings might also be sentenced to be imprisoned in the Tour de
Constance. There were even cases of boys of twelve years old having
been sent to the galleys for life, because of having accompanied their
parents to "the Preaching."[70]

[Footnote 70: Athanase Coquerel, "Les Forcats pour la Foi,"
91.]

The same cruelties were at that time practised upon the common people
generally, whether they were Huguenots or not. The poor creatures,
whose only pleasure consisted in sometimes hunting a Protestant, were
so badly off in some districts of France that they even fed upon
grass. The most distressed districts in France were those in which the
bishops and clergy were the principal owners of land. They were the
last to abandon slavery, which continued upon their estates until
after the Revolution.

All these abominations had grown up in France, because the people had
begun to lose the sense of individual liberty. Louis XIV. had in his
time prohibited the people from being of any religion different from
his own. "His Majesty," said his Prime Minister Louvois, "will not
suffer any person to remain in his kingdom who shall not be of his
religion." And Louis XV. continued the delusion. The whole of the
tyrannical edicts and ordinances of Louis XIV. continued to be
maintained.

It was not that Louis XIV. and Louis XV. were kings of any virtue or
religion. Both were men of exceedingly immoral habits. We have
elsewhere described Louis XIV., but Louis XV., the Well-beloved, was
perhaps the greatest profligate of the two. Madame de Pompadour, when
she ceased to be his mistress, became his procuress. This infamous
woman had the command of the state purse, and she contrived to build
for the sovereign a harem, called the Parc-aux-Cerfs, in the park of
Versailles, which cost the country at least a hundred millions of
francs.[71] The number of young girls taken from Paris to this place
excited great public discontent; and though morals generally were not
very high at that time, the debauchery and intemperance of the King
(for he was almost constantly drunk)[72] contributed to alienate the
nation, and to foster those feelings of hatred which broke forth
without restraint in the ensuing reign.

[Footnote 71: "Madame de Pompadour decouvrit que Louis XV.
pourrait lui-meme s'amuser a faire l'education de ces jeunes
malheureuses. De petites filles de neuf a douze ans,
lorsqu'elles avaien