The Duke of Antin, son of Madame de Montespan, one of the most adroit courtiers of the old as well as of the new court, “honorless and passionless” (_sans honneur et sans humeur_), according to the Regent’s own saying, took a severer view than Dubois of the arrangement to which he had contributed. “The councils are dissolved,” he wrote in his memoirs; “the nobility will never recover from it--to my great regret, I must confess. The kings who hereafter reign will see that Louis XIV., one of the greatest kings in the world, never would employ people of rank in any of his business; that the Regent, a most enlightened prince, had begun by putting them at the head of all affairs, and was obliged to remove them at the end of three years. What can they and must they conclude therefrom? That people of this condition are not fitted for business, and that they are good for nothing but to get killed in war. I hope I am wrong, but there is every appearance that the masters will think like that, and there will not be wanting folks who will confirm them in that opinion.” A harsh criticism on the French nobility, too long absorbed by war or the court, living apart from the nation and from affairs, and thereby become incapable of governing, put down once for all by the iron hand of Richelieu, without ever having been able to resume at the head of the country the rank and position which befitted them. The special councils were dissolved, the council of regency diminished; Dubois became premier minister in name--he had long been so in fact. He had just concluded an important matter, one which the Regent had much at heart--the marriage of the king with the Infanta of Spain, and that of Mdlle. de Montpensier, daughter of the Duke of Orleans, with the Prince of the Asturias. The Duke of St. Simon was intrusted with the official demand. Philip V. was rejoiced to see his daughter’s elevation to that throne which he still regarded as the first in the world; he purchased it by the concession made to the Regent.