Generals were appointed to the command of expeditions for no better reason than this. That Pompadour drew thirty-six millions of francs from the "royal treasury," _i. e._, from the earnings of the frugal and laborious French people, could easily have been borne. It was government by mistresses and for mistresses, the government of ignorant and idle caprice, that broke down monarchy in France and set the world on fire. Of the evils which corrupt rulers bring upon communities, the waste of the people's money (though that is a great evil in so poor a world as ours, with such crowds of poor relations and so much to be done) is among the least. It is the absence of intelligence and public spirit in the Government that brings on ruin. "As long as I live," said Louis XV. one day to Madame de Pompadour, "I shall be the master, to do as I like. But my grandson will have trouble." Madame was of the same mind, but gave it neater expression: "After us the deluge." [Illustration: Assembly of the Notables at Paris, February 22d, 1787.[22] "Dear objects of my care, I have assembled you to ascertain with what sauce you want to be eaten." "But we don't want to be eaten at all." "You are departing from the question." [Footnote 22: Champfleury, "Histoire de la Caricature sous la République," etc., p. 5.]] [Illustration: Mirabeau.[23] (Paris, 1789.) [Footnote 23: Champfleury, "Histoire de la Caricature sous la République," p. 81.]] The world is familiar with the tragic incidents of the sudden collapse of the monarchy. Except during the Reign of Terror, which was short, the caricaturists, whether with the pen or the pencil, played their usual part. It was almost impossible to caricature the abuses of the times, so monstrous was the reality. The "local hits" in Beaumarchais' "Marriage of Figaro," played with rapturous applause a hundred nights in 1784, were little more than the truth given with epigrammatic brevity. When the saucy page, Cherubin, confessed that he had behaved very badly, but rested his defense upon the fact that he had never been guilty of the slightest indiscretion in _words_, and so obtained both pardon and promotion, the audience must have felt the perfect congruity of the incident with the moral code of the period. In Figaro's famous discourse on the English _God-dam_ there is, indeed, a touch of caricature: "A fine language the English; a little of it goes a great way. The English people, it is true, throw in some other words in the course of conversation, but it is very easy to see that _God-dam_ is the basis of their language." When he descants upon politics, he rarely goes beyond the truth: "Ability advance a man in the Government bureaus! My lord is laughing at me. Be commonplace and obsequious, and you get every thing." Figaro gives the whole art of French politics in a few words: "To pretend you don't know what you do know, and to know what you don't; to