But restraint irritated these kings, these princes and great ones, senseless enough not to understand that they were ruining themselves, together with respect for authority, by teaching the people contempt for the moral law. The age of the “Renaissance” was, from this point of view, perhaps the most fatal era of our old monarchy. Paganism, when it left Constantinople, proceeded to take possession of the papacy, and, being infiltrated into all the pores of our society, dominated in literature, art and morals. In the “saturnalia” of debauchery, Rome lost her empire over the souls of men; the Reformation carrying with it the principle of vitality, substituted the authority of conscience for that of divine right; but France, corrupted to the extent of having abbots like Brantôme, had not recuperative force sufficient to regenerate her morals, and, pagan in her customs, she was yet illogical enough to believe she was Christian and profess herself Catholic. Her kings, putting themselves out of the page—that is, ceasing to be guided by common sense or reason, wallowed with impunity in the most monstrous debauchery. Sending to execution those who reproved them,[41] they paid honour to their _morganatic queens_ (queen-mistresses). From this period, moreover, every principle of respect was destroyed by these great violators of the social compact, henceforward in no fear from judges; it is in this way that France experienced the humiliation of sullying her history by the disgraces of the court during the dynasty of the Valois, and by the scandals and infamies of that of the Bourbons. The example afforded by royalty having roused the courtiers and nobles to emulate it, they vied with each other in deserting their duty of making their estates productive and enlightening their vassals. Wholly taken up in the gratification of their selfish passions, they gradually lost their long kept honour in the ostentatious idleness of Versailles, and communicated their corruption, more and more closely, to the rich of the middle class. Still, however, the law, which was no longer anything but a dead-letter for royalty and the aristocracy, continuing to exercise authority over the masses, the condition of morals at the close of the 18th century may be thus summed up: the nobles paraded their mistresses, the middle class concealed them, the lower orders coveted them. But peace to these _Manes_, since rivers of blood have cleansed these _Augean_ stables.[42] It is not useless to compare this period of decline with our present morals. _Then the debauchee infringed the laws—he keeps them now_; the corruption which was at the head of the nation has affected its heart; _the privilege of the few has become the right of all_. “Obscur, on l’eût flétri d’une mort légitime, Il est puissant, les lois out ignoré son crime:”[43]