The historian well and truly describes the state of society in those evil days, and how the manners of the age became, year by year, more lost to virtue, dignity, and honour, until at length all the better feelings of human nature, even religion itself, became a by-word and a mockery amidst the chaos of the Revolution. "The ante-chambers of Versailles were daily besieged by crowds of titled, yet needy supplicants, who eagerly sought employment, favour, or distinction from the king's ministers or his mistresses, and mandates issued from them were obeyed without a murmur from Calais to the Pyrenees. What, then, was it which, in a country so profusely endowed with the riches of nature, and inhabited by a race of men so brave, so active, and so enterprising, has led to a convulsion attended with the unspeakable horrors of the French Revolution? The answer is to be found in the previous state of the country, and the general perversion of the national mind; in the oppressions to which the people were subjected, the vices by which the nobles alienated them; the corruptions by which morals were contaminated; the errors with which religion was disfigured; the extent to which infidelity had spread."[4] "Corruption, in its worst form, had long tainted the manners of the court as well as the nobility, and poisoned the sources of influence. The favour of royal mistresses, or the intrigues of the court, openly disposed of the highest appointments, both in the army, the church, and the civil service. Since the reign of the Roman emperors, profligacy had never been conducted in so open and undisguised a manner as under Louis XV. and the Regent Orleans. From the secret memoirs of the period, which have now been published, it is manifest that the licentious novels, which at that time disgraced French literature, conveyed a faithful picture of the manners of the age."[5]