In these circumstances, fifty-one French bishops, under the presidency of the Cardinal of Luynes, assembled, and, after a prolonged examination of the Constitutions, declared that the unlimited obedience that the General residing in Rome was empowered to exact from every member, was incompatible with the laws of the kingdom, and with the general duties of the subject to his sovereign. Now the opponents of the Jesuits, and Madame do Pompadour at their head, pressed upon the king to take a decisive measure. Louis XV. was an indolent profligate, whose chief characteristic was the love and veneration of himself. Provided royalty did not perish in his own person, he cared little what should become of it after his death. He had no liking for any person but those who could amuse him—a thing in his old age by no means easy. He cared nothing for the Jesuits, but he feared them. He was persuaded that they had been accomplices in the assassination of Henry III. and Henry IV.; he had always before his eyes the poniard of Damiens, and attributed to the fathers both the will and the power to murder him. For this all-important reason, he resisted long all solicitations to expel them from France, but he consented to address a request to the Pope to grant a reform, but to grant it immediately, and without hesitation or subterfuge. Choiseul himself prepared a plan of reform, which, it may be said, centred in this principal point, namely, to propose to the General the appointment of a vicar-general for France, who was to fix his residence in that country, and pledge himself to render obedience to its laws—a measure which was in conformity with the statutes, since these authorised the General, in case of a great emergency, to name a vicar-general.[342] The fact of this most reasonable demand having been made, would of itself be a sufficient answer to the Jesuits and their partisans, who pretend that the destruction of the order was not the consequence of any of these misdemeanours, but that it had been planned long before between the Encyclopædists Choiseul and Pombal. Yet we shall adduce some further proofs to shew how unfounded their assertions are.