It is now time to ask what had been done with the magnificent inheritance which the fourteenth Louis had entered upon at the opening of his reign: he left to his successor a France crushed by an appalling debt of 2,400,000,000 livres; a noblesse and an army in bondage to money-lenders; public officials and fund-holders unpaid, trade paralysed, and the peasants in some provinces so poor that even straw was lacking for them to lie upon, many crossing the frontiers in search of a less miserable lot. Scarcity of bread made disease rampant at Paris, and as many as 4,500 sick poor were counted at one time in the Hôtel Dieu alone. Louis left a court that "sweated hypocrisy through every pore," and an example of licentious and unclean living and cynical disregard of every moral obligation, which ate like a cancer into the vitals of the aristocracy. CHAPTER XVI PARIS UNDER THE REGENCY AND LOUIS XV.--THE BROODING STORM Under the regency of the profligate Philip of Orleans, a profounder depth was sounded. The vices of Louis' court were at least veiled by a certain regal dignity, and the Grand Monarque was always keenly sensitive, and at times nobly responsive, to any attack upon the honour of France; but under the regent, libertinage and indifference to national honour were flagrant and shameless. The Abbé Dubois, a minister worthy of his prince, was, says St. Simon, "a mean-looking, thin little man, with the face of a ferret, in whom every vice fought for mastery." This creature profaned the seat of Richelieu and Colbert, and rose to fill a cardinal's chair. The revenues of seven abbeys fed his pride and luxury, and his annual income was estimated at 1,534,000 livres, including his bribe from the English Government. His profanity was such that he was advised to economise time by employing an extra clerk to do his swearing for him, and during a fatal operation, rendered necessary by a shameful disease, he went to his account blaspheming and gnashing his teeth in rage at his physicians.