In 1768 the poor abused, injured and neglected queen, Marie Leczynski died. The court went from bad to worse: void of all dignity, all gaiety, all wit and all elegance, it drifted to its doom. Six years passed, and Louis was smitten by confluent small-pox and a few poor women were left to perform the last offices on the mass of pestiferous corruption that once was the fifteenth Louis of France.[149] None could be found to embalm the corpse, and spirits of wine were poured into the coffin which was carried to St. Denis without pomp and amid the half-suppressed curses of the people. Before the breath had left the body, a noise as of thunder was heard approaching the chamber of the Dauphin and Marie Antoinette: it was the sound of the courtiers hastening to grovel before the new king and queen. Warned that they had now inherited the awful legacy of the French monarchy, they flung themselves in tears on their knees, and exclaimed--"O God, guide and protect us! We are too young to govern." [Illustration: PLACE DU CHÂTELET AND TOUR ST. JACQUES.] The degradation of the monarchy during the reign is reflected in the condition of the royal palace in the capital. Henry IV.'s great scheme, which Louis XIII. had inherited and furthered, included a colossal equestrian statue, which was to stand on a rocky pedestal in the centre of a new Place, before the east front of the Louvre, but the regency revoked the scheme, and for thirty years nothing was done. It had even been proposed under the ministry of Cardinal Fleury to pull the whole structure down and sell the site. The neglect of the palace during these years is almost incredible. Perrault's fine façade was hidden by the half-demolished walls of the Hôtels de Longueville, de Villequier, and de Bourbon. The east wing itself was unroofed on the quadrangle side and covered with rotting boarding. Perrault's columns on the outer façade were unchannelled, the capitals unfinished, the portal unsculptured, and the post-office stabled its horses along the whole of the wing from the middle entrance to the north angle. The royal apartments of Anne of Austria in the Petite Galerie were used as stables; so, too, were the halls where now is housed the collection of Renaissance sculpture. The Infanta's garden was a yard where grooms exercised their horses: a colony of poor artists and court attendants were lodged in the upper floors, and over most of the great halls entresols were constructed to increase this kind of accommodation. The building was described as a huge caravanserai, where each one lodged and worked as he chose, and over which might have been placed the legend, "_Ici on loge à pied et à cheval_." Worse still, an army of squatters, ne'er-do-weels, bankrupts and defaulting debtors took refuge in the wooden sheds left by the contractors, or built others--a miserable gangrene of hovels--against the east façade. Perrault's base had been concealed by rubbish and apparently forgotten.