An edict of 1705, recalling that, in 1690, _la noblesse au premier degré_ had been bestowed upon the president, councillors, and other officers "of our _Cour de Parlement de Paris_;" that in 1691 the same privileges had been granted to the presidents, councillors, and other officers "of our _Cour des Aydes de Paris_;" in 1704, on the officers of the _Chambre des Comptes_, granted also this nobility to the presidents, treasurers-general of France, avocat, procureur, and _greffier en chef_ of the bureau of finance. In the following year, the privileges of this nobility were granted to the _échevins_, the procureur, the greffier, and receiver of the city of Paris, and the _prévôt_ of the merchants was given the title of chevalier. Following the ancient traditions of the French monarchy, the king preferred to see himself served by the men of the middle classes, rather than by the powerful lords, whose _rôle_ was reduced to that of obsequious courtiers in his antechamber, but, "in working with the bourgeois, the grandson of Henri IV wished to remain always _le roi des gentilshommes_." In the person of Louis XV the most ignoble vices of a man were united to those of a king, but he had sufficient intelligence to foresee the calamity that was coming. "The thing will last at least as long as I do," he said, "my successor may get out of it the best way he can." And to Madame Pompadour is credited the famous saying: "After us, the deluge." When the minister Choiseul was disgraced, in 1770, half the nobles deserted the court to follow him to his estate of Chanteloup, near Amboise,--so much had the splendor of Versailles, that great glory of the reign of the _Roi-Soleil_, departed!