To the superficial observer who, as guests of royalty, loitered through the sunny days which marked the closing years of Louis XV., France presented the aspect of a gay, thoughtless, happy, butterfly nation, whose government on the whole satisfied the requirements of the rich and powerful, and was sustained by the strong arm of the army on the one hand and the impregnable influence of the Church on the other. Small heed was to be given to the pamphleteers, whose brilliant satire, biting sarcasm, and pointed logic afforded amusement at the Louvre, rather than struck dismay to the hearts of those who fondly believed that the Church still held in thrall the brain of the masses, and that as for centuries the people had been content with slavery and vassalage, it was absurd to imagine they had now come to man's estate, had, Phoenix-like, arisen from the ashes of old-time sullen obedience or ignorant content, into the tumultuous atmosphere of intellectual activity. It is true, some far-seeing brains beheld the coming storm and warned the king, urging him to either suppress the philosophers, or concede to the masses a greater meed of justice, but their views were scouted by the ruling or conventional thought of the court, and life at the Louvre continued a merry whirl of carnal and selfish delight. The morning brought the chases, and evening the banquet, the theatre, or the ball; while at intervals grand polytechnic exhibitions delighted the populace, being given, probably, in the vain hope that they would satisfy the rising discontent, much as the gladiatorial shows satisfied, while they still further brutalized, the degraded populace of ancient Rome, making possible the toleration of such colossal iniquity as marked the decline of the Empire. Such, then, was the aspect of court life, while above the social and political horizon were gathering clouds which prophesied the greatest cataclysm civilization had witnessed. The wilful short-sightedness, the supreme indifference to the principles of justice, liberty, and fraternity; the conspicuous absence of the spirit of humanity, which characterized those who might have averted the coming baptism of blood, was the legitimate result of the anaesthetizing of the soul of the Court and aristocracy with the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. The divine spark had disappeared. The spiritual nature had given way to the sensual. Ambition and pleasure were enthroned in the seats of justice and humanity. Selfishness was the keynote of aristocratic life. And with this fact kept in view, the short-sightedness of royalty in the presence of the rising tide of intelligent discontent is by no means strange. Indifferent to the fate of the masses in any struggle that might be precipitated, guided by none of the higher impulses of life, and possessing implicit confidence in the impregnability of that triple bulwark of conservatism, the army, the police, and the Church,