But with all this rough and somewhat ostentatious disregard of etiquette, Peter had a keen sense of what was due to his imperial mightiness, and, with the caprice of a despot, could assert it trenchantly enough when he thought fit. The regent invited a number of the most illustrious men of the day to meet his eccentric guest at a banquet at the Palais Royal. As they were about to enter the dining-room, little Louis XV. stood back to let the czar pass first; Peter was unwilling to take precedence of the King of France, and equally reluctant to walk behind a child, so he wittily solved the difficulty by catching up the small monarch in his arms and carrying him to his seat. The regent closed his ignoble life at the Palais Royal in 1723. His son Louis, Duke of Orleans, succeeded him. This prince brought his young bride, Jeanne de Bade, there soon after he took possession of his ancestral home, and lost her after a brief and blissful union. At the time of her death, Louis XV. was lying mortally sick, it was believed, at Metz, and thither, in the frenzy of his grief, the bereaved husband flew, and, going straight to the room of the dying king, demanded admittance; the attendants expostulated, but Louis pushed them aside, and kicked in the door to announce his loss to the kinsman who himself lay battling with death. He survived Jeanne some years, but never recovered her loss; he led a solitary and desolate life, and gave himself up to works of benevolence and the study of oriental languages. He became a perfect adept in the Arabic, Hebrew, and Greek tongues, and never appeared at court as a widower except when the imperious etiquette of Versailles occasionally demanded it. He died in 1752. His son’s reign at the Palais Royal is chiefly remarkable by his having inoculated his own children with small-pox; the daring experiment, which was performed by Tronchin, summoned from Geneva for the purpose, was crowned with success. Paris, transported with joy, made bonfires in the Place in front of the palace, and for a time the rash and fortunate father was the hero of toast and song. Another event which signalized his occupation of Richelieu’s palace was the destruction of the theatre by fire (1763). The duke rebuilt it on a somewhat larger but infinitely less gorgeous scale as to decoration. He was an enlightened patron of art, and especially kind in assisting young men whose talent was struggling to make head against poverty. He divined the genius of the young poet Le Fèvre, and encouraged him both by personal notice and by liberal gifts. He was so pleased with Le Fèvre’s tragedy _Zuma_ that immediately on its appearance he bestowed a pension of 1,200 crowns on the poet out of his privy purse; and on the latter’s asking what services were expected from him in return for this munificence, the duke answered: “It obliges you to work henceforth more ardently for your own fame—nothing more.” This prince, though he allowed himself