The Marquis d’Argenson accuses her of having been occupied with porcelains at a time when people should have been thinking of arms. “Madame de Pompadour,” he writes in 1754, “does nothing but preach up the great advantage it has been to the State to manufacture porcelain like that of Saxony, and even to have surpassed it. A royal warehouse for this porcelain is being established in the rue de la Monnaie. There may be seen a service which the King is about to send to the King of Saxony, as if to brave and provoke him, saying that he has surpassed even his manufactory. At the King’s suppers the Marquise says that it is uncitizenlike not to buy as much of this porcelain as one can pay for. Some one answered her: But while the King has been so liberal in encouraging this manufactory, those of Charleville and Saint-Étienne are abandoned, which are quite differently useful to us, since they concern the defence of the kingdom, and three-quarters of the workmen are passing into foreign countries.” The reflection is, doubtless, just; but a few Saxony or Sèvres porcelains, more or less, would not greatly have altered the situation of France. It was her misfortune to be slumbering in a fatal ease. Voltaire has said: “All Europe never saw happier days than followed the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, until toward the year 1755. Commerce flourished from St. Petersburg to Cadiz; the fine arts were everywhere in honor. A mutual confidence existed between all nations. Europe resembled a large family, reunited after its dissensions.” The French allowed themselves to be deceived by this universal lull. Military men and diplomatists felt an exaggerated confidence. In a few years people became so accustomed to peace that they no longer even thought of war. It was the same thing that happened about a century later, at the time of the Universal Exposition of 1867. Peoples who wish to preserve their greatness ought to beware of cosmopolitan theories. While the philosophers were weaving their humanitarian dreams, England was preparing her fleets and Frederick the Great his armies. A trifling contest between France and England for some wild lands in Canada was the kindling spark of a fire that was to inflame the four quarters of the earth. But this quarrel, insignificant in itself, was not the true cause of the war: it was at most its pretext.