quite right, for it is great folly for a man of letters to be here. They give no pleasure and receive none.”[7] By dint of compliments in prose and verse, Voltaire obtained a pension of 1500 livres, which made him write to _la présidente_ de Bernières, November 13, 1725: “I count on the friendliness of Madame de Prie. I no longer complain of court life, I begin to have reasonable expectations.” Some days afterwards (December 1, 1725), Marie Leczinska left Fontainebleau and went to Versailles. She installed herself in what were called the Queen’s apartments, and slept in the chamber which had been successively occupied by Marie Thérèse, the Bavarian Dauphiness, the Duchess of Burgundy, and the Infanta Marie Anne Victoire. There she brought her ten children into the world, and it was there she was to die. The early days of the marriage were very happy; at that time Louis XV. was a model youth. The counsels of his former preceptor, the Bishop of Fréjus; the sense of duty; religious beliefs; the timidity inseparable from adolescence,--all these contributed to keep in the paths of wisdom the young monarch who dreamed of being a good husband and father, a good king, and working out his own salvation along with the welfare of his subjects. Naturally inclined to the pleasures of the senses, he attached himself to Marie Leczinska with the ardor of an innocent young man who loves for the first time. Notwithstanding the shamelessness of many of them, the court beauties did not yet venture to raise their eyes toward this royal adolescent, who made even the most audacious respectful, by his gentleness and his reserve. Nothing, at this time, announced the disorders to which the young monarch was one day to yield himself. The _roués_ of the Regency could not console themselves for having so calm and virtuous a master; they awaited with impatience the moment when they could thrust him over the declivity of scandal, and, like real demons, they lay in wait for their prey. III THE DISGRACE OF THE MARQUISE DE PRIE