the word that best characterizes him, not malignity. Take his favorites from the sovereign, and he might be not simply a worthy man, but a great king. He is intelligent and kindly. His people adore him. Fortune has crowned him. Voltaire goes into ecstasies over the glories of this reign, which the advocate Barbier declares to be the finest epoch in the entire history of France. What compromises, what ruins all this? The great enemy, voluptuousness. Oh! how swift, how slippery, is the descent into vice! How one fault entails another! During several years (1725–1733) Louis XV. is a model husband. Then he mysteriously commits a first infidelity; afterwards he stops at nothing. He is timid at first; he hides himself, but by degrees he becomes bolder. He declares himself at first with the Countess de Mailly; afterwards with her sister, the Countess de Vintimille; however, he still maintains some restraint. Louis XV. is stingy with the State funds; his old preceptor, Cardinal Fleury, retains some influence over him. But Fleury dies (1743); the King has a mentor no longer; he emancipates himself; the scandal gains strength and is triumphant in the person of a third sister, the Duchess of Châteauroux. Heaven, nevertheless, sends the monarch some severe lessons; Madame de Vintimille had died in childbirth (1741); the King himself came near dying at Metz; the Duchess of Châteauroux dies of chagrin and other emotions at the close of 1744. People think Louis XV. is about to change his ways. ’Tis an error: here comes the minister in petticoats, the Marquise de Pompadour, a queen of the left hand. She, to use Voltaire’s expression, is a sort of grisette made for the opera or the seraglio, who tries to amuse this bored monarch by diversions still more preposterous than his dulness. She dies at the task, and Louis XV. has not even a tear for her. As Rochefoucauld has said: “If a man thinks he loves his mistress for love of her, he is much mistaken.” Louis XV. is growing old. The Queen dies in 1768. He regrets her, and people fancy that at last he is going to follow the wise advice of his surgeon, and not merely rein his horses up, but take them out of the traces. They are reckoning without the woman who is about to bring the slang of Billingsgate to Versailles. After great ladies the great citizeness; after her the woman of the people; the De Nesle sisters are followed by Madame de Pompadour; Madame de Pompadour by Dubarry; Dubarry, the “portiere of the Revolution.”