In our civilian and democratic century we find it very difficult to get a perfect notion of such festivities. “We children of a wretched and bloody revolution,” as M. Capefigue says, “see these galleries of glass and gilding inundated with people in rough clothing, with noisy, hobnailed shoes, like a muddy torrent spreading over a parterre of tulips and variegated roses.” Let us not forget that there was chivalry and courage, carelessness and gaiety, animation and native wit, charm and elegance, in the last fortunate days of the French nobility. If the men who shone at that period should return, they would find ours mean and irksome. The noise of battle succeeds the echoes of the orchestras. Two months and a half after this fine ball Louis XV. and his son are with the army. The King wishes that the Dauphin, although but sixteen years old, should set an example, and at Fontenoy the young man excites the admiration of old soldiers by his ardor and courage. Louis XV. is a happy father. His son is a model of filial respect. His six daughters, Mesdames Elisabeth, Henriette, Adelaide, Victoire, Sophie, and Louise, all of whom with the exception of Madame Adelaide were educated in the convent of Fontevrault, have the most religious sentiments and display profound affection for their father. Only one of them is married, the eldest, Madame Elisabeth, who espoused in 1739 the Infant Don Philip, son of the King of Spain, and with whom Louis XV. did not part without keen sorrow. In 1745 only two of his daughters, Henriette and Adelaide, are with him. The other three, Victoire, Sophie, and Louise, are still at Fontevrault, and it is singular that this king, so affectionate to his children, should leave them in a convent eighty leagues from Versailles when it would be so easy to place them, if not close beside him, at least in some neighboring convent. In order to complete this sketch of the royal family in 1745, it remains to say a few words about the Duke d’Orléans and his son, the Duke de Chartres. Born in 1703, and widowed since 1726 of a princess of Baden, the Duke d’Orléans, only son of the regent, seldom shows himself at court. The premature death of his wife, whom he had the misfortune of losing after two years of marriage, had inspired him with extremely grave and Christian reflections. His tastes have become those of an anchorite. In 1730 he resigned his position as Colonel-general in order to be more at liberty to make very frequent retreats at the Abbey of Sainte Geneviève. In 1742 he finally renounced all political action, and quitted the Council of State in order to install himself definitively in his dear abbey, where he leads the life of a monk, between prayer and study. He has left the administration of his property to his mother, keeping for himself only an income of one million eight hundred thousand livres, which he spends almost entirely in works of charity.