A part of the scheme of penitence seems to have been that on the death of poor Marie Therese, he should make her (de Maintenon) his lawful wife, which he did privately; and his sun went down obscured by crushing griefs and disappointments. His children swept away, the prestige of success tarnished, this demigod was taken to pieces by time's destroying fingers, quite as unceremoniously as are the rest of us, hiding finally behind the bed-curtains while a kneeling courtier passed to him his wig on the end of a stick, and at last lying down like any other old dying sinner, overwhelmed with the vanity of earthly things and with the vastness of eternity. Still more would the dying moments of the Grand Monarque have been embittered could he have foreseen into what hands his great inheritance was passing. Upon Louis XV. more than any other rests the responsibility of the crisis which was approaching. A heartless sybarite, depraved in tastes, without sense of responsibility or comprehension of his times, a brutalized voluptuary governed by a succession of designing women, regardless of national poverty, indulging in wildest extravagance,--such was the man in whom was vested the authority rendered so absolute by Richelieu,--such the man who opened up a pathway for the storm. As for the nobility, their degradation may be imagined when it is said there was as bitter rivalry between titled and illustrious fathers to secure for their daughters the coveted position held by Madame de Pompadour, as for the highest offices of State. Could the upper ranks fall lower than this? Had not the kingdom reached its lowest depths, where its foreign policy was determined by the amount of consideration shown to Madame de Pompadour? But this woman, whose friendship was artfully sought by the great Empress Maria Theresa, was superseded, and the fresher charms of Madame du Barri enslaved the King. The deposed favorite could not survive her fall, and died of a broken heart. It is said that as Louis, looking from an upper window of his palace, saw the coffin borne out in a drenching rain, he smiled and said: "Ah, the Marquise has a bad day for her journey." It may be imagined that the man who could be so pitiless to the woman he had loved would feel little pity for the people whom he had not loved, but whom he knew only as a remote, obscure something, which held up the weight of his glory. But this "obscure something" was undergoing strange transformation. The greater light at the surface had sent some glimmering rays down into the mass below, which began to awaken and to think. Misery, hopeless and abject, was changing into rage and thirst for vengeance.