Our sketch of the immoralities of the French court naturally ends here. Though the period of the Directory was marked by a general looseness in the best French society, and both Napoleon and Louis XVIII. set no example of conjugal fidelity to their subjects, yet vice was not exhibited so openly under them as it had been under former kings, and the laws of decency were not actually set at defiance. Their frailties were private matters, into which it is scarcely the duty of the historian to intrude. The same may be said of Charles X. and Louis Philippe. The former had, in his youth, been a sharer of many of the excesses of the Orleans family, but at the time he became king he was an old man, and could afford to lead a decent life. Louis Philippe had never afforded a theme for scandal, and as king he set an example of rigorous morality. If we turn back now to the period of the Regency, we shall find letters sympathizing in the most marked manner with the court. Under the regime of severe etiquette and decency established by Louis XIV., authors respected the ear of innocence; under the brutal sway of the regent, and the lewd influence of the satyr Louis XV., the old prostitution of literature was revived. Thus we find that the most successful authors of the day, such as Voltaire, handled themes grossly immoral in themselves, and rendered still more offensive by their mode of treatment. The most popular novel of the eighteenth century--Manon Lescant--the work, by the way, of an abbé, is the narrative of the adventures of a prostitute. Of all the romance writers of that age, no one was more widely popular or more generally read than Crebillon _fils_, whose works would almost fall into the hands of the police at the present time. Diderot, Mirabeau, Montesquieu, and, with few exceptions, all the most eminent men of France, prostituted their genius to the composition of erotic works which were widely read by women as well as men. Of the light poetry of the eighteenth century very little is fit for modern reading, the poets being, as a general rule, either dull or depraved. Nor were the arts behindhand. Frescoes differing but little from those which had adorned Fontainebleau under Francis I. again covered the walls of rich men's houses; and the most fortunate painters of the day were those who could best outrage decency without positively suggesting the brothel. Lewd books and pictures were freely sold in Paris during the Regency, the reign of Louis XV., and the Revolutionary period. Napoleon burned all he could find, but there still remained enough to supply the demand almost ever since.