The brilliant victories of Marshal Saxe, and the consequent Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, brought some years of prosperity. Wealth increased; Paris became more than ever a centre of intellectual splendour and social refinement, where the arts administered to luxurious ease and to the fair frailties of passion. But it was a period of riotous pride and regal licentiousness unparalleled even in the history of France. Louis XIV. at least exacted good breeding and wit in his mistresses: his descendant enslaved himself to the commonest and most abandoned of women. For twenty years the destinies of the people, and the whole patronage of the Government, the right to succeed to the most sacred and exalted offices in the Church, were bartered and intrigued for in the chamber of a harlot and procuress, and under the influence of the Pompadours and the Du Barrys a crowned _roue_ allowed the state to drift into financial, military and civil[153] disaster. [Footnote 153: In 1753 between 20th January and 20th February two hundred persons died of want (_misere_) in the Faubourg St. Antoine.] "Authentic proofs exist," says Taine, "demonstrating that Madame de Pompadour cost Louis XV. a sum equal to about seventy-two millions of present value (L2,880,000)." She would examine the plans of campaign of her marshals in her boudoir, and mark with patches (_mouches_) the places to be defended or attacked. Such was the mad extravagance of the court that to raise money recourse was had to taxation of the clergy, which the prelates successfully resisted; the old quarrel with the Jansenists was revived, and soon Church and Crown were convulsed by an agitation that shook society to its very base. During the popular ferment the king was attacked in 1757 by a crack-brained fanatic named Damiens, who scratched him with a penknife as he was entering his coach at Versailles. The poor crazy wretch, who at most deserved detention in an asylum, was first subjected to a cruel judicial torture, then taken to the Place de Greve, where he was lacerated with red-hot pincers and, after boiling lead had been poured into the wounds, his quivering body was torn to pieces by four horses, and the fragments burned to ashes. A few years later the long-suffering Jansenists were avenged with startling severity. The Jesuits, to their honour be it said, shocked by the infamies of the royal seraglio in the Parc aux Cerfs, made use of their ascendency at Court to awaken in the king's mind some sense of decency: they did but add the bitter animosity of Madame de Pompadour to the existing hostility of the Parlement of Paris. Louis, urged by his minister the Duke of Choiseul, and by the arts of his mistress, abandoned the Jesuits to their enemies: the Parlement suppressed the Society, secularised its members and confiscated its property.