Only a study of tapestries or their photographs can show the radical depth of the change from the styles prevailing under the influence of Madame de Maintenon to those produced by Audran and his school under the regence. The difference in character of the two dominations is the very evident cause. It is as though the severe moral pose of de Maintenon had suppressed a whole Pandora's box of loves and graces who, when the lid was lifted by the Regent, flew, a happy crew, to fix themselves in dainty decorative effect, trailing with them their complement of accessory flowers, butterflies, clouds and tempered grotesques. Philippe d'Orleans, under the influence of the corrupt cleverness of Cardinal du Bois, celebrated the few years of his regency by bankrupting France with John Law's financial fallacies (this was the time of the South Sea Bubble and the Mississippi scheme) and by returning to Spain her princess as unsuited for the boy king's mate--with war as the natural result of that insult. But he also let artists have their way, and the style that they supplied him, shows a talented invention unsurpassed. Audran we will place at the top, but only to fix a name, for there was a whole army of men composing the tapestry designs that so delighted the people of those days and that have gone on thrilling their beholders for two hundred years, and which distinguish French designs from all others--which give them that indefinable quality of grace and softness that we denominate French. Wizards in design were the artists who developed it and those who continue it in our own times. CHAPTER XII THE GOBELINS FACTORY (_Continued_) Audran had in his studio Andre Watteau, whose very name spells sophisticated pastorals of exceeding loveliness. Watteau worked with Audran when he was producing his most inspired set of tapestry, on which we must dwell for a bit for pure pleasure. This set is called the _Portieres des Dieux_. That they were portieres, only door-hangings, is a fact too important to be slipped by. It denotes one of the greatest changes in tapestries when the size of a hanging comes down from twenty or thirty feet to the dimensions of a doorway. It speaks a great change in interiors, and sets tapestries on a new plane. Later on, they are still further diminished. But the sadness of noting this change is routed by the thrills of pleasure given by the exquisite design, colour and weave. The _Portieres of the Gods_ was, then, a series of eight small hangings, four typifying the seasons and four the elements, with an appropriate Olympian forming the central point of interest and the excuse for an entourage of thrilling and graceful versatility. This set has been copied so many times that even the most expert must fail in trying to identify the date of reproduction. Two hundred and thirty times this set is known to have been reproduced, and such talented weavers were given the task as Jans and Lefebvre.