The latter part of Louis’ reign showed a constant decline in power resulting from a decline in common sense no less than from the loss of able advisers. Taxes brought the peasants to poverty, famine killed them when disease did not. Territory was lost. As a last burst of stupidity the revocation of the Edict of Nantes drove out of the country the best class of artisans who took their intelligence and skill to the enrichment of other countries. The beginning of the eighteenth century found France with a selfish nobility, and a disordered _bourgeoisie_ and a peasantry in whose hearts was smoldering the fire of bitter hatred that was to burst forth into flame at the Revolution. During the winter of 1709, six years before Louis’ death, the cold was so severe that five thousand people died of their sufferings in Paris alone, and the scarcity of food was so pronounced that the purveyors of the court had difficulty in securing enough for the king himself to eat. So ended in suffering and sullenness the reign of the _Grand Monarque_. CHAPTER XVII PARIS OF LOUIS THE “WELL-BELOVED” It was a pitiful country to which Louis XV fell heir (in 1715) when his great-grandfather died. The peasants had been taxed to the last sou, the nobles, untaxed and selfish, scrambled greedily for court preferment and left their estates uncared for, many of the _bourgeois_ tried to emulate the nobles in extravagance, and all of them seemed to view with apathy a government in which the most intelligent part of the community had an extremely small share. The _nouveau riche_ has his place in the picture. It is related of a rich salt manufacturer, for instance, that he was asked by a friend to whom he was showing a fine villa that he had just built, why a certain niche was left vacant. Proud of his occupation the owner replied that he intended to fill the space with a statue symbolic of his business. To which the friend retorted with a prompt suggestion, “Lot’s wife.” At the time of his accession Louis was but five years old, and the regency was given into the hands of the unscrupulous Duke of Orleans. Both courtiers and Parisians were delighted at the removal of the court from Versailles to the city, but the good people of the town soon realized that the added liveliness was a doubtful advantage, for the gayeties of the Palais Royal in which the regent lived were gross debaucheries. Even holy days were not held sacred, and Orleans is said to have expressed extravagant admiration for a certain church dignitary who was reputed not to have gone to bed sober for forty years. To such a pass did the extravagances fostered by the regent grow that even Louis the Well-Beloved, himself the Prince of Extravagance, was compelled later to pass sumptuary laws regulating dress and the expense of entertainments.