Again the royal family preferred Versailles to Paris. In the country the well-meaning young king tinkered with locks and was generally dull and uninteresting, while the queen made a charmingly elaborate pretence at living the simple life, _à la_ Watteau. Louis did his ineffective best to straighten out the affairs of his kingdom but the deluge which Louis XV had predicted was coming and rapidly. The court often came to town both to give and receive entertainment, and public festivities were not infrequent, for the people had a sort of tolerant affection for the king and queen whose gentleness and helplessness were not without their appeal. When the dauphin was born, eight years after the accession, the City of Paris gave a dinner at the Hôtel de Ville in honor of the event. The royal table was laid with seventy-eight covers and at it the king and his two brothers were the only men, the remaining seventy-five being the queen, the princesses and the ladies of the court. As seems frequently to have happened at these large dinners at the City Hall not everything went smoothly. This time the trouble arose from the commands of etiquette. The hosts bent their whole energies upon serving the king promptly. When he had finished his dinner the guests at the other tables had had nothing but butter and radishes, yet in spite of their hunger they were forced to rise and leave when the king rose. As the preparations for the feast are reported to have been lavishly extravagant it is to be hoped that “the left-overs” were given to the poor who were pitiably hungry most of the time in those days. The public works of Louis’ reign were not many. The unrest of the people was too evident, the supply of money too small for much to be accomplished. To the clearing of the bridges which has been mentioned above was added an effort to bring light and air into at least one crowded spot on the left bank by tearing down the ancient Petit Châtelet. A new wall protected several of the outlying suburbs, and was not pulled down until 1860. At each of its gates was a pavilion, several of which are still standing, which served as an office for the collectors of the _octroi_, a tax levied even now upon all food brought into the city. As anything to do with taxes was obnoxious to the people this construction has been described as “_Le mur murant Paris rend Paris murmurant._” which may be inadequately translated, “The wall walling Paris makes Paris wail.”