to alter the angle at which the gun was originally fixed. This cannon measures twenty-five centimetres in diameter of bore, and is the one which threw a bolt about seventy-five centimetres in length right across the Seine on to the slope below the terrace at St. Germain, thereby scattering the crowd of idle sight-seers congregated there, and interfering considerably with the digestion of the peaceful diners in the hospitable salons of the Pavilion Henry IV. Below this monster are the other two breech-loading iron guns of nineteen centimetres calibre, which fired on Bougival and Ville St. Cloud; while on either side of them the batteries are filled up with eight muzzle-loading marine guns, of sixteen centimetres bore. Half way up the slope, between the ordinary bastions and the heavy naval battery, and on the southern face of the hill, was a tier of guns, principally twentyfour-pounders, throwing a long conical shot of fifty-six pounds in weight. Most of these were directed against Sévres, Montretout and Ville d'Auray. On this level also a splinter-proof battery was in course of construction; the uprights had been fixed, but the work would seem to have been sudde: ly interrupted, as there were no preparations visible fr completing the frame, or mounting guns. The guns are all mounted en barbette, and many of them are placed on fronts and faces unprovided with embrasures, and have been simply fired over the edge of the parapet. These guns have been elevated to such an angle that it was found necessary to depress the trails into holes dug in the earth for that purpose. Besides the defences of the principal fort, two outlying earthworks or redoubts had been thrown up during the siege; one in the direction of Rueil, and at a considerable distance from the main work, with which it is connected by traverses. This is the redoubt well known to you under the name of the "Windmill battery," which was very active in its attentions to the fourth corps during the sortie of the 21st. No siege guns had been mounted in it. It was armed for the occasion with field artillery only. The other outwork is thrown out upon the southern, or, more properly speaking, the south-western side. It was armed with heavy guns, and was very active at one time. It was this battery which shelled the Landwehr officers out of their comfortable, quiet quarters near Marly, and from the audacious mouth of one of its guns was thrown the shell which fell not far from the acqueduct of Marly, having been, it is supposed, aimed at a distinguished group who were surveying the scene from the secure elevation afforded by that building. At Valerien or at Issy the French appeared to have wasted their time, and thrown away their opportunities sadly; scarcely any preparation had been made for a bombardment. No proper measures had been taken to provide even proper sleeping places for the men, and the bastion fronts and batteries were very much exposed. The homeward route lay through St. Cloud. St. Cloud once contained in itself all the evidences of what we consider a highly civilized phase of existence. Inhabited by men whose delight it was to gather up all that wealth, industry, and artistic skill could produce, its houses were patterns of ornamental science and art. And what has been the net result of this? What is the appearance of the place now? Rows of skeleton houses, bare blackened walls, charred rafters, and deserted hearths, show how quickly man can destroy what man has toiled and striven to set up. Could we but comprehend the misery that is represented by these outward signs, and trace to the end the story connected with each shattered dwelling and each nameless grave, we might well cry in despair, How can these things be? Where is the Providence that allows the innocent to suffer for faults or ignorances they were powerless to control? The road from here passed through the Park of St. Cloud, where the scene, equally desolate, became in its bareness almost grotesque. The chateau stood a black, fire-riven wreck, looking strangely out of place with the still neat, though neglected, contour of the orange-trees and clipped yews. The statues did not appear to have shared in the universal grief. Venus, with mock modesty, was still calling attention to her half-hidden charms. Fauns were dancing, satyrs grinning, and gentlemen with nothing on still complacently playing quoits. These statues were so utterly at variance with the scene, and in their action, attitudes, and occupations reflected such a bitter moral, such a biting sarcasm, upon the lives, thoughts, and feelings of the men around them, that had I wished to write an essay upon the mutability of human affairs, I should have sat down for my inspiration beneath one of the shell-struck chestnuts in the park. LA MARQUISE DE POMPADOUR. PROPHECIES frequently work their own fulfilment. Macbeth, if we are to believe the old chronicles, might never have been Duncan's murderer, nor King of Scotland, harl not the "weird sisters" suggested the crime by prophetic warnings; and Jeanne Antoinette Poisson might never have become the mistress and counsellor of Louis XV., nor have swayed the destinies of France, had not a French sibyl foretold that she, Jeanne, would one day become "part and parcel of the king," and a lucky prophecy it proved, at feast for Madame Lebon (the sibyl), its fulfilment obtaining for her an annuity of six hundred livres for the remainder of her life. Poisson mère was refined and educated -a woman of great beauty, a sceptic, and a philosopher, with no morals to speak of. She seized upon the prophecy with the utmost avidity, and resolved to bring it to pass. Jeanne Antoinette was only nine years of age when her destiny was revealed to her, and from that time her mother never cea ed inflaming the girl's imagination by glowing pictures of her preordained greatness, until the realization of these pictures became the dream of her life. Such mothers and daughters were very common in France during the eighteenth century. Poisson père was attached to the victualling department of the army, and made much money, but was a man of extremely coarse and vulgar habits failings which caused Madame la Marquise, in her great days, much annoyance. One day, when intoxicated (so say the scandalous chronicles of the period), he staggered into his daughter's apartment, while the king was with her, and familiarly slapping the royal visitor upon the shoulder, saluted him with “Ah, mon gendre!" (Ah, son-in-law!) For this breach of etiquette M. de Poisson was banished the court, and narrowly escaped being the subject of a lettre de cachet. Jeanne Antoinette was extremely beautiful: golden hair, elegant figure, dignified presence, and noble features, of which the great charm lay rather in their wondrous mobility than in their regularity of form. Even her bitterest enemies agree that no painter has or could do justice to her rare charms of expression. To this beauty she united, thanks to her mother, every elegant and intellectual accomplishment; she played bewitchingly upon the lute and the clavecin, danced and sang like a professional artiste; as an actress she was scarcely surpassed by the most accomplished ladies of the Comédie Française; she engraved admirably upon stone and steel, and her skill in the use of the brush and the pencil is attested in the paintings upon some of the finest specimens of Sévres porcelain that we possess, and which bear her name. At twenty her mother married her to Lenormand d'Etioles, the nephew of Lenormand de Tournehem, a rich farmer-general; the husband was little, ugly, and ill-shaped, and as contemptible in mind as he was in body. For such an one the brilliant Jeanne could have neither love nor respect. Her thoughts were still running upon the prophecy, and she used naïvely to say to M. d'Etioles, "I will never be unfaithful to you save for the King of France and Navarre!" To this reservation, to which the gentleman seems to have made no objection, she faithfully adhered, for with all her faults, a plurality of lovers was not amongst them. Madame d'Etioles made her house the resort of all' that was brilliant in art and letters; poets, actors, painters, musicians, and nobles assembled there to do homage to her a beauty and her wit. A private theatre was fitted up, in which she first developed those splendid histrionic abilities which were thereafter to delight the court of France. Voltaire himself superintended there the production of his plays, and gained the friendship of the fair hostess friendship which, in after years, stood him in good stead, and which he lost only through that bitter envy of disposition that could not endure to see a rival honored above himself. To him she confided her ambitious aspirations. "I believe in my destiny," she said to him one day. That destiny was soon to be accomplished. D'Etioles had a mansion in the neighborhood of the Forest of Senart, where the king hunted. Madame d'Etioles used to follow the chase, magnificently attired, in a carriage of ebony and ivory, shaped like a car, and her great beauty quickly attracted royal eyes. One day the king shot a stag close to her gates; etiquette demanded the presentation of the antlers to the fair châtelaine, and kneeling and blushing, with pleased confusion, Jeanne Antoinette received the complimentary gift from her monarch's own hands. The days had long gone by when the young king, devoted only to the chase and Marie Leczinska, had stood aloof from the corrupt allurements of his court; he had long since ceased to ask, when a lady's charms were praised in his presence, "Is she as beautiful as the Queen?" -it has been said that that lady's somewhat frigid nature was largely accountable for the unhappy change, to which the unfortunate De Mailly sisters had already fallen victims. He became fascinated by the beautiful bourgeoise. Their next meeting was at a masked ball given at the Hôtel de Ville in celebration of the Dauphin's marriage. From that time their meetings were frequent. Noble in features, majestic and elegant in figure, Louis was at that period the handsomest man in France, and that which had been the effect of evil training, and the ambition of an idea, was, as far as Jeanne's naturally cold temperament would admit of such a passion, softened into love. For two years Madame d'Etioles was favorite sultana only in private. When the admirable Madame Poisson heard her daughter spoken of as the king's mistress, she was lying upon a sick-bed. "I have nothing more to wish for!" she cried piously, and died of joy! Volumes of description could not more fully illustrate the utter moral corruption of the age. In the next campaign, Madame d'Etioles accompanied her royal lover to Flanders; but, remembering the fate of the Duchess de Châteauroux, she doffed her woman's dress and donned the disguise of a young officer of musketeers.* From that period her position was openly proclaimed and recognized; upon her return to France apartments were assigned to her at Versailles, and according to the custom introduced by Henry IV. and copied from him by succeeding sovereigns-she was formally introduced to the Queen and to the royal family. By Marie Leczinska she was received graciously enough; but the Dauphin lolled out his tongue in token of contempt, for which the king made him afterwards apologize. In 1745, she was created Marquise de Pompadour. In the mean time, M. d'Etioles was compensated for his widowhood by a farmer-generalship, and afterwards by the place of fermier des postes. He fre quently boasted of the king's protection. When he required any thing he grew troublesome, talked about his wrongs, and threatened to claim his wife; but a handsome douceur never failed to restore him to his normal condition of amiable resignation. The new Marquise had now attained the height of her ambitious hopes; all France was at her feet, nobles fawned upon her, and court ladies, who a little time before would have scorned to receive her as a guest, were now eager to assist her in the menial offices of her toilette. She scattered gold and offices upon her relatives, even the most distant; her cousin, a drummer, was made captain of dra • The Duchess de Châteauroux had attended Louis in his first campaign, but when the King was seized with that dangerous illness at Metz the clergy ba ished her from his presence, and the mob drove her from the town, with howls and execrations. Her sudden and tragical death followed soon afterwards. goons; her brother, a man of talent, however, was made director-general of buildings, arts, and manufactures, and created Marquis de Vandières, a title afterwards changed to that of Marigny. To literary men and artists she extended the most liberal patronage; she made Marmontel her secretary, she brought Pigalle the sculptor out of his obscurity, and afterwards drew for him the design for his statue of Louis XV.; she patronized Glück, who had failed to gain any attention in the Baotian England of the first Georges, and it was under her auspices that his "Orfeo" was produced; to her Montesquieu dedicated his greatest work; and to her Voltaire owed his first introduction to court. The king always disliked Voltaire; he once said that he feared him, and a breach of etiquette nearly lost the poet his newly-gained favor. To Pompadour had a theatre fitted up at Versailles, of which the Duke de la Vallière was the director, the Abbé de la Garde the prompter, and the lady herself the principal actress. To celebrate the triumph of Fontenoy, Voltaire wrote a kind of pageant, entitled "Le Temple de la Gloire,” in which the parts were executed by the ladies and gentlemen of the court, including La Pompadour herself. favor the author, she had placed him in the king's box, and on the first representation Voltaire found himself standing immediately behind the king, who was designated in the spectacle as Trajan. When that august personage appeared upon the scene, the poet became so excited that, in a transport of self-gratulation, he caught the real monarch in his arms, crying, "Eh, Trajan, you recognize yourself, do you not?" This daring breach of decorum caused a terrible commotion, the offender was removed by the guards, and would certainly have been banished had it not been for the good offices of his patroness. She afterwards conferred upon him the dignity of gentleman in ordinary of the chamber, and the post of historiographer. Her friendship for Voltaire survived even the lampoons and abuse with which he so plentifully bespattered her during his residence at Potsdam, and she frequently interceded with the king to allow him to return to France. † One of her most disinterested acts of kindness was bestowed upon the old poet Crébillon, who was at the time eighty years of age: she settled upon him a handsome annuity, appointed him to the sinecure of librarian, which included a lodging in the Louvre, and presented to him a magnificent impression of his own works, of which she herself had engraved the tail pieces. Under her reign genius of all kinds found a warm welcome in the court of France. Not to literature and art alone did she confine her influence and her patronage. At her suggestion the great Ecole Militaire was first founded; the groves of the Champs Elysées were planted, and the trees of the boulevards, as far as the Porte St. Martin. She drew a grand plan for rebuilding Paris, of which only a portion was executed, but of that portion are the Place de Louis Quinze, the Place Vendôme, the Madeleine, &c. But the greatest of all her works was the establishment of the great Sevres manufactory. The idea was first suggested by the sight of some very beautiful specimens of porcelain, brought by Charles Adams to the king. An attempt had been made in Louis XIII.'s time to introduce into France the manufacture of porcelain, but it had signally failed. Under the ardent auspices of Pompadour, however, who drew with her own hand, and occasionally painted some of the finest designs, the Sévres ware became the most celebrated in Europe. In all these undertakings she was ably seconded by the talents of her brother, the Marquis de Marigny. Upon a hill that commanded a fine view of the manufac * In consequence of the nobility punning upon the word "Vandières." and nicknaming him the" Marquis d'Avant-hier" (Marquis of the day before yesterday). †The origin of all this abuse was envy and disappointed ambition— envy of the patronage bestowed upon poor old Crébillon, and disap pointment at not being raised to certain dignities, which he coveted. Whatever were her faults, she did not deserve the abuse of the man who owed his own elevation to the patronage with which they had gifted her, Her subsequent intercession with the king is scarcely indicative of that malignant disposition against all who crossed her with which certain writers have sought to still further blacken a name too deeply dyed already with incontrovertible misdeeds. tory, of the windings of the Seine, of the city of Paris, and of the beautiful country around, she caused to be erected that exquisite temple of luxury, destroyed during the Revolution Belle Vue. Upon the erection of this building, and upon its adornment with every beauty of art that could charm the senses, three million livres were expended. Falconet, Coustan, Adam, Verbreck, Pigalle, were the sculp tors; Boucher, Vanloo, Oudry, Pierre, Vernet, were the painters; but all these worked under her orders and through her inspiration. So interested was the king in the new building, that during the progress of the works he frequently remained with the workmen throughout the whole day, sometimes even taking his dinner among them! It was completed in the depth of winter, but even the barrenness of the season was overcome by the mimicry of art. The conservatories and rooms were filled with the most gorgeous flowers, from which were emitted exquisite odors. So perfect was the imitation of nature, that on first seeing them the king put his fingers to the stem of one to pluck it, and found that those floral beauties were simply painted porcelain, into the calyces of which had been poured a drop of the perfume associated with the flowers represented. It was here that La Pompadour gave her petits soupers, which consisted of never less than forty-eight different dishes. Talking of les petits soupers suggests a yet more celebrated and equally splendid palace, which is yet standing, Le petit Trianon. It was here that Louis chiefly loved to cast aside the restraints of royalty, and, surrounded by ses intimes, wander through those enchanting gardens, and to gather and distribute among them with his own hands the delicious fruits and flowers that grew there, luscious as those of Armida; or, better still, to entertain them with gastronomical delicacies. These suppers were prepared by noble hands alone, for in those days gastronomy was not only a science but a fine art, and an indispensable accomplishment for a fine gentleman. When one of these suppers was decided upon, his Majesty left Versailles before mid-day, accompanied by the Ducs de Goutant, d'Ayen, de Coigni, de la Vallière, the Prince de Beaufrement, and the Marquis de Polignac. Upon their arrival at the Little Trianon the cuisine was carried into the salon, and there, assisted by the Count de Croismare, the Chevalier de Brusse, grand equerries; the Chevalier Saint Saveur, and the Marquis de Montmorency, officers of the body-guard; together with four pages who acted as under-cooks and scullions, the meal was prepared. The king himself donned the cook's apron, and was celebrated for his poulets au basilic and eggs prepared in different ways; M. Goutant was the hero of the salad, Coigni of the rôti; each member of the party was famous in some particular branch of the art, and all were ever tasking their ingenuity to invent new dishes. Both here and at Belle Vue the attendance of domestics was entirely dispensed with; when one course was finished, a stamp of the foot signalled the attendants beneath; the table sank through a trap in the floor, and another ready furnished rose in its place. The salons in which these suppers were eaten were adorned with all that was exquisite in nature and art; the dishes were interspersed with vases filled with the rarest and most beautiful flowers; the walls were covered with the finest paintings; statuary was everywhere; every article of furniture was a model of beauty. Licentious as these brilliant reunions were, they still form a favorable contrast to the coarse drunken gluttony that characterized the English feeds of the time, which were equally sensual and far more brutish. La Pompadour was the first who introduced those refinements and elegances of the table which so obtain at the present day. In 1752 the king bestowed upon her the distinction of the tabouret and the honors of a duchess, which conferred the privilege of sitting in the presence of the queen. A pension of 4,000 livres a month had been settled upon her, independent of the large gifts of money which were constantly bestowed upon her by her royal lover. For the purchase of the magnificent hotel of the Count D'Evreux, in the Champs Elysées, she received 800,000 livres. Among other estates she owned the lands of Crécy, of Montretout, of La Celle, of d'Aulnay, of de St. Rémy, and the hôtels of Compiègne, Fontainebleau, and Versailles. In the archives at Versailles are preserved an account of her expenses during her nineteen-years' reign. The sum total is 40,000,000 livres. A note in her own handwriting states that out of this enormous sum she had given to the poor 150,000 livres ! * A heart disease, constantly aggravated by a life of restless, anxious excitement, impaired her personal charms at an early age, and during the latter years of her life her connection with the king was a purely platonic one. Louis was indolent and hated business, and upon this weakness she founded a new empire. She plunged into state affairs, and in time became his chief political adviser; ministers were appointed and displaced at her pleasure; foreign affairs, home affairs, even war affairs, all came under her influence. While the king amused himself at a printing-press, or with some other trifling, she would be drawing out plans of campaign. Incapable ministers, incapable officers, peculation, jobbery, monopolies, and ruinous taxation were the results of this influence. But both at home and abroad her power was omnipotent. Even the haughty Marie Thérèse condescended to smile upon her to address her as "dear cousin!" And it was to avenge the contempt and abuse that Frederick of Prussia unceasingly heaped upon her that she so eagerly advocated the Austrian alliance, which was ultimately concluded. But these political labors were light compared to those of another task with which the necessities of her position burdened her. From his earliest youth Louis had been afflicted with a profound melancholy and an almost unconquerable ennui; to this temperament, rather than to innate vices, may be attributed that utter moral corruption into which he ultimately fell. To soothe this melancholy, to divert this ennui by an unceasing round of novel amusements and dissipations, was the task which Pompadour undertook, and was the means by which she held her empire over her fickle lover until the last day of her life. The secret of that empire is contained in a sentence-she rendered herself indispensable to his mode of life. Upon these diversions were lavished millions wrung from a starving people. To provide entertainments, the ingenuity of poets and artists was put continually upon the rack; each one was more curious and costly than its predecessor; but the king had no taste for art or literature, and the novelty of the thing once exhausted, it became wearisome to him. To divert his melancholy Belle Vue was built, a private theatre was established at Versailles, balls, feasts, petit soupers were given and still the demon within him craved for now food. Intellectual and artistic pleasures were soon exhausted, and then diversion had to be found in vice; vice, not only as it luxuriated in courts and in the beau monde, but as it festered in the gutters and alleys. In one of the suburbs of Paris there was a low tavern, kept by one Ramponneau, whose convivial disposition and coarse wit attracted an enormous custom to his house. By and by his celebrity reached even to the court. Eureka! a new pleasure to divert the royal spleen! Nobles, princes of the blood, even ladies of the court, disguised themselves, and paid visits to the gay cabaretier, to listen to his gross anecdotes, his ribaldry, and obscene wit, and to carry them away for the delectation of their royal master. Far from desiring to conceal their relish for such uncourtly pleasures, they openly blazoned it to the world, and the cabaretier, for a season, became the fashion- the rage. His songs and sayings were in every noble mouth, male and female, -his name was given to every new fashion, clothes, furniture, sauces, dishes, and they alone were looked upon as worthy of ridicule who had nothing à la Ramponneau! And when the piquancy of Ramponneau was exhausted, scouts were sent out at night to scour the human sewers of Paris, to collect their filth, to collect stories of debauch, and vile anecdotes for the king's morning amusement! *Among the items are 1,200,000 livres for her domestics; for her table, 3,504,800; for her comedies and fêtes, 4,000,000; for her coaches and horses, 3,000,000. After her death her wardrobe was valued at 350,000 livres; her china (models for Sévres), 101,945 livres. Her library, very rich in MSS., sold for £40,000. When her faded charms rendered her no longer an object of passion, and the wretched woman was pursued, night and day, by the tormenting fear of a rival supplanting her, she resorted to the horrible expedient of seeking out for her lover new mistresses, carefully selecting them from an inferior rank of society, and such whose influence could only be transitory. Then came the establishment of the Pare aux Cerfs, that most hideous scandal of a scandalous reign. The daughters of the citizens, some scarcely more than children, were continually abducted and brought to this place, where the King, as a pretended Polish noble (a relative of the Queen), visited them. No young girl possessing any claims to beauty was safe from the raids of his panders, who were ever in search of new victims. Think of the life of this woman, busying herself in every affair of state, ever racking her brain to invent new diversions, new vices for an incurable ennui, and ever pursued by the phantom of a coming rival who should deprive her of the fruits of her toils. Ambition and retribution divided her soul between them. Well might she say, "My life has been a perpetual fight." The ennui of Louis XV. is said to have cost the nation one hundred million livres! This sum is perhaps an exaggerated one; but even an approximation to it is terrible to think of. For besides these costly pleasures, there were the burthens imposed by years of ruinous war. The effects of this enormous expenditure upon the condition of the people is thus terribly described in one of the "Want Memorials" which were sent in to Pompadour from all parts of the country after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. "I cannot," says the writer, "represent the wretchedness that reigns in this province. The earth yields nothing. Most of the farmers, unable to live by the products of their lands, have abandoned them. Some have become beggars, and others soldiers; many have gone away to foreign countries. A hamlet which before the war supported fifteen hundred inhabitants, can scarcely furnish necessaries for six hundred. Cattle have diminished in proportion with men. The country is in absolute need of cattle; in most of the villages where labor is still carried on men do the work of oxen." other writer writes thus:- -"The subjects of the king diminish every day in this province; soon there will be no longer any inhabitants. I have desired the curés of the different parishes to furnish me with lists of baptisms and burials, and the number of the deaths exceeds the numbers of the living; but of fifty of the king's subjects there are scarcely two who have bread to eat. Others die from want. Marriage is almost unknown, and the children that are born are the offspring of debauchery." An Riots broke out in the streets of Paris, and gaunt, famished wretches pursued the king's carriage with cries of "Bread! bread!" But the courtiers closed his ears against these cries, and were assiduous only in effacing from his mind those dark images. In the Gallery at Versailles was a picture representing a Roman emperor giving bread to the people, and this was removed, in order that the king might not be reminded of the wants of the populace. And he and his companions feasted and revelled, and the sale of corn was a monopoly, and people died of want in the streets. "After us the deluge!" said Pompadour, prophetically. Verily the clouds had long been gathering. Scores of years before she or her royal lover came into the world, the groans and tears of the oppressed, and their cries for justice, had been rising from earth to heaven and evoking Divine wrath. With Louis XIV. began this storm-gathering-with those long, desolating wars that brought only ruin and defeat upon the government, and upon the masses a terrible heritage of suffering to be transmitted from father to son. To complete the labor that Richelieu had commenced, and upon the ruins of the feudal system to erect an absolute and irresponsible monarchy, was the leading aim of the Grand Monarque's life. In the splendor of his Oriental court the nobility became mere gilded butterflies, a portion of the trappings that set off his own magnificence, but having no vitality apart from him. The nobles, by their constant attendance upon the king, became alienated from the peasantry, who were ground down to support their extravagance at Versailles; thus the best ties of the feudal system, those ties which in the old days rendered the interests of lord and vassal in some measure identical, were broken, and the lord soon became, in the eyes of the vassal, simply a tyrant and an oppressor. Many of the nobility, unable to keep pace with the splendor of the court, their estates sold, or hopelessly mortgaged,- sank into the condition of mere peasant-farmers. Gloomy, discontented, ever inwardly contrasting the past power of their family with their present degradation, the proud blood of the old noblesse that coursed through their veins revolting against their menial position, heart-sick, weary, longing for any change that would break the fetters of their vile bondage, the descendants of these men became the leading and most dangerous spirits of the early days of the Revolution. Thus, the very means by which the king had thought to most effectually cement absolutism, proved one of its strongest disintegrating elements. The numbers of the discontented were largely swelled by the ingratitude of his successor. Lapped in Sybaritish luxury, Louis XV. cared little for the brave men who fought the battles of the country, who shed their blood and expended their patrimonies to uphold a monarch who at times would not even deign to receive them. After the battle of Fontenoy, the Chevalier de Modena presented himself at Versailles, and craved an audience with the king; but as his dress was that which he had worn upon the battle-field, admission was refused him. "This dress still bears upon it the dust of Fontenoy, which ought to be a proud sight for the king," answered the old soldier. But such excuses were no passport at Versailles; the chevalier was ordered to don a more ceremonious garb, and then he might be admitted. "I have none but this, nor the means to procure any other; I sold my last rood of land to make the last compaign," was the reply. The more reason that he should not be admitted; why should the repose of Sardanapalus be troubled by the presence of beggared soldiers? And so the brave old noble was not suffered to put foot within the palace. Stung to the soul by the thought of the unworthy treatment he had received in return for all his sacrifices, he vented his wrath in the following verses: "Serviles instruments de triomphes nouveaux, Victimes des projets dont cette cour abonde, Mais ne paraissez point au grand jour qui s'apprête : For this "seditious" utterance of his wrongs, orders were given for his arrest, and it was only by a timely flight into his own country of Avignon that he escaped, what might have been, a life-long incarceration in the Bastille ! But although brave soldiers were refused admittance to Versailles on account of their battle-stained costume, the rigid etiquette and almost Eastern severance of ranks which had obtained under the Grand Monarque all but disappeared in the court of his successor. La Pompadour was a bourgeoise, the first who had ever risen to the "honors" of the acknowledged favorite in the court of France. The etiquette and aristocratic exclusiveness of the last reign were standing protests against her position. To nullify such protests by breaking down the distinctions of caste was her natural impulse. The task was one of little difficulty, for the court, wearied of tedious ceremony and autocratic seclusion, plunged into the opposite extreme, and, rioting in its new-found liberty, mingled with bourgeois and artisan in one common debauchery. It was the beginning of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity;" but thereafter the people improved upon the lesson, and applied it in a way of which its first promoters never dreamed. The glamour of rank that had hitherto dazzled the eyes of the commonality was dispelled, and the eyes saw, instead of demi-gods and demi-goddesses, men and women as commonplace and as vicious as those to whom they belonged. The effects of this disillusion were quickly apparent; the sacredness of monarchy was openly questioned; the privileges of rank bitterly inveighed against; the "Esprit des Loix" and the "Contrat Social" struck at the very roots of the ancien régime. But, as though the very nobles themselves were beginning to sicken of the tainted atmosphere of decay in which they lived, or as though possessed by a strange infatuation that led them to court their own destruction Montesquieu, Rousseau, the very men who were preaching a crusade against their order, were those whom they most delighted to receive and honor. To crown this strangest anomaly of history came the Encyclopedists, whose daring pens attacked every subject, sacred and profane. It was during the bitter wars between the Jesuits and Jansenists, in the midst of the discussions upon the bull "Unigenitus," that the first numbers of the "Encyclopédie" appeared. They were quickly suppressed by an order in council; but they still continued to circulate secretly. It was from that time that they began to grow really dangerous; for it was only after this public suppression that the more extreme articles were written. A secret society, of which D'Alembert, Diderot, and Voltaire were the heads, was founded for the propagation of the doctrines of Jacobinism, a society whose ramifications extended through France and Germany, whose members recognized each other by masonic signs, and the object of which was the destruction of monarchy and religion. Each of these writers had been a pupil of the Jesuits, and had learned from those masters of the art of sophistry that subtle mode of reasoning which they now employed for the destruction of their teachers. † In 1764 was published the edict for the expulsion of the Jesuits, and with them was swept away the last barrier to the propagation of the new doctrine; and infidelity, no longer lurking shamefaced in holes and corners, flaunted itself boldly and publicly, even in the church itself. The princes of the church left the laity far behind in their vices and hideous debaucheries; the abbés were mere hangers-on at the houses of noble courtesans-panders to the rich, boon companions in every dissolute excess, ministers of religion in form, sceptics and even atheists in heart, scoffing in society at the very doctrines they preached. Religion became a byword and a jest, a subject for puns and epigrams, and the wit applauded loudest was that which contained the largest amount of blasphemy. The whole fabric of society, from the cottage to the court, from the alley to the altar, was rotting, crumbling. There was no cohesion anywhere; love, faith, honor, religion, all were swallowed up in a gulf of seething corruption. King, priest, noble, lady, author and artist, bourgeois, ruffian -all mingled together in the demon revel of this hellish carnival, with the thunder-clouds above their heads, the earthquake beneath their feet, and Satan as master of the revels. There is little more of interest to be told of the life of La Pompadour. The "fight" went on fiercely as ever, now with the Jesuits, - -a severe one, involving as it did, excommunication, now with the ministers, now with the people. The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, so unfavorable in many respects to the interests of France, and the hasty conclusion of which was ascribed to her influence, rendered her name odious throughout the country. But with the attempt upon the king's life by Damiens, the contriving of which was ascribed by turns to every party in the State, not excluding the Dauphin himself-came her severest trial of strength. She was ordered to quit the palace; had even commenced preparations for doing so, but her empire was to be relinquished only with life; she clung to her position, and weathered the storm. The family compact, the Austrian alliance, and the expulsion of the Jesuits, all of which events she largely influenced, raised her for a time into popularity. But with the news of the terrible defeat of Rosbach this transient gleam of By which extreme unction was refused to any person who could not produce a confessional note, signed by a priest; such notes being refused to all who were not Jesuitically orthodox. † Jay, the principal of the Jesuits' College, had predicted of Voltaire that he would one day become the leader of Deism in France. national favor died out forever. It mattered but little now; "the fight" was nearly over- - the grisly victor of all flesh had his dart ready poised, and the brilliant La Pompadour, succumbing to a painful disease that had been wearing her away for years, lay upon her death-bed. But little of that brilliance and beauty which had enslaved all hearts was left in those bloodless lips, those worn, cadaverous features. Rouge and rose-colored silk garments but made them look the more ghastly. Since some time the Church had received her back into its bosom; she was sister of a religious body, and regularly performed all the rites of a good Catholic. As her confessor, after administering extreme unction, was leaving the chamber, she cried to him, "Stay a moment, and I will go with you." Those were her last words. She expired with her hand in the king's. Her death took place in 1764. She was forty-two years old. She was carried to the grave by the Capuchin brothers; her funeral little better than a pauper's. It was a wet day, and as Louis saw the melancholy cortège pass along, he cynically remarked, "Madame la Marquise will have bad weather for her journey to-day!" Not one tear did he shed for the woman who had been his constant companion during so many years of her life. It has been said that Pompadour possessed but little talent; no genuine love of art and literature, and left but little or no trace upon her age. But so harsh a judgment is untenable after a dispassionate review of her life. To estimate the moral character and to estimate the effects produced by celebrated individuals upon their age and nation, should be separate tasks. But they too frequently coalesce in an author's mind to the destruction of impartiality. That she was immoral, that she was unscrupulously ambitious, and that by her extravagance and bad counsels she worked incalculable evils upon France is indisputable. But in our judgment of this woman and of her acts we must cast aside our nineteenth-century code of morality, and try her by that of her own age- that is to say, in true British fashion, by her peers. What that age was I have endeavored to show; and did I dare to illustrate its corruption by stories out of the lives of its men and women, Jeanne Antoinette d'Etioles would show quite advantageously beside hundreds of her contemporaries. Moral corruption she imbibed at her mother's breast. "C'est un morceau pour un roi!" was the exclamation constantly in Madame Poisson's mouth when speaking of her daughter. She was educated, she was accomplished, she was trained in every elegance of life and manner to fit her for the reigning sultanaship of the royal harem. Had the girl been born a saint she could not have resisted the infection of such a training. Neither was the position of king's mistress regarded by far better mothers than Madame Poisson as a degradation, but rather as an honor for which the highest ladies in the land contested. And there is reason to believe Madame d'Etioles was faithful to her one dereliction from morality-a praise that could scarcely be extended to one of her contemporaries; it is, at all events, quite certain that her conduct was not marked by that indiscriminate licentiousness which was the general attribute of the court ladies of her age. The darkest moral taint upon her memory is the Parc aux Cerfs, the revolting and unnatural vices of which have justly excited the shuddering abhorrence of posterity. Ambition was her ruling passion; to retain her power there was no depth of degradation into which she would not have plunged, perhaps no crime she would have left uncommitted. But she had no innate love of vice, and to crime she only resorted in a last extremity. Few, if any, deliberate and gratuitous acts of evil mark her life; the various charges that are brought against her are enormously exaggerated, being utterly at variance with the general tone of her character and known facts that indicate an opposite disposition. Had her temper been of that vindictiveness with which it is accredited she would scarcely have interceded with the king to permit the return of Voltaire, at whose hands she had received such ingratitude and bitter contempt. Neither was she deficient in generosity; the exiled House of Stuart found in her a warm and sympathizing friend to the last; upon the occasion of the |