pocket, a handsome coat on his toilet table, powdered valets in his antechamber, a gilded coach at his door, and a fine dinner on his table; so that he may reserve all his attention to be expended in favors on the guests in his drawing-room. Such a mode of living is not to be maintained without waste; and the domestics, left to themselves, make the most of it. What matter is it, so long as they perform their duties? Moreover, everybody must live, and it is pleasant to have contented and obsequious faces around one. Hence the first houses in the kingdom are given up to pillage. Louis XV., on a hunting expedition one day, accompanied by the Duc de Choiseul, inquired of him how much he thought the carriage in which they were seated had cost. M. de Choiseul replied that he should consider himself fortunate to get one like it for 5,000 or 6,000 francs; but "his Majesty, paying for it as a king, and not always paying cash, might have paid 8,000 francs for it." "You are wide of the mark," rejoined the King; "for this vehicle, as you see it, cost me 30,000 francs. The robberies in my household are enormous, but it is impossible to put a stop to them."

In effect, the great help themselves as well as the littleeither in money, or in kind, or in services. There are in the King's household fifty-four horses for the grand equerry, thirtyeight of them being for Madame de Brionne, the administratrix of the office of the stables during her son's minority; there are two hundred and fifteen grooms on duty, and about as many horses kept at the King's expense for various other persons, entire strangers to the department. What a nest of parasites

on this one branch of the royal tree! Elsewhere I find Madame Elisabeth, so moderate, consuming fish amounting to 30,000 francs per annum; meat and game to 70,000 francs; candles to 60,000 francs: Mesdames burn white and yellow candles to the amount of 215,068 francs; the light for the Queen comes to 157,109 francs. The street at Versailles is still shown, formerly lined with stalls, to which the King's valets resorted to nourish Versailles by the sale of his dessert. There is no article from which the domestic insects do not manage to scrape and glean something. The King is supposed to drink orgeat and lemonade to the value of 2,190 francs; "the grand broth, day and night," which Madame Royale, aged six years, sometimes drinks, costs 5,201 francs per annum. Towards the end of the preceding reign the femmes-de-chambre enumerate in the dauphine's outlay

"four pairs of shoes per week; three ells of ribbon per diem, to tie her dressing-gown; two ells of taffeta per diem, to cover the basket in which she keeps her gloves and fan." A few years earlier the King paid 200,000 francs for coffee, lemonade, chocolate, orgeat, and water-ices; several persons were inscribed on the list for ten or twelve cups a day: while it was estimated that the coffee, milk, and bread each morning for each lady of the bedchamber cost 2,000 francs per annum.

We can readily understand how, in households thus managed, the purveyors are willing to wait. They wait so well that often under Louis XV. they refuse to provide, and "hide themselves." Even the delay is so regular that at last they are obliged to pay them five per cent. interest on their advances; at this rate, in 1778, after all Turgot's economic reforms, the King still owes nearly 800,000 livres to his wine merchant, and nearly three millions and a half to his purveyor. The same disorder exists in the houses which surround the throne. "Madame de Guéménée owes 60,000 livres to her shoemaker, 16,000 livres to her paper-hanger, and the rest in proportion." Another lady, whom the Marquis de Mirabeau sees with hired horses, replies to his look of astonishment, "It is not because there are not seventy horses in our stables, but none of them are able to walk to-day." Madame de Montmorin, on ascertaining that her husband's debts are greater than his property, thinks she can save her dowry of 200,000 livres; but is informed that she had given security for a tailor's bill, which, "incredible and ridiculous to say, amounts to the sum of 180,000 livres." One of the decided manias of these days," says Madame d'Oberkirk, "is to be ruined in everything and by everything." "The two brothers Villemer build country cottages at from 500,000 to 600,000 livres; one of them keeps forty horses to ride occasionally in the Bois de Boulogne on horseback." In one night M. de Chenonceaux, son of M. and Madame Dupin, loses at play 700,000 livres. "M. de Chenonceaux and M. de Francueil ran through seven or eight millions at this epoch." "The Duc de Lauzun, at the age of twenty-six, after having run through the capital of 100,000 crowns revenue, is prosecuted by his creditors for nearly two millions of indebtedness." "M. le Prince de Conti lacks bread and wood, although with an income of 600,000 livres," for the reason that "he buys and builds wildly on all sides.”

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Where would be the pleasure if these people were reasonable? What kind of a seignior is he who studies the price of things? And how can the exquisite be reached if one grudges money? Money, accordingly, must flow and flow on until it is exhausted, first by the innumerable secret or tolerated bleedings through domestic abuses, and next in broad streams of the master's own prodigality, through structures, furniture, toilets, hospitality, gallantry, and pleasures. The Comte d'Artois, that he may give the Queen a fête, demolishes, rebuilds, arranges, and furnishes Bagatelle from top to bottom, employing nine hundred workmen day and night; and as there is no time to go any distance for lime, plaster, and cut stone, he sends patrols of the Swiss guards on the highways to seize, pay for, and immediately bring in all carts thus loaded. The Marshal de Soubise, entertaining the King one day at dinner and over night, in his country-house, expends 200,000 livres. Madame de Matignon makes a contract to be furnished every day with a new head-dress, at 24,000 livres per annum. Cardinal de Rohan has an alb bordered with point lace, which is valued at more than 100,000 livres, while his kitchen utensils are of massive silver.

Nothing is more natural, considering their ideas of money: hoarded and piled up, instead of being a fertilizing stream, it is a useless marsh exhaling bad odors. The Queen, having presented the dauphin with a carriage whose silver-gilt trappings are decked with rubies and sapphires, naïvely exclaims, "Has not the King added 200,000 livres to my treasury? That is no reason for keeping them!" They would rather throw it out of the windowwhich was actually done by the Marshal de Richelieu with a purse he had given to his grandson, and which the lad, not knowing how to use, brought back intact. Money, on this occasion, was at least of service to the passing street-sweeper that picked it up. But had there been no passer-by to pick it up, it would have been thrown into the river. One day Madame de B-—, being with the Prince de Conti, hinted that she would like a miniature of her canary-bird set in a ring. have it made. His offer is accepted, but miniature be set plain and without jewels. iature is placed in a simple rim of gold. painting, a large diamond, made very thin, serves as a glass. Madame de B having returned the diamond, "M. le Prince

The prince offers to on condition that the Accordingly the minBut to cover over the

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de Conti had it ground to powder which he used to dry the ink of the note he wrote to Madame de B— on the subject." This pinch of powder cost four or five thousand livres, but we may divine the turn and tone of the note. The extreme of profusion must accompany the height of gallantry; the man of the world being important in the ratio of his contempt for money.

THE

POLITE EDUCATION

From The Ancient Régime.' Copyright 1876, by Henry Holt

HE Duc de Lauzun finds it difficult to obtain a good tutor for his son; for this reason, the latter writes, "he conferred the duty on one of my late mother's lackeys who could read. and write tolerably well, and to whom the title of valet-dechambre was given to insure greater consideration. They gave me the most fashionable teachers besides; but M. Roch (which was my mentor's name) was not qualified to arrange their lessons, nor to qualify me to benefit by them. I was, moreover, like all the children of my age and of my station, dressed in the handsomest clothes to go out, and naked and dying with hunger in the house:" and not through unkindness, but through household oversight, dissipation, and disorder; attention being given to things elsewhere. One might easily count the fathers who, like the Marshal de Belle-Isle, brought up their sons under their own eyes, and themselves attended to their education methodically, strictly, and with tenderness. As to the girls, they were placed in convents: relieved from this care, their parents only enjoy the greater freedom. Even when they retain charge of them, the children are scarcely more of a burden to them. Little Félicité de Saint-Aubin sees her parents "only on their waking up and at meal-times." Their day is wholly taken up: the mother is making or receiving visits; the father is in his laboratory or engaged in hunting. Up to seven years of age the child passes her time with chambermaids, who teach her only a little catechism, "with an infinite number of ghost stories." About this time she is taken care of, but in a way which well portrays the epoch. The marquise her mother, the author of mythological and pastoral operas, has a theatre built in the chateau; a great crowd of company resorts to it from Bourbon-Lancy and Moulins: after rehearsing twelve weeks the little girl, with a quiver

of arrows and blue wings, plays the part of Cupid, and the costume is so becoming she is allowed to wear it for common during the entire day for nine months. To finish the business they send for a dancing-fencing master, and still wearing the Cupid costume, she takes lessons in fencing and in deportment. « The entire winter is devoted to playing comedy and tragedy." Sent out of the room after dinner, she is brought in again only to play on the harpsichord or to declaim the monologue of Alzire before a numerous assembly. Undoubtedly such extravagances are not customary: but the spirit of education is everywhere the same; that is to say, in the eyes of parents there is but one intelligible and rational existence,- that of society,- even for children; and the attentions bestowed on these are solely with a view to introduce them into it or to prepare them for it.

Even in the last years of the ancient régime, little boys have their hair powdered, "a pomatumed chignon [bourse], ringlets, and curls"; they wear the sword, the chapeau under the arm, a frill, and a coat with gilded cuffs; they kiss young ladies' hands with the air of little dandies. A lass of six years is bound up in a whalebone waist; her large hoop-petticoat supports a skirt covered with wreaths; she wears on her head a skillful combination of false curls, puffs, and knots, fastened with pins, and crowned with plumes, and so high that frequently "the chin is half-way down to her feet"; sometimes they put rouge on her face. She is a miniature lady, and she knows it: she is fully up in her part, without effort or inconvenience, by force of habit; the unique, the perpetual instruction she gets is that on her deportment: it may be said with truth that the fulcrum of education in this country is the dancing-master. They could get along with him without any others; without him the others were of no use. For without him, how could people go through easily, suitably, and gracefully, the thousand and one actions of daily life, walking, sitting down, standing up, offering the arm, using the fan, listening and smiling, before eyes so experienced and before such a refined public? This is to be the great thing for them when they become men and women, and for this reason it is the thing of chief importance for them as children. Along with graces of attitude and of gesture, they already have those of the mind and of expression. Scarcely is their tongue loosened when they speak the polished language of their parents. The latter amuse themselves with them and use them as pretty dolls; the