Clisson to house the national archives; the near-by Hôtel de Hollande, once the Dutch embassy; and the Hôtel Beauvais from whose balcony the queen-mother, the Queen of England, Cardinal Mazarin and Turenne watched the entrance of Louis XIV and his bride, Maria Theresa of Spain.
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.
There is in the French character to-day a certain credulity as concerns “get-rich-quick” schemes which renders the people astonishingly responsive to the efforts of swindlers like Madame Humbert, notorious a few years ago. It is a quality in curious contrast to the shrewdness which makes them the readiest financiers of modern Europe, yet in a way it supplements the thrift which some students look upon as a result of the bitter days of the “Old Régîme,” the pinching period that resulted in the Revolution. It would seem that this characteristic is not a modern phenomenon, for at the beginning of Louis XV’s reign a Scotsman named Law proposed a paper money scheme that was seized upon with eagerness by all classes of an impoverished society. Nor was it a phenomenon peculiar to France, for at about the same time the South Sea Bubble was exciting England to a frenzy of acquisitiveness. Whatever the psychology, all France and especially all Paris went wild over Law’s propositions. He issued small notes which he redeemed in specie until he won the confidence of the public and the government endorsed his bank and permitted the use of his paper in payment of taxes. The Mississippi valley was supposed at that time to abound in gold and silver and Law’s office in the rue Quincampoix, near the Halles and the church of Saint Leu, was fairly besieged by courtiers and clergy, by tradesmen and ladies of the nobility eager to buy stock in a mining company which Law organized. West of the Halles, near the Hôtel de Soissons, was a Bourse des Valeurs established entirely for the conduct of business connected with Law’s schemes.
It is probable that Law was self-deceived. At any rate, when the bubble burst he was as hard hit financially as any of his victims, and, in addition, barely escaped with his life from their wrath, when they besieged his bank in the Place Vendôme and rushed, howling with rage, to the Palais Royal where they thought he had taken refuge. The government repudiated its debts, but private individuals could not do that and the ruin was general. A rhyme of the day says:
On Monday I bought share on share;
On Tuesday I was a millionaire;
On Wednesday I took a grand abode;
On Thursday in my carriage rode;
On Friday drove to the Opera-ball;
On Saturday came to the paupers’ hall.