Most of the books found in the prison were destroyed, but a few escaped, and these contained the ex-libris of the Château Royal de la Bastille, certainly one of the scarcest and most interesting in the world.
The accession of Louis XVI. gave rise to great hopes for the regeneration of France, retrenchment in her finances, and reformation in the morals of her court.
The king was young, married to a beautiful and virtuous princess, and was himself credited with the domestic virtues of chastity and sobriety. Indeed, as a master locksmith he might no doubt have earned a comfortable livelihood, for in that occupation, if in no other, he displayed considerable skill and dexterity.
The French have always had a knack of affixing very humorous and catching nicknames to their kings and public men; they might appropriately have christened their new king Louis Trop-tard. He was always Lewis the Too-Late; he was born too late, he resisted the wishes of his people till it was too late; he made concessions when they were too late to conciliate anyone; he practised economy when it only brought him into ridicule; too late he fled from Paris; drank Burgundy, and ate bread and cheese at Varennes until it was too late to escape across the frontier, and finally he died when his death was too late to save his good name, his family, or the monarchy.
He lacked decision of character, and clearness of purpose or perception. He was incapable of reading the signs of the times, or of reforming the vicious system of government he had inherited from his forefathers. So he, who was in many respects the best of the later Bourbons, had to pay the penalty for the crimes, the cruelty, and the follies of his ancestors.
In the best period of French heraldry, supporters were less frequently found than in British heraldry, and it was a rule, or a tradition, that, as marking the divine right of kings, only members of the royal family of France should carry angels as supporters. They were, however, assumed by the illegitimate descendants of the kings, who carried the royal arms with the usual differences.
