But these dissipated courtiers had a model constantly before their eyes, whose more excessive follies it were difficult to rival; and this was the King himself, whom the whole nation was called upon to obey.  If Louis XIV. was a Nebuchadnezzar, unapproachable from pride, Louis XV. was a Sardanapalus in effeminacy and insouciant revelries.  The shameless infamies of his life were too revolting to bear more than a passing allusion; and I should blush to tear away the historic veil which covers up his vices from the common eye.  I shrink from showing to what depths humanity can sink, even when clothed in imperial purple and seated on the throne of state.  The countless memoirs of that wicked age have however, exposed to the indignant eye of posterity the regal debaucheries of Versailles and the pollutions of the Pare aux Cerfs,—­that infamous seraglio which cost the State one hundred millions of livres, at the lowest estimate.  And this was but a part of the great system of waste and folly.  Five hundred millions of the national debt were incurred for expenses too ignominious to be even named.  The King, however, was not fond of pomp; it was fatiguing for him to bear, and he generally shut himself from the sight and intercourse of any but convivial friends,—­no, not friends, for to absolute monarchs the pleasures of friendship are denied; I should have said, the panderers to his degrading pleasures.  Never did the Papal court at Avignon or Rome, even in the worst ages of mediaeval darkness, witness more scandalous enormities than those which disgraced the whole reign of Louis XV., either in the days of his minority, when the kingdom was governed by the Duke of Orleans, or in his latter years, when the Duke of Choiseul was the responsible adviser of the crown.  The Palais Royal, the Palais Luxembourg, the Trianon, and Versailles were alternately scenes of excesses which would have disgraced the reigns of the most degenerate of Saracenic caliphs.  So vile was the court, that a celebrated countess one day said, at a public festival, that “God, after having formed man, took the mud which was left, and made the souls of princes and footmen.”

And the King hated business as much as he hated pomp.  Unlike his predecessor, he left everything in the hands of his servants.  Nothing wearied him so much as an interview with a minister, or a dispatch from a general.  In the society of his mistresses he abnegated his duties as a monarch, and the labors of his life were employed in gratifying their resentments and humoring their caprices.  Their complaints were more potent than the suggestions of ministers, or the remonstrances of judges.  In idle frivolities his time was passed, neglectful of the great interests which were intrusted to him to guard; and the only attainment of which he was proud was a knack of making tarts and bon-bons, with which he frequently regaled his visitors.