Languedoc and Brittany at the head, resisted, in the name of their ancient privileges, the collection of taxes to which they had not consented; riots went on multiplying; they even extended to Paris, where the government was accused of kidnapping children for transportation to the colonies.  The people rose, several police-agents were massacred; the king avoided passing through the capital on his way from Versailles to the camp at Compiegne; the path he took in the Bois de Boulogne received the name of Revolt Road.  “I have seen in my days,” says D’Argenson, “a decrease in the respect and love of the people for the kingship.”

Decadence went on swiftly, and no wonder.  At forty years of age Louis XV., finding every pleasure pall, indifferent to or forgetful of business from indolence and disgust, bored by everything and on every occasion, had come to depend solely on those who could still manage to amuse him.

[Illustration:  Madame de Pompadour——­215]

Madame de Pompadour had accepted this ungrateful and sometimes shameful task.  Born in the ranks of the middle class, married young to a rich financier, M. Lenormant d’Etioles, Mdlle.  Poisson, created Marchioness of Pompadour, was careful to mix up more serious matters with the royal pleasures.  The precarious lot of a favorite was not sufficient for her ambition.  Pretty, clever, ingenious in devising for the king new amusements and objects of interest, she played comedy before him in her small apartments and travelled with him from castle to castle; she thus obtained from his easy prodigality enormous sums to build pleasaunces which she amused herself by embellishing; Bellevue, Babiole, the marchioness’ house at Paris, cost millions out of the exhausted treasury.  Madame de Pompadour was fond of porcelain; she conceived the idea of imitating in France the china-work of Saxony, and founded first at Vincennes and then at Sevres the manufacture of porcelain, which the king took under his protection, requiring the courtiers to purchase the proceeds of it at high prices.  Everybody was anxious to please the favorite; her incessantly renewed caprices contributed to develop certain branches of the trade in luxuries.  The expenses of the royal household went on increasing daily; the magnificent prodigalities of King Louis XIV. were surpassed by the fancies of Madame de Pompadour.  Vigilant in attaching the courtiers to herself, she sowed broadcast, all around her, favors, pensions, profitable offices, endowing the gentlemen to facilitate their marriage, turning a deaf ear to the complaints of the people as well as to the protests of the States or Parliaments.  The greedy and frivolous crowd that thronged at her feet well deserved the severe judgment pronounced by Montesquieu on courtiers and courts.  “Ambition amidst indolence, baseness amidst pride, the desire to grow rich without toil, aversion from truth, flattery, treason, perfidy, neglect of all engagements, contempt for the duties of a citizen,