be my duty.”  He had no more commands, in spite of his entreaties to obtain, in 1709, permission to march against the enemy.  “If money is short, I will go without any train,” he said; “I will live like a simple officer; I will eat, if need be, the bread of a common soldier, and none will complain of lacking superfluities when I have scarcely necessaries.”  It was at the very time when the Archbishop of Cambrai was urgent for peace to be made at any price.  “The people no longer live like human beings,” he said, in a memorial sent to the Duke of Beauvilliers; “there is no counting any longer on their patience, they are reduced to such outrageous trials.  As they have nothing more to hope, they have nothing more to fear.  The king has no right to risk France in order to save Spain; he received his kingdom from God, not that he should expose it to invasion by the enemy, as if it were a thing with which he can do anything he pleases, but that he should rule it as a father, and transmit it as a precious heirloom to his posterity.”  He demanded at the same time the convocation of the assembly of notables.

It was this kingdom, harassed on all sides by its enemies, bleeding, exhausted, but stronger, nevertheless, and more bravely faithful than was made out by Fenelon, that the new dauphin found himself suddenly called upon to govern by the death of Monseigneur, and by the unexpected confidence testified in him before long by the king.  “The prince should try more than ever to appear open, winning, accessible, and sociable,” wrote Fenelon; “he must undeceive the public about the scruples imputed to him; keep his strictness to himself, and not set the court apprehending a severe reform of which society is not capable, and which would have to be introduced imperceptibly, even if it were possible.  He cannot be too careful to please the king, avoid giving him the slightest umbrage, make him feel a dependence founded on confidence and affection, relieve him in his work, and speak to him with a gentle and respectful force which will grow by little and little.  He should say no more than can be borne; it requires to have the heart prepared for the utterance of painful truths which are not wont to be heard.  For the rest, no puerilities or pettinesses in the practice of devotion; government is learned better from studying men than from studying books.”

The young dauphin was wise enough to profit by these sage and able counsels.  “Seconded to his heart’s content by his adroit young wife, herself in complete possession of the king’s private ear and of the heart of Madame de Maintenon, he redoubled his attentions to the latter, who, in her transport at finding a dauphin on whom she might rely securely instead of one who did not like her, put herself in his hands, and, by that very act, put the king in his hands.  The first fortnight made perceptible to all at Marly this extraordinary change in the king, who was so reserved towards his legitimate children,