The new councils had already been constituted, when it was discovered that commerce had been forgotten; and to it was assigned a seventh body.  “Three sorts of men, the choice of whom was dictated by propriety, weakness, and necessity, filled the lists:  in the first place, great lords, veterans in intrigue but novices in affairs, and less useful from their influence than embarrassing from their pride and their pettinesses; next, the Regent’s friends, the cream of the rows, possessed with the spirit of opposition and corruption, ignorant and clever, bold and lazy, and far better calculated to harass than to conduct a government; lastly, below them, were pitch-forked in, pell-mell, councillors of State, masters of requests, members of Parliament, well-informed and industrious gentlemen, fated henceforth to crawl about at the bottom of the committees, and, without the spur of glory or emulation, to repair the blunders which must be expected from the incapacity of the first and the recklessness of the second class amongst their colleagues.” [Lemontey, Histoire de la Regence, t. i. p. 67.] “It is necessary,” the young king was made to say in the preamble to the ordinance which established the councils, “that affairs should be regulated rather by unanimous consent than by way of authority.”

How singular are the monstrosities of experience!  At the head of the council of finance, a place was found for the Duke of Noailles, active in mind and restless in character, without any fixed principles, an adroit and a shameless courtier, strict in all religious observances under Louis XIV., and a notorious debauchee under the Regency, but intelligent, insolent, ambitious, hungering and thirsting to do good if he could, but evil if need were, and in order to arrive at his ends.  His uncle, Cardinal Noailles, who had been but lately threatened by the court of Rome with the loss of his hat, and who had seen himself forbidden to approach the dying king, was now president of the council of conscience.  Marshal d’Huxelles, one of the negotiators who had managed the treaty of Utrecht, was at the head of foreign affairs.  The Regent had reserved to himself one single department, the Academy of Sciences.  “I quite intend,” said he, gayly, “to ask the king, on his majority, to let me still be Secretary of State of the Academy.”

The Regent’s predilection, consolidating the work of Colbert, contributed to the development of scientific researches, for which the neatness and clearness of French thought rendered it thenceforth so singularly well adapted.

The gates of the prison were meanwhile being thrown open to many a poor creature; the Jansenists left the Bastille; others, who had been for a long time past in confinement, were still ignorant of the grounds for their captivity, which was by this time forgotten by everybody.  A wretched Italian, who had been arrested the very day of his arrival in Paris, thirty-five years before, begged to remain in prison; he had no