But of those decadent ages in which no Ideal either grows or blossoms?  When Belief and Loyalty have passed away, and only the cant and false echo of them remains; and all Solemnity has become Pageantry; and the Creed of persons in authority has become one of two things:  an Imbecility or a Macchiavelism?  Alas, of these ages World-History can take no notice; they have to become compressed more and more, and finally suppressed in the Annals of Mankind; blotted out as spurious,—­which indeed they are.  Hapless ages:  wherein, if ever in any, it is an unhappiness to be born.  To be born, and to learn only, by every tradition and example, that God’s Universe is Belial’s and a Lie; and ‘the Supreme Quack’ the hierarch of men!  In which mournfulest faith, nevertheless, do we not see whole generations (two, and sometimes even three successively) live, what they call living; and vanish,—­without chance of reappearance?

In such a decadent age, or one fast verging that way, had our poor Louis been born.  Grant also that if the French Kingship had not, by course of Nature, long to live, he of all men was the man to accelerate Nature.  The Blossom of French Royalty, cactus-like, has accordingly made an astonishing progress.  In those Metz days, it was still standing with all its petals, though bedimmed by Orleans Regents and Roue Ministers and Cardinals; but now, in 1774, we behold it bald, and the virtue nigh gone out of it.

Disastrous indeed does it look with those same ‘realised ideals,’ one and all!  The Church, which in its palmy season, seven hundred years ago, could make an Emperor wait barefoot, in penance-shift; three days, in the snow, has for centuries seen itself decaying; reduced even to forget old purposes and enmities, and join interest with the Kingship:  on this younger strength it would fain stay its decrepitude; and these two will henceforth stand and fall together.  Alas, the Sorbonne still sits there, in its old mansion; but mumbles only jargon of dotage, and no longer leads the consciences of men:  not the Sorbonne; it is Encyclopedies, Philosophie, and who knows what nameless innumerable multitude of ready Writers, profane Singers, Romancers, Players, Disputators, and Pamphleteers, that now form the Spiritual Guidance of the world.  The world’s Practical Guidance too is lost, or has glided into the same miscellaneous hands.  Who is it that the King (Able-man, named also Roi, Rex, or Director) now guides?  His own huntsmen and prickers:  when there is to be no hunt, it is well said, ’Le Roi ne fera rien (To-day his Majesty will do nothing). (Memoires sur la Vie privee de Marie Antoinette, par Madame Campan (Paris, 1826), i. 12).  He lives and lingers there, because he is living there, and none has yet laid hands on him.