The triumph of the Bourbon monarchy was complete.  The government had become one great machine of centralized administration, with a king for its head; though a king who neither could nor would direct it.  All strife was over between the Crown and the nobles; feudalism was robbed of its vitality, and left the mere image of its former self, with nothing alive but its abuses, its caste privileges, its exactions, its pride and vanity, its power to vex and oppress.  In England, the nobility were a living part of the nation, and if they had privileges, they paid for them by constant service to the state; in France, they had no political life, and were separated from the people by sharp lines of demarcation.  From warrior chiefs, they had changed to courtiers.  Those of them who could afford it, and many who could not, left their estates to the mercy of stewards, and gathered at Versailles to revolve about the throne as glittering satellites, paid in pomp, empty distinctions, or rich sinecures, for the power they had lost.  They ruined their vassals to support the extravagance by which they ruined themselves.  Such as stayed at home were objects of pity and scorn.  “Out of your Majesty’s presence,” said one of them, “we are not only wretched, but ridiculous.”

Versailles was like a vast and gorgeous theatre, where all were actors and spectators at once; and all played their parts to perfection.  Here swarmed by thousands this silken nobility, whose ancestors rode cased in iron.  Pageant followed pageant.  A picture of the time preserves for us an evening in the great hall of the Chateau, where the King, with piles of louis d’or before him, sits at a large oval green table, throwing the dice, among princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses, ambassadors, marshals of France, and a vast throng of courtiers, like an animated bed of tulips; for men and women alike wear bright and varied colors.  Above are the frescos of Le Brun; around are walls of sculptured and inlaid marbles, with mirrors that reflect the restless splendors of the scene and the blaze of chandeliers, sparkling with crystal pendants.  Pomp, magnificence, profusion, were a business and a duty at the Court.  Versailles was a gulf into which the labor of France poured its earnings; and it was never full.

Here the graces and charms were a political power.  Women had prodigious influence, and the two sexes were never more alike.  Men not only dressed in colors, but they wore patches and carried muffs.  The robust qualities of the old nobility still lingered among the exiles of the provinces, while at Court they had melted into refinements tainted with corruption.  Yet if the butterflies of Versailles had lost virility, they had not lost courage.  They fought as gayly as they danced.  In the halls which they haunted of yore, turned now into a historical picture-gallery, one sees them still, on the canvas of Lenfant, Lepaon, or Vernet, facing death with careless gallantry, in