and never was man such an idler, nor so entirely delivered up to ennui and nothing ness. To account for this unhappy contradiction, Madame his mother, who was a great reader of fairy lore, invented a pretty little fable. She said, that at his birth all the fairies had been summoned round her bed, but that, unfortunately, one old fairy, who had disappeared for such a very long time as to have quite slipped out of everybody's memory, was forgotten. Suddenly, howSuddenly, however, she appeared, leaning upon her stick. Piqued at the universal forgetfulness, she revenged herself by rendering all the talents presented by the other fairies useless, not one of which, while preserving all, he was ever able to turn to good account. The political life of the Regent commenced at one in the afternoon, the morning having passed in gradually arousing himself from the stupor of the previous night's debauch. After he had taken chocolate his brain cleared, and he was ready for business. His first visit was to the Louvre, to the young king, whom he always treated with the most profound respect. There he would remain conversing about an hour, after which he attended the council of state; this despatched, he paid a visit either to his mother at Saint-Cloud, to the Duchesse de Berry at the Luxembourg, or to some of his other children, for all of whom he had a great affection. So passed the time until ten at night, the hour for supper. and impiety, passed from mouth to mouth; the wild license momentarily increasing as the wine circulated, until the revel ended in helpless intoxication. This was the more decorous of the petits soupers. There were others which in numbers, riot, and indiscriminate gathering, resembled an old Greek saturnalia or a performance of the mysteries of Aphrodite. About this time Canaillac originated public balls. The opera house was built in the garden of the Palais Royal, and a private door afforded direct communication between the two buildings. The Regent frequently attended these balls, and through this entrance sometimes brought a company of the masquers to supper. Then strange noisy groups would gather pell-mell round the luxurious tables, and greedily devour the costly comestibles and choice wines: grisettes, danseuses, noble ladies in the motley attire of Chinese, bayadères, nuns, fairies, Circassians; sacrilegious jests and wild laughter, a Babel of tongues, disputes, quarrels, sometimes blows; delirious mirth, oaths, blasphemy, bacchanalian songs, posés plastiques, unbridled license of all kind, stupefaction, swinish sleep, and a mass of human clay scattered, amidst other remnants of the feast, over satin couch and gorgeous carpet. More than once death joined in the party, and clasping some victim in his bony arms, spread shrieking horror and dismay amongst the revellers. One of the wildest of these bacchanals was the Regent's daughter. Married at a very early age to the Duc de Berry, a good-natured but weak-minded prince, who was desperately fond of her, but whom she despised and hated, her whole life—it was not a long one, only twenty-four yearswas a horror of immorality. She was only nineteen when the Duke died, undoubtedly of poison; but by whom administered it would be difficult to say. Passionate, haughty, insufferably arrogant, she pretendShe was ac The guests at these famous, or rather infamous feasts, which almost rival in historical celebrity the epicurean banquets of Apicius or Lucullus, were usually restricted to twenty; but, as we shall presently see, this number was frequently increased ad libitum. They were selected from all, and from the most diverse, classes of societynobles, poets, philosophers, wits, abbés, courtesans, court ladies. The apartments were furnished with the most costly volup-ed to the rights of a queen. tuousness, the tables loaded with magnificent plate, flowers, and the most delicious wines and viands. As a preparative for drinking, the hanap, an immense goblet in the form of a barrel, hooped with gold and filled with wine, was handed from guest to guest, which goblet it was de rigueur to empty at the first round. Coarse bon mots, sallies of licentious wit, chiefly directed against religion and morality, in which each strove to outdo the other in irreverence companied, when she passed through the streets, by the band of the musketeers, by the music of trumpets and cymbals. But with all that she was the slave of a little pimple-faced man, the Comte de Riom, to whom she was at length secretly united. One might have imagined him to be the avenger of the dead husband, he treated her with such utter and capricious tyranny; he ordered her toilet, her dresses, her every movement, and compelled her for the lightest offence to kneel at his feet and ask for pardon. Her summer residence was at La Muette, in the very centre of the Bois de Boulogne; for amidst all her dissipations she had a love for trees and solitude and the simple pleasures of country life. At times a sense of her enormities would overwhelm her; more than once she fled to the Carmelites of Chaillot to weep and pray, racked by a terrible remorse. But after a time her fierce passions would once more master her, and drag her back to the saturnalias, where all the past was quickly forgotten, until wild gaiety lapsed again into wild despair. At length her health began to sink, but her dissipation only increased, until death closed her terrible career. Her death was a great blow to Orléans, who was passionately attached to her. The vices of the Fronde were those of factions, and arose out of the disorganisation of society; the vices of the age of Louis were clothed in a garb of outward decency, and were not regarded as things to be proud of; even over illicit amours was cast a veil of poetry and romance that concealed their grossness. But under the Regency vice was laurel-crowned. It was a reproach to a man not to be a debauchee, not to nightly drink himself into a state of insensibility. The only churchman that Orléans expressed an admiration for was the Grand Prior, and that because for forty years he had never gone to bed sober. It was ridiculous in a woman to be wise, or modest, or virtuous; every lady of the Court had a nickname, gathered from the calendar of love, which concealed a licentious meaning; one was Sainte Facile, another Sainte Pleureuse, another Sainte Contente, etc. The poems and epigrams were not mere effusions of licentious wit; they stripped human frailty of every sentiment, every rag of decency, and not only presented it in its naked deformity, but bedaubed with vileness more than natural, with the very ordure of vice. Never since the last days of old Rome had human nature sunk so nearly to the level of the brute. In the meanwhile the people looked with horror upon the godless rule, for the moral corruption had not yet descended to the bourgeois class, which was still com The posed of God-fearing men, amongst whom the marriage tie and the ordinances of religion still obtained respect. The Regent was hated. Paris was filled not only with lampoons and satires against him and his Court, but with terrible philippics, accusing him of crimes too hideous to be even glanced at in these pages. The most remarkable of these extant is that of La Grange Chancel, who expiated its composition by years of imprisonment. young Arouet (Voltaire) then just rising into fame, with that audacious irony which always characterised the man, actually solicited the presence of Orléans and the Duchesse de Berry at the first representation of Edipus.' They acceded to his request, and were equal to the occasion, joining in the tumultuous applause with which the play was greeted by an audience who applied every incident of the ghastly story to the Regent and his daughter; and to further testify his gratification with the work the Duke bestowed a pension upon the author. At forty six Philippe d'Orléans was a wreck, broken down in health and strength, his once handsome face blotched and carbuncled, his person heavy and obese. In vain the doctors entreated him to reform his mode of life. They warned him that he was in hourly danger of apoplexy; advised bleeding. "Come, to-morrow," was still his answer. One day it was the 21st of December, 1723-he had dined heartily, and passed into his cabinet in company with the Duchesse Falari; he complained of dulness, and requested her to tell him one of the pretty stories for the relation of which she was famous. She sat down at his feet, and resting her head upon his knees began. But she had scarcely completed the first sentence when the Duke's head fell forward upon his chest; she raised her eyes in affright, then springing to her feet, rushed out to call assistance. All in vain-he was dead! So died, in the very prime of manhood, a man who might, but for evil training and the cruel jealousy of Louis the Fourteenth, have transmitted to posterity a name loaded with the honors of genius, instead of which it has become the symbol of all that is vicious and sensual.-Temple Bar. OMPHALE. Two women, at the parting of two ways, And saw beyond the riddle of sick time; The other wooed him with a wantonness Of splendor far beyond his young desire, He turned to her who did not need to woo: The other sobbed "She leaves thee with no guide, The boy, who had not slacked his scornful stride, Yet answered, "She will meet me at the end." The man through toil and peril followed on, Till on a day his mighty knees were bowed, Where neither dew nor any footsteps shone, And only dust came up where he had gone, And all the sky was grey without a cloud. Also the way was broken down before, Nor might a man go forward without wings, Within the door he saw a walled wood, Beyond he saw the old path leading straight Up open hills, and there his lady stood Transfigured far beyond all womanhood, Who seemed again to beckon—and to wait. He saw her then; among the Gods on high He never knew how much he was beguiled When through the door he hurried, in new haste, Toward the austerely smiling upland waste, Its slowly treacherous length of subtle curve. Indeed, none standing at the door might say The woodland path was pleasant to the feet, And yet, withal, the wood was full of fear, At last the wood was over, he might stand To draw new breath, and look for some new sign Where parti-colored tilths of hollow land. Sloped upward soberly on either hand To low hills terraced for the lowly vine. And here the busy people went and came, Each with his load, and none regarded him, For every man was sick with smothered care, He marvelled to what end his arm was strong. Where there was nought for him to mar or make, So, through the press where he was most alone, Hungry and faint, forgetful of his deeds, And more than half forgetful of his choice, Uprooting, half in spite the wayside weeds, Hopeless of helping strange, unvoiceful needs, Ripe for the greeting of a woman's voice, Whose open house closed up the weedy track, As if they mourned their souls, they left there, dead. But he, unknowing this, began to trace She met his look with level leaden eyes, "Sit down," she said, "while you have strength to rise." |