kenzie. Lord Rockingham's incapacity
overturned _him_; and now the Duke of Grafton destroyed a power which
it had depended on himself to make as permanent as he could desire."
But rash and rapid as those changes were, what were the grave
intrigues of the English cabinet to the _boudoir_ ministries of
France? Walpole is never so much in his element, as when he is
sporting in the fussy frivolities of the Faubourg St Germain. He was
much more a Frenchman than an Englishman; his love of gossip, his
passion for haunting the society of talkative old women, and his
delight at finding himself revelling in a region of _petite soupers_,
court gallantries, and the faded indiscretions of court beauties in
the wane, would have made him a rival to the courtiers of Louis XIV.

Perhaps, the world never saw, since the days of Sardanapalus, a court
so corrupt, wealth so profligate, and a state of society so utterly
contemptuous of even the decent affectation of virtue, as the closing
years of the reign of Louis XV. A succession of profligate women ruled
the king, a similar succession ruled the cabinet; lower life was a
sink of corruption; the whole a romance of the most scandalous order.
Madame de Pompadour, a woman whose vice had long survived her beauty,
and who ruled the decrepit heart of a debauched king, had made
Choiseul minister. Choiseul was the beau-ideal of a French noble of
the old _regime_. His ambition was boundless, his insolence
ungoverned, his caprice unrestrained, and his love of pleasure
predominant even over his love of power. "He was an open enemy, but a
generous one; and had more pleasure in attaching an enemy, than in
punishing him. Whether from gaiety or presumption, he was never
dismayed; his vanity made him always depend on the success of his
plans, and his spirits made him soon forget the miscarriage of them."

At length appeared on the tapis the memorable Madame du Barri! For
three months, all the faculties of the court were absorbed in the
question of her public presentation. Indulgent as the courtiers were
to the habits of royal life, the notoriety of Madame du Barri's early
career, startled even their flexible sense of etiquette. The ladies of
the court, most of whom would have been proud to have taken her place,
determined "that they would not appear at court if she should be
received there." The King's daughters (who had borne the ascendant of
Madame du Pompadour in their mother's life) grew outrageous at