e of it; that lawsuits, intrigues, warfare, and the
quarrels of priests, which consume human life, are absurd and horrible
things; that man is born only to enjoy himself;" and that among the
essential things we must put the "superfluous" in the first rank.

According to this, we can easily foresee that they will be as
little concerned with their private affairs as with public affairs.
Housekeeping, the management of property, domestic economy, are in
their eyes vulgar, insipid in the highest degree, and only suited to an
intendant or a butler. Of what use are such persons if we must have such
cares? Life is no longer a festival if one has to provide the ways and
means. Comforts, luxuries, the agreeable must flow naturally and greet
our lips of their own accord. As a matter of course and without his
intervention, a man belonging to this world should find gold always in
his pocket, a handsome coat on his toilet table, powdered valets in his
antechamber, a gilded coach at his door, a fine dinner on his table, so
that he may reserve all his attention to be expended in favors on
the guests in his drawing-room. Such a mode of living is not to be
maintained without waste, and the domestics, left to themselves, make
the most of it. What matter is it, so long as they perform their duties?
Moreover, everybody must live, and it is pleasant to have contented and
obsequious faces around one.--Hence the first houses in the kingdom
are given up to pillage. Louis XV, on a hunting expedition one day,
accompanied by the Duc de Choiseul,[2211] inquired of him how much he
thought the carriage in which they were seated had cost. M. de Choiseul
replied that he should consider himself fortunate to get one like it for
5,000 or 6,000 francs; but, "His Majesty paying for it as a king, and
not always paying cash, might have paid 8,000 francs for it."--"You are
wide of the mark," rejoined the king, "for this vehicle, as you see it,
cost me 30,000 francs. . . . The robberies in my household are enormous,
but it is impossible to put a stop to them."--So the great help
themselves as well as the little, either in money, or in kind, or in
services. There are in the king's household fifty-four horses for the
grand equerry, thirty-eight of them being for Mme. de Brionne, the
administratrix of the office of the stables during her son's minority;
there are two hundred and fifteen grooms on duty, and about as many
horses kept at the king's expense for variou