where he was
lacerated with red-hot pincers and, after boiling lead had been poured
into the wounds, his quivering body was torn to pieces by four horses,
and the fragments burned to ashes.

A few years later the long-suffering Jansenists were avenged with
startling severity. The Jesuits, to their honour be it said, shocked
by the infamies of the royal seraglio in the Parc aux Cerfs, made use
of their ascendency at Court to awaken in the king's mind some sense
of decency: they did but add the bitter animosity of Madame de
Pompadour to the existing hostility of the Parlement of Paris. Louis,
urged by his minister the Duke of Choiseul, and by the arts of his
mistress, abandoned the Jesuits to their enemies: the Parlement
suppressed the Society, secularised its members and confiscated its
property.

The closing years of the Well-Beloved's reign were years of
unmitigated ignominy and disaster. Indian conquests were muddled away,
and the gallant Dupleix died broken-hearted and in misery at Paris.
Canada was lost. During the Seven Years' War the incapacity and
administrative corruption of Madame de Pompadour's favourites made
them the laughing-stock of Paris. In 1770 the Duke of Choiseul refused
to tolerate the vile Du Barry, whom we may see in Madame Campan's
Memoirs sitting on the arm of Louis' chair at a council of state,
playing her monkey tricks to amuse the old sultan, snatching sealed
orders from his hand and making the royal dotard chase her round the
council chamber. She swore to ruin the duke and, aided by a cabal of
Jesuit sympathisers and noble intriguers, succeeded in compassing his
dismissal. The Parlement of Paris paid for its temerity: it and the
whole of the parlements in France were suppressed, and seven hundred
magistrates exiled by _lettres de cachet_. Every patriotic Frenchman
now felt the gathering storm. Madame Campan writes that twenty years
before the crash came it was common talk in her father's house (he was
employed in the Foreign Office) that the old monarchy was rapidly
sinking and a great change at hand. Indeed, the writing on the wall
was not difficult to read. The learned and virtuous Malesherbes and
many another distinguished member of the suppressed parlements warned
the king of the dangers menacing the crown, but so sunk was its wearer
in sensual stupefaction that he only murmured: "Well, it will last my
time," and with his flatterers and strumpets uttered the famous
words--"_Apres nous