nnacle of power. All the decisions of September 2
were ratified in the child's name. Louis XIV. had just descended to the
tomb without pomp and without regret. The joy of the people broke out
indecently as the funeral train passed by; the nation had forgotten the
glory of the great king; it remembered only the evils which had for so
long oppressed it during his reign.

The new councils had already been constituted, when it was discovered
that commerce had been forgotten; and to it was assigned a seventh body.
"Three sorts of men, the choice of whom was dictated by propriety,
weakness, and necessity, filled the lists: in the first place, great
lords, veterans in intrigue but novices in affairs, and less useful from
their influence than embarrassing from their pride and their pettinesses;
next, the Regent's friends, the cream of the rows, possessed with the
spirit of opposition and corruption, ignorant and clever, bold and lazy,
and far better calculated to harass than to conduct a government; lastly,
below them, were pitch-forked in, pell-mell, councillors of State,
masters of requests, members of Parliament, well-informed and industrious
gentlemen, fated henceforth to crawl about at the bottom of the
committees, and, without the spur of glory or emulation, to repair the
blunders which must be expected from the incapacity of the first and the
recklessness of the second class amongst their colleagues." [Lemontey,
_Histoire de la Regence,_ t. i. p. 67.] "It is necessary," the young
king was made to say in the preamble to the ordinance which established
the councils, "that affairs should be regulated rather by unanimous
consent than by way of authority."

How singular are the monstrosities of experience! At the head of the
council of finance, a place was found for the Duke of Noailles, active in
mind and restless in character, without any fixed principles, an adroit
and a shameless courtier, strict in all religious observances under Louis
XIV., and a notorious debauchee under the Regency, but intelligent,
insolent, ambitious, hungering and thirsting to do good if he could, but
evil if need were, and in order to arrive at his ends. His uncle,
Cardinal Noailles, who had been but lately threatened by the court of
Rome with the loss of his hat, and who had seen himself forbidden to
approach the dying king, was now president of the council of conscience.
Marshal d'Huxelles, one of the negotiators who had managed the trea