himerical hopes and the fatal result of his
enterprises, as deplorable in their effects upon the moral condition of
France, as upon her wealth and her credit.

The Regent's rash infatuation for a system, as novel as it was seductive,
had borne its fruits. The judgment which his mother had pronounced upon
Philip of Orleans was justified to the last. "The fairies," said Madame,
"were all invited to the birth of my son; and each endowed him with some
happy quality. But one wicked fairy, who had been forgotten, came
likewise, leaning upon her stick, and not being able to annul her
sisters' gifts, declared that the prince should never know how to make
use of them."

Throughout the successive periods of intoxication and despair caused by
the necessary and logical development of Law's system, the Duke of
Orleans had dealt other blows and directed other affairs of importance.
Easy-going, indolent, often absorbed by his pleasures, the Regent found
no great difficulty in putting up with the exaltation of the
legitimatized princes; it had been for him sufficient to wrest authority
from the Duke of Maine, he let him enjoy the privileges of a prince of
the blood. "I kept silence during the king's lifetime," he would say;
"I will not be mean enough to break it now he is dead." But the Duke of
Bourbon, heir of the House of Conde, fierce in temper, violent in his
hate, greedy of honors as well as of money, had just arrived at man's
estate, and was wroth at sight of the bastards' greatness. He drew after
him the Count of Charolais his brother, and the Prince of Conti his
cousin; on the 22d of April, 1716, all three presented to the king a
request for the revocation of Louis XIV.'s edict declaring his
legitimatized sons princes of the blood, and capable of succeeding to the
throne. The Duchess of Maine, generally speaking very indifferent about
her husband, whom she treated haughtily, like a true daughter of the
House of Conde, flew into a violent passion, this time, at her cousins'
unexpected attack; she was for putting her own hand to the work of
drawing up the memorial of her husband and of her brother-in-law, the
Count of Toulouse. "The greater part of the nights was employed at it,"
says Madame de Stael, at that time Mdlle. do Launay, a person of much
wit, half lady's maid, half reader to the duchess. "The huge volumes,
heaped up on her bed like mountains overwhelming her, caused her," she
used to say, "to look, making due