ouse at Paris, cost millions out of the exhausted treasury.
Madame de Pompadour was fond of porcelain; she conceived the idea of
imitating in France the china-work of Saxony, and founded first at
Vincennes and then at Sevres the manufacture of porcelain, which the king
took under his protection, requiring the courtiers to purchase the
proceeds of it at high prices. Everybody was anxious to please the
favorite; her incessantly renewed caprices contributed to develop certain
branches of the trade in luxuries. The expenses of the royal household
went on increasing daily; the magnificent prodigalities of King Louis
XIV. were surpassed by the fancies of Madame de Pompadour. Vigilant in
attaching the courtiers to herself, she sowed broadcast, all around her,
favors, pensions, profitable offices, endowing the gentlemen to
facilitate their marriage, turning a deaf ear to the complaints of the
people as well as to the protests of the States or Parliaments. The
greedy and frivolous crowd that thronged at her feet well deserved the
severe judgment pronounced by Montesquieu on courtiers and courts.
"Ambition amidst indolence, baseness amidst pride, the desire to grow
rich without toil, aversion from truth, flattery, treason, perfidy,
neglect of all engagements, contempt for the duties of a citizen, fear of
virtue in the prince, hope in his weaknesses, and more than all that, the
ridicule constantly thrown upon virtue, form, I trow, the characteristics
of the greatest number of courtiers, distinctive in all places and at all
times." The majesty of Louis XIV. and the long lustre of his reign had
been potent enough to create illusions as to the dangers and the
corruptions of the court; the remnants of military glory were about to
fade out round Louis XV.; the court still swarmed with brave officers,
ready to march to death at the head of the troops; the command of armies
henceforth depended on the favor of Madame the Marchioness of Pompadour.

The day had come when the fortune of war was about to show itself fatal
to France. Marshal Saxe had died at Chambord, still young and worn out
by excesses rather than by fatigue; this foreigner, this Huguenot, as he
was called by Louis XV., had been the last to maintain and continue the
grand tradition of French generals. War, however, was inevitable; five
months of public or private negotiation, carried on by the ambassadors or
personal agents of the king, could not obtain from England any