ns brought into
the world a failing--let us call things by their names--a weakness, which
unceasingly spoiled all his talents, and which were of marvellous use to
his preceptor all his life. Dubois led him into debauchery, made him
despise all duty and all decency, and persuaded him that he had too much
mind to be the dupe of religion, which he said was a politic invention to
frighten ordinary, intellects, and keep the people in subjection. He
filled him too with his favourite principle, that probity in man and
virtue in woman, are mere chimeras, without existence in anybody except a
few poor slaves of early training. This was the basis of the good
ecclesiatic's doctrines, whence arose the license of falsehood, deceit,
artifice, infidelity, perfidy; in a word, every villainy, every crime,
was turned into policy, capacity, greatness, liberty and depth of
intellect, enlightenment, good conduct, if it could be hidden, and if
suspicions and common prejudices could be avoided.

Unfortunately all conspired in M. d'Orleans to open his heart and his
mind to this execrable poison: a fresh and early youth, much strength and
health, joy at escaping from the yoke as well as vexation at his
marriage, the wearisomeness produced by idleness, the impulse of his
passions, the example of other young men, whose vanity and whose interest
it was to make him live like them. Thus he grew accustomed to
debauchery, above all to the uproar of it, so that he could not do
without it, and could only divert himself by dint of noise, tumult, and
excess. It is this which led him often into such strange and such
scandalous debauches, and as he wished to surpass all his companions, to
mix up with his parties of pleasure the most impious discourses, and as a
precious refinement, to hold the most outrageous orgies on the most holy
days, as he did several times during his Regency on Good Friday, by
choice, and on other similar days. The more debauched a man was, the
more he esteemed him; and I have unceasingly seen him in admiration, that
reached almost to veneration for the Grand Prieur,--because for forty
years he had always gone to bed drunk, and had never ceased to keep
mistresses in the most public manner, and to hold the most impious and
irreligious discourses. With these principles, and the conduct that
resulted from them, it is not surprising that M. le Duc d'Orleans was
false to such an extent, that he boasted of his falsehood, and plumed
h