, mediocre, hypocritical, a man of little led by a woman of
nothing, Madame de Prie," and who renewed the persecution of the
Protestants and the Jansenists. The young king contented himself with
"showing at the council table his handsome and impassible countenance,
which nothing ever animated. When not thus engaged, when he was neither
gambling nor hunting, he occupied himself with tapestry-making, turning
snuff-boxes in wood, or reading either the secret correspondence with
his ambassadors, which he maintained unknown to his ministers, or the
scandalous recitals which the lieutenant of police sent him regularly
every day." In the latter part of his reign, these habits were succeeded
by even more ignoble ones, drunkenness and nameless vices.

To maintain his own power, the Duc de Bourbon sent back to Spain the
Infanta, who had been brought to Paris, at the age of four, to fit her
for her future position as Queen of France, and married the king to
Marie Leczinska, daughter of the dethroned King of Poland, then living
at Wissembourg on the charity of the French government. One day, this
Stanislas Leczinski entered the chamber in which his wife and daughter
were sitting, and said to them in great excitement: "Let us get down on
our knees and thank God!" "Are you recalled to the throne of Poland?"
asked his daughter. "Much better; you are Queen of France." She was
seven years older than the king, very poor, without beauty, but gentle
and pious. The insult offered to the court of Spain was but one of the
many blunders and failures of the foreign diplomacy, while the
extravagance and debauchery at home kept pace with the growing disorder
in the national finances. The sum total of the funds disbursed during
"the nineteen years of the _reign_ of Madame de Pompadour, drawn up by
her orders, exceeds thirty-six millions of livres, equivalent to more
than sixty millions at the present day." In 1780, under Louis XVI, the
amount of pensions paid by the government reached the sum of
twenty-eight millions, and soon after rose to thirty-two. "I doubt,"
said Necker, in his _Compte rendu_, "if all the sovereigns of Europe pay
in pensions the half of this sum." At the same time, the officers of the
household of Louis XV were frequently unpaid, and it was more than once
necessary, as it had been in the reign of his illustrious predecessor,
to appeal to bourgeois and nobles to bring their silverware to the
treasury to be melted down, that the