ng round said, "I don't
know what is the matter with Conillac. He has lost his wits: he did
not remember what he had to say to me." No one answered.

Toward the moment of the capitulation, Madame de Maintenon apparently
asked permission to go away; for the King cried, "The chairmen of
madame!" They came and took her away; in less than a quarter of an
hour afterward the King retired also, and nearly everybody else. There
was much interchange of glances, nudging with elbows, and then
whisperings in the ear. Everybody was full of what had taken place on
the ramparts between the King and Madame de Maintenon. Even the
soldiers asked what meant that sedan-chair, and the King every moment
stooping to put his head inside of it. It became necessary gently to
silence these questions of the troops. What effect this sight had upon
foreigners present, and what they said of it, may be imagined. All
over Europe it was as much talked of as the camp of Compiegne itself,
with all its pomp and prodigious splendor.

BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Born near Bordeaux in 1689, died in Paris in 1755; studied
law and became a councilor in 1716; president of the
Bordeaux Parliament; devoted himself to a study of
literature and jurisprudence; published "Persian Letters" in
1721, which secured him an election to the Academy in 1728;
traveled in Austria, Italy, Germany, Holland and England;
published "Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans" in 1734,
and "Spirit of the Laws" in 1748.[37]

I

OF THE CAUSES WHICH DESTROYED ROME[38]

While the sovereignty of Rome was confined to Italy, it was easy for
the commonwealth to subsist: every soldier was at the same time a
citizen; every Consul raised an army, and other citizens marched into
the field under his successor: as their forces were not very numerous,
such persons only were received among the troops as had possessions
considerable enough to make them interested in the preservation of the
city; the Senate kept a watchful eye over the conduct of the generals,
and did not give them an opportunity of machinating anything to the
prejudice of their country.

[Footnote 37: Montesquieu is declared by Mr. Saintsbury to deserve the
title of "the greatest man of letters of the French eighteenth
century." He places him above Voltaire because "of his far greater
originality and depth of thought."]

[Footnote 38: From the "Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans,