Parlement de Paris_;" that in 1691 the same
privileges had been granted to the presidents, councillors, and other
officers "of our _Cour des Aydes de Paris_;" in 1704, on the officers of
the _Chambre des Comptes_, granted also this nobility to the presidents,
treasurers-general of France, avocat, procureur, and _greffier en chef_
of the bureau of finance. In the following year, the privileges of this
nobility were granted to the _echevins_, the procureur, the greffier,
and receiver of the city of Paris, and the _prevot_ of the merchants was
given the title of chevalier. Following the ancient traditions of the
French monarchy, the king preferred to see himself served by the men of
the middle classes, rather than by the powerful lords, whose _role_ was
reduced to that of obsequious courtiers in his antechamber, but, "in
working with the bourgeois, the grandson of Henri IV wished to remain
always _le roi des gentilshommes_."

In the person of Louis XV the most ignoble vices of a man were united to
those of a king, but he had sufficient intelligence to foresee the
calamity that was coming. "The thing will last at least as long as I
do," he said, "my successor may get out of it the best way he can." And
to Madame Pompadour is credited the famous saying: "After us, the
deluge." When the minister Choiseul was disgraced, in 1770, half the
nobles deserted the court to follow him to his estate of Chanteloup,
near Amboise,--so much had the splendor of Versailles, that great glory
of the reign of the _Roi-Soleil_, departed!

There were thirteen parlements and four provincial councils in France
having sovereign jurisdiction in civil and criminal cases; the authority
of the Parlement of Paris covered two-fifths of the kingdom. The
chambres des comptes, the cours des aides, and the cours des monnaies
judged all cases relating to the imposts, to the coinage, and to
bullion. The grand conseil, the requetes de l'Hotel, the tribunal of the
University of Paris, the capitaineries royales, etc., had each a special
jurisdiction. Certain persons could only be judged by certain tribunals.
In 1735, the Parlement having despatched its first president and several
of its members to the king, then at Compiegne, to remonstrate with him,
Louis XV informed them that he "forbade his Parlement to meet, to issue
any decree, or to deliberate in any manner on the affairs of State; that
they were to assemble only to receive his orders and to execute them,