Toulouse, he returned to St. Simon.  "I have just told him all," said he,
"I couldn't help it; he is the best fellow in the world, and the one who
touches my heart the most.  He was coming to me on behalf of his brother,
who had a shrewd notion that there was something in the wind, and that he
did not stand quite well with me; he had begged him to ask me whether I
wished him to remain, or whether he would not do well to go away.  I
confess to you that I thought I did well to tell him that his brother
would do just as well to go away, since he asked me the question; that,
as for himself, he might safely remain, because he was to continue just
as he is, without alteration; but that something might take place rather
disagreeable to M. du Maine.  Whereupon, he asked me how he could remain,
when there was to be an attack upon his brother, seeing that they were
but one, both in point of honor and as brothers.  I do believe, there
they are just going out," added the Regent, casting a glance towards the
door, as the members of the council were beginning to take their places:
"they will be prudent; the Count of Toulouse promised me so."  "But, if
they were to do anything foolish, or were to leave Paris?"  "They shall
be arrested, I give you my word," replied the Duke of Orleans, in a
firmer tone than usual.  They had just read the decree reducing the
legitimatized to their degree in the peerage, and M. le Duc had claimed
the superintendence of the king's education, when it was announced that
the Parliament, in their scarlet robes, were arriving in the court of the
palace.  Marshal de Villeroi alone dared to protest.  "Here, then," said
he with a sigh, "are all the late king's dispositions upset; I cannot see
it without sorrow.  M. du Maine is very unfortunate."  "Sir," rejoined
the Regent, with animation, "M. du Maine is my brother-in-law, but I
prefer an open to a hidden enemy."

With the same air the Duke of Orleans passed to the bed of justice, "with
a gentle but resolute majesty, which was quite new to him; eyes
observant, but bearing grave and easy; M. le Duc staid, circumspect,
surrounded by a sort of radiance that adorned his whole person, and under
perceptible restraint; the keeper of the seals, in his chair, motionless,
gazing askance with that witful fire which flashed from his eyes and
which seemed to pierce all bosoms, in presence of that Parliament which
had so often given him orders standing at its bar as chief of police, in
presence of that premier president, so superior to him, so haughty, so
proud of his Duke of Maine, so mightily in hopes of the seals."  After
his speech, and the reading of the king's decree, the premier president
was for attempting a remonstrance; D'Argenson mounted the step,
approached the young king, and then, without taking any opinion, said, in
a very loud voice, "The king desires to be obeyed, and obeyed at once."
There was nothing further for it but to enregister the edict; all the
decrees of the Parliament were quashed.

Some old servants of Louis XIV., friends and confidants of the Duke of
Maine, alone appeared moved.  The young king was laughing, and the crowd
of spectators were amusing themselves with the scene, without any
sensible interest in the court intrigues.  The Duchess of Maine made her
husband pay for his humble behavior at the council; "she was," says St.
Simon, "at one time motionless with grief, at another boiling with rage,
and her poor husband wept daily like a calf at the biting reproaches and
strange insults which he had incessantly to pocket in her fits of anger
against him."

In the excess of her indignation and wrath, the Duchess of Maine
determined not to confine herself to reproaches.  She had passed her life
in elegant entertainments, in sprightly and frivolous intellectual
amusements; ever bent on diverting herself, she made up her mind to taste
the pleasure of vengeance, and set on foot a conspiracy, as frivolous as
her diversions.  The object, however, was nothing less than to overthrow
the Duke of Orleans, and to confer the regency on the King of Spain,
Philip V., with a council and a lieutenant, who was to be the Duke of
Maine.  "When one has once acquired, no matter how, the rank of prince of
the blood and the capability of succeeding to the throne," said the
duchess, "one must turn the state upside down, and set fire to the four
corners of the kingdom, rather than let them be wrested from one."  The
schemes for attaining this great result were various and confused.
Philip V. had never admitted that his renunciation of the crown of France
was seriously binding upon him; he had seen, by the precedent of the war
of devolution, how a powerful sovereign may make sport of such acts; his
Italian minister, Alberoni, an able and crafty man, who had set the crown
of Spain upon the head of Elizabeth Farnese, and had continued to rule
her, cautiously egged on his master into hostilities against France.
They counted upon the Parliaments, taking example from that of Paris, on
the whole of Brittany, in revolt at the prolongation of the tithe-tax, on
all the old court, accustomed to the yoke of the bastards and of Madame
de Maintenon, on Languedoc, of which the Duke of Maine was the governor;
they talked of carrying off the Duke of Orleans, and taking him to the
castle of Toledo; Alberoni promised the assistance of a Spanish army.
The Duchess of Maine had fired the train, without the knowledge, she
said, and probably against the will, too, of her husband, more indolent
than she in his perfidy.  Some scatter-brains of great houses were mixed
up in the affair; MM. de Richelieu, de Laval, and de Pompadour; there was
secret coming and going between the castle of Sceaux and the house of the
Spanish ambassador, the Prince of Cellamare; M. de Malezieux, the
secretary and friend of the duchess, drew up a form of appeal from the
French nobility to Philip V., but nobody had signed it, or thought of
doing so.  They got pamphlets written by Abbe Brigault, whom the duchess
had sent to Spain; the mystery was profound, and all the conspirators
were convinced of the importance of their manoeuvres; every day, however,
the Regent was informed of them by his most influential negotiator with
foreign countries, Abbe Dubois, his late tutor, and the most depraved of
all those who were about him.  Able and vigilant as he was, he was not
ignorant of any single detail of the plot, and was only giving the
conspirators time to compromise themselves.  At last, just as a young
abbe, Porto Carrero, was starting for Spain, carrying important papers,
he was arrested at Poitiers, and his papers were seized.  Next day,
December 7, 1718, the Prince of Cellamare's house was visited, and the
streets were lined with troops.  Word was brought in all haste to the
Duchess of Maine.  She had company, and dared not stir.  M. de Chatillon
came in; joking commenced.  "He was a cold creature, who never thought of
talking," says Madame de Stael in her memoirs.  "All at once he said,
'Really there is some very amusing news: they have arrested and put in
the Bastille, for this affair of the Spanish ambassador, a certain Abbe
Bri .  .  .  .  Bri' he could not remember the name, and those who knew
it had no inclination to help him.  At last he finished, and added, 'The
most amusing part is, that he has told all, and so, you see, there are
some folks in a great fix.'  Thereupon he burst out laughing for the
first time in his life.  The Duchess of Maine, who had not the least
inclination thereto, said, 'Yes, that is very amusing.'  'O! it is enough
to make you die of laughing,' he resumed; 'fancy those folks who thought
their affair was quite a secret; here's one who tells more than he is
asked, and names everybody by name!'"  The agony was prolonged for some
days; jokes were beginning to be made about it at the Duchess of Maine's;
she kept friends with her to pass the night in her room, waiting for her
arrest to come.  Madame de Stael was reading Machiavelli's conspiracies.
"Make haste and take away that piece of evidence against us," said Madame
du Maine, laughingly, "it would be one of the strongest."

The arrest came, however; it was six A.M., and everybody was asleep, when
the king's men entered the Duke of Maine's house.  The Regent had for a
long time delayed to act, as if he wanted to leave everybody time to get
away; but the conspirators were too scatter-brained to take the trouble.
The duchess was removed to Dijon, within the government, and into the
very house of the Duke of Bourbon, her nephew, which was a very bitter
pill for her.  The Duke of Maine, who protested his innocence and his
ignorance, was detained in the Castle of Dourlans in Picardy.  Cellamare
received his passports and quitted France.  The less illustrious
conspirators were all put in the Bastille; the majority did not remain
there long, and purchased their liberty by confessions, which the Duchess
of Maine ended by confirming.  "Do not leave Paris until you are driven
thereto by force," Alberoni had written to the Prince of Cellamare, "and
do not start before you have fired all the mines."  Cellamare started,
and the mines did not burst after his withdrawal; conspiracy and
conspirators were covered with ridicule; the natural clemency of the
Regent had been useful; the part of the Duke and Duchess of Maine was
played out.

The only serious result of Cellamare's conspiracy was to render imminent
a rupture with Spain.  From the first days of the regency the old enmity
of Philip V. towards the Duke of Orleans and the secret pretensions of
both of them to the crown of France, in case of little Louis XV.'s death,
rendered the relations between the two courts thorny and strained at
bottom, though still perfectly smooth in appearance.  It was from England
that Abbe Dubois urged the Regent to seek support.  Dubois, born in the
very lowest position, and endowed with a soul worthy of his origin, was
"a little, lean man, wire-drawn, with a light colored wig, the look of a
weasel, a clever expression," says St. Simon, who detested him; "all
vices struggled within him for the mastery; they kept up a constant
hubbub and strife together.  Avarice, debauchery, ambition, were his
gods; perfidy, flattery, slavishness, his instruments; and complete
unbelief his comfort.  He excelled in low intrigues; the boldest lie was
second nature to him, with an air of simplicity, straightforwardness,
sincerity, and often bashfulness."  In spite of all these vices, and the
depraving influence he had exercised over the Duke of Orleans from his
earliest youth, Dubois was able, often far-sighted, and sometimes bold;
he had a correct and tolerably practical mind.  Madame, who was afraid of
him, had said to her son on the day of his elevation to power, "I desire
only the welfare of the state and your own glory; I have but one request
to make for your honor's sake, and I demand your word for it, that is,
never to employ that scoundrel of an Abbe Dubois, the greatest rascal in
the world, and one who would sacrifice the state and you to the slightest
interest."  The Regent promised; yet a few months later and Dubois was
Church-councillor of State, and his growing influence with the prince
placed him, at first secretly, and before long openly, at the head of
foreign affairs.

[Illustration: Cardinal Dubois----78]

James Stuart, King James II.'s son, whom his friends called James III.
and his enemies Chevalier St. George, had just unsuccessfully attempted a
descent upon Scotland.  The Jacobites had risen; they were crying aloud
for their prince, who remained concealed in Lorraine, when at last he
resolved to set out and traverse France secretly.  Agents, posted by the
English ambassador, Lord Stair, were within an ace of arresting him,
perhaps of murdering him.  Saved by the intelligence and devotion of the
post-mistress of Nonancourt, he embarked on the 26th of December at
Dunkerque, too late to bring even moral support to the men who were
fighting and dying for him.  Six weeks after landing at Peterhead, in
Scotland, he started back again without having struck a blow, without
having set eyes upon the enemy, leaving to King George I. the easy task
of avenging himself by sending to death upon the scaffold the noblest
victims.  The Duke of Orleans had given him a little money, had known of
and had encouraged his passage through France, but had accorded him no
effectual aid; the wrath of both parties, nevertheless, fell on him.

Inspired by Dubois, weary of the weakness and dastardly incapacity of the
Pretender, the Regent consented to make overtures to the King of England.
The Spanish nation was favorable to France, but the king was hostile to
the Regent; the English loved neither France nor the Regent, but their
king had an interest in severing France from the Pretender forever.
Dubois availed himself ably of his former relations with Lord Stanhope,
heretofore commander of the English troops in Spain, for commencing a
secret negotiation which soon extended to Holland, still closely knit to
England.  "The character of our Regent," wrote Dubois on the 10th of
March, 1716, "leaves no ground for fearing lest he should pique himself
upon perpetuating the prejudices and the procedure of our late court,
and, as you yourself remark, he has too much wit not to see his true
interest."  Dubois was the bearer to the Hague of the Regent's proposals;
King George was to cross over thither; the clever negotiator veiled his
trip under the pretext of purchasing rare books; he was going, he said,
to recover from the hands of the Jews Le Poussin's famous pictures of the
Seven Sacraments, not long ago carried off from Paris.  The order of
succession to the crowns of France and England, conformably to the peace
of Utrecht, was guaranteed in the scheme of treaty; that was the only
important advantage to the Regent, who considered himself to be thus
nailing the renunciation of Philip V.; in other respects all the
concessions came from the side of France; her territory was forbidden
ground to the Jacobites, and the Pretender, who had taken refuge at
Avignon on papal soil, was to be called upon to cross the Alps.  The
English required the abandonment of the works upon the canal of Mardyck,
intended to replace the harbor of Dunkerque the Hollanders claimed
commercial advantages.  Dubois yielded on all the points, defending to
the last with fruitless tenacity the title of King of France, which the
English still disputed.  The negotiations came to an end at length on the
6th of January, 1717, and Dubois wrote in triumph to the Regent, "I
signed at midnight; so there are you quit of servitude (your own master),
and here am I quit of fear."  The treaty of the triple alliance brought
the negotiator before long a more solid advantage; he was appointed
secretary of state for foreign affairs; it was on this occasion that he
wrote to Mr. Craggs, King George's minister, a letter worthy of his
character, and which contributed a great deal towards gaining credit for
the notion that he had sold himself to England.  "If I were to follow
only the impulse of my gratitude and were not restrained by respect, I
should take the liberty of writing to H. B. Majesty to thank him for the
place with which my lord the Regent has gratified me, inasmuch as I owe
it to nothing but to the desire he felt not to employ in affairs common
to France and England anybody who might not be agreeable to the King of
Great Britain."

At the moment when the signature was being put to the treaty of the
triple alliance, the sovereign of most distinction in Europe, owing to
the eccentric renown belonging to his personal merit, the czar Peter the
Great, had just made flattering advances to France.  He had some time
before wished to take a trip to Paris, but Louis XIV. was old,
melancholy, and vanquished, and had declined the czar's visit.  The
Regent could not do the same thing, when, being at the Hague in 1717,
Peter I. repeated the expression of his desire.  Marshal Cosse was sent
to meet him, and the honors due to the king himself were everywhere paid
to him on the road.  A singular mixture of military and barbaric
roughness with the natural grandeur of a conqueror and creator of an
empire, the czar mightily excited the curiosity of the Parisians.
"Sometimes, feeling bored by the confluence of spectators," says Duclos,
"but never disconcerted, he would dismiss them with a word, a gesture, or
would go away without ceremony, to stroll whither his fancy impelled him.
He was a mighty tall man, very well made, rather lean, face rather round
in shape, a high forehead, fine eyebrows, complexion reddish and brown,
fine black eyes, large, lively, piercing; well-opened; a glance majestic
and gracious when he cared for it, otherwise stern and fierce, with a tic
that did not recur often, but that affected his eyes and his whole
countenance, and struck terror.  It lasted an instant, with a glance wild
and terrible, and immediately passed away.  His whole air indicated his
intellect, his reflection, his grandeur, and did not lack a certain
grace.  In all his visits he combined a majesty the loftiest, the
proudest, the most delicate, the most sustained, at the same time the
least embarrassing when he had once established it, with a politeness
which savored of it, always and in all cases; masterlike everywhere, but
with degrees according to persons.  He had a sort of familiarity which
came of frankness, but he was not exempt from a strong impress of that
barbarism of his country which rendered all his ways prompt and sudden,
and his wishes uncertain, without bearing to be contradicted in any."
Eating and drinking freely, getting drunk sometimes, rushing about the
streets in hired coach, or cab, or the carriage of people who came to see
him, of which he took possession unceremoniously, he testified towards
the Regent a familiar good grace mingled with a certain superiority;
at the play, to which they went together, the czar asked for beer; the
Regent rose, took the goblet which was brought and handed it to Peter,
who drank, and, without moving, put the glass back on the tray which the
Regent held all the while, with a slight inclination of the head, which,
however, surprised the public.  At his first interview with the little
king, he took up the child in his arms, and kissed him over and over
again, "with an air of tenderness and politeness which was full of
nature, and nevertheless intermixed with a something of grandeur,
equality of rank, and, slightly, superiority of age; for all that was
distinctly perceptible."  We know how he went to see Madame de Maintenon.
One of his first visits was to the church of the Sorbonne; when he caught
sight of Richelieu's monument, he ran up to it, embraced the statue, and,
"Ah! great man," said he, "if thou wert still alive, I would give thee
one half of my kingdom to teach me to govern the other."

[Illustration: Peter the Great and Little Louis XV----82]

The czar was for seeing everything, studying everything; everything
interested him, save the court and its frivolities; he did not go to
visit the princesses of the blood, and confined himself to saluting them
coldly, whilst passing along a terrace; but he was present at a sitting
of the Parliament and of the academies, he examined the organization of
all the public establishments, he visited the shops of the celebrated
workmen, he handled the coining-die whilst there was being struck in his
honor a medal bearing a Fame with these words: _Vires acquiret eundo_
('Twill gather strength as it goes.) He received a visit from the doctors
of the Sorbonne, who brought him a memorial touching the reunion of the
Greek and Latin Churches.  "I am a mere soldier," said he, "but I will
gladly have an examination made of the memorial you present to me."
Amidst all his chatting, studying, and information-hunting, Peter the
Great did not forget the political object of his trip.  He wanted to
detach France from Sweden, her heretofore faithful ally, still receiving
a subsidy which the czar would fain have appropriated to himself.
Together with his own alliance, he promised that of Poland and of
Prussia.  "France has nothing to fear from the emperor," he said; as for
King George, whom he detested, "if any rupture should take place between
him and the Regent, Russia would suffice to fill towards France the place
of England as well as of Sweden."

Thanks to the ability of Dubois, the Regent felt himself infeoffed to
England; he gave a cool reception to the overtures of the czar, who
proposed a treaty of alliance and commerce.  Prussia had already
concluded secretly with France; Poland was distracted by intestine
struggles; matters were confined to the establishment of amicable
relations; France thenceforth maintained an ambassador in Russia, and the
czar accepted the Regent's mediation between Sweden and himself.  "France
will be ruined by luxury and daintiness," said Peter the Great, at his
departure, more impressed with the danger run by the nation from a court
which was elegant even to effeminacy than by the irregularity of the
morals, to which elsewhere he was personally accustomed.

Dubois, however, went on negotiating, although he had displayed no sort
of alacrity towards the czar; he was struggling everywhere throughout
Europe against the influence of a broader, bolder, more powerful mind
than his own, less adroit perhaps in intrigue, but equally destitute of
scruples as to the employment of means.  Alberoni had restored the
finances, and reformed the administration of Spain; he was preparing an
army and a fleet, meditating, he said, to bring peace to the world, and
beginning that great enterprise by manoeuvres which tended to nothing
less than setting fire to the four corners of Europe, in the name of an
enfeebled and heavy-going king, and of a queen ambitious, adroit, and
unpopular, "both of whom he had put under lock and key, keeping the key
in his pocket," says St. Simon.  He dreamed of reviving the ascendency of
Spain in Italy, of overthrowing the Protestant king of England, whilst
restoring the Stuarts to the throne, and of raising himself to the
highest dignities in Church and State.  He had already obtained from Pope
Clement XI. the cardinal's hat, disguising under pretext of war against
the Turks the preparations he was making against Italy; he had formed an
alliance between Charles XII. and the czar, intending to sustain, by
their united forces, the attempts of the Jacobites in England.  His first
enterprise, at sea, made him master of Sardinia within a few days; the
Spanish troops landed in Sicily.  The emperor and Victor Amadeo were in
commotion; the pope, overwhelmed with reproaches by those princes, wept,
after his fashion, saying that he had damned himself by raising Alberoni
to the Roman purple; Dubois profited by the disquietude excited in Europe
by the bellicose attitude of the Spanish minister to finally draw the
emperor into the alliance between France and England.  He was to renounce
his pretensions to Spain and the Indies, and give up Sardinia to Savoy,
which was to surrender Sicily to him.  The succession to the duchies of
Parma and Tuscany was to be secured to the children of the Queen of
Spain.  "Every difficulty would be removed if there were an appearance of
more equality," wrote the Regent to Dubois on the 24th of January, 1718.
"I am quite aware that my personal interest does not suffer from this
inequality, and that it is a species of touchstone for discovering my
friends as well at home as abroad.  But I am Regent of France, and I
ought to so behave myself that none may be able to reproach me with
having thought of nothing but myself.  I also owe some consideration to
the Spaniards, whom I should completely disgust by making with the
emperor an unequal arrangement, about which their glory and the honor of
their monarchy would render them very sensitive.  I should thereby drive
them to union with Alberoni, whereas, if a war were necessary to carry
our point, we ought to be able to say what Count Grammont said to the
king: "At the time when we served your Majesty against Cardinal Mazarin.
Then the Spaniards themselves would help us."  In the result, France and
England left Holland and Savoy free to accede to the treaty; but, if
Spain refused to do so voluntarily within a specified time, the allies
engaged to force her thereto by arms.

The Hollanders hesitated; the Spanish ambassador at the Hague had a medal
struck representing the quadruple alliance as a coach on the point of
falling, because it rested on only three wheels.  Certain advantages
secured to their commerce at last decided the States-general.  Victor
Amadeo regretfully acceded to the treaty which robbed him of Sicily; he
was promised one of the Regent's daughters for his son.

Alberoni refused persistently to accede to the great coalition brought
about by Dubois.  Lord Stanhope proposed to go over to Spain in order to
bring him round.  "If my lord comes as a lawgiver," said the cardinal,
"he may spare himself the journey.  If he comes as a mediator I will
receive him; but in any case I warn him that, at the first attack upon
our vessels by an English squadron, Spain has not an inch of ground on
which I would answer for his person."  Lord Stanhope, nevertheless, set
out for Spain, and had the good fortune to leave it in time, though
without any diplomatic success.  Admiral Byng, at the head of the English
fleet, had destroyed the Spanish squadron before Messina; the troops
which occupied Palermo found themselves blockaded without hope of relief,
and the nascent navy of Spain was strangled at the birth.  Alberoni, in
his fury, had the persons and goods seized of English residents settled
in Spain, drove out the consuls, and orders were given at Madrid that no
tongue should wag about the affairs of Sicily.  The hope of a sudden
surprise in England, on behalf of the Jacobites, had been destroyed by
the death of the King of Sweden, Charles XII., killed on the 12th of
December, 1718, at Freiderishalt, in Norway; the flotilla equipped by
Alberoni for Chevalier St. George, had been dispersed and beaten by the
elements; the Pretender henceforth was considered to cost Spain too dear;
he had just been sent away from her territory at the moment when the
conspiracy of Cellamare failed in France; in spite of the feverish
activity of his mind, and the frequently chimerical extent of his
machinations, Alberoni remained isolated in Europe, without ally and
without support.

The treaty of the quadruple alliance had at last come to be definitively
signed; Marshal d'Huxelles, head of the council of foreign affairs, an
enemy to Dubois, and displeased at not having been invited to take part
in the negotiations, at first refused his signature.  [_Memoires de St.
Simon,_ t. xix.  p. 365.]  "At the first word the Regent spoke to him, he
received nothing but bows, and the marshal went home to sulk; caresses,
excuses, reasons, it was all of no use; Huxelles declared to the Marquis
of Effiat, who had been despatched to him, that he would have his hand
cut off rather than sign.  The Duke of Orleans grew impatient, and took a
resolution very foreign to his usual weakness; he sent D'Antin to Marshal
d'Huxelles, bidding him to make choice of this: either to sign or lose
his place, of which the Regent would immediately dispose in favor of
somebody who would not be so intractable (_farouclae_) as he.  O, mighty
power of orvietan (_a counterpoison_)!  This man so independent, this
great citizen, this courageous minister, had no sooner heard the threat,
and felt that it would be carried into effect, than he bowed his head
beneath his huge hat, which he always had on, and signed right off,
without a word.  He even read the treaty to the council of regency in a
low and trembling voice, and when the Regent asked his opinion, 'the
opinion of the treaty,' he answered, between his teeth, with a bow."
Some days later appeared, almost at the same time--the 17th of December,
1718, and the 9th of January, 1719--the manifestoes of England and
France, proclaiming the resolution of making war upon Spain, whilst
Philip V., by a declaration of December 25th, 1718, pronounced all
renunciations illusory, and proclaimed his right to the throne of France
in case of the death of Louis XV.  At the same time he made an appeal to
an assembly of the States-general against the tyranny of the Regent, "who
was making alliances," he said, "with the enemies of the two crowns."

For once, in a way, Alberoni indulged the feelings of the king his
master, and, in spite of the good will felt by a part of the grandees
towards France, Spain was, on the whole, with him; he no longer felt
himself to be threatened, as he had been a few months before, when the
king's illness had made him tremble for his greatness, and perhaps for
his life.  He kept the monarch shut up in his room, refusing entrance to
even the superior officers of the palace.  [_Memoires de St. Simon,_
t. xv.]  "The Marquis of Villena, major-domo major, having presented
himself there one afternoon, one of the valets inside half opened the
door, and told him, with much embarrassment, that he was forbidden to let
him in.  'You are insolent, sir,' replied the marquis; 'that cannot be.'
He pushed; the door against the valet and went in.  The marquis, though
covered with glory, being very weak on his legs, thus advances with short
steps, leaning on his little stick.  The queen and the cardinal see him,
and look at one another.  The king was too ill to take notice of
anything, and his curtains were drawn.  The cardinal, seeing the marquis
approach, went up to him, and represented to him that the king wished to
be alone, and begged him to go away.  'That is not true,' said the
marquis.  'I kept my eye upon you, and the king never said a word to
you.'  The cardinal, insisting, took him by the arm to make him go out;
what with the heat of the moment, and what with the push, the marquis,
being feeble, fell into an arm-chair which happened to be by.  Wroth at
his fall, he raises his stick and brings it down with all his might,
hammer and tongs, about the cardinal's ears, calling him a little rascal,
a little hound, who deserved nothing short of the stirrup-leathers.  When
he did at last go out, the queen had looked on from her seat at this
adventure all through, without moving or saying a word, and so had the
few who were in the room, without daring to stir.  The curious thing is,
that the cardinal, mad as he was, but taken completely by surprise at the
blows, did not defend himself, and thought of nothing but getting clear.
The same evening the marquis was exiled to his estates, without ever
wanting to return from them, until the fall of Alberoni."  Alberoni has
sometimes been compared to the great cardinals who had governed France.
To say nothing of the terror with which Richelieu inspired the grandees,
who detested him, the Prince of Coude would not have dared to touch
Cardinal Mazarin with the tip of his cane, even when the latter "kissed
his boots" in the courtyard of the castle at Havre.

Alberoni had persuaded his master that the French were merely awaiting
the signal to rise in his favor; the most odious calumnies were
everywhere circulating against the Regent; he did not generally show that
he was at all disturbed or offended by them; however, when the poem of
the Philippics by La Grange appeared, he desired to see it; the Duke of
St. Simon took it to him.  "'Read it to me,' said the Regent.  'That I
will never do, Monseigneur,' said I.  He then took it and read it quite
low, standing up in the window of his little winter-closet, where we
were.  All at once I saw him change countenance, and turn towards me,
tears in his eyes, and very near fainting.  'All,' said he to me, 'this
is too bad, this horrid thing is too much for me.'  He had lit upon the
passage where the scoundrel had represented the Duke of Orleans purposing
to poison the king, and all ready to commit his crime.  I have never seen
man so transfixed, so deeply moved, so overwhelmed by a calumny so
enormous and so continuous.  I had all the pains in the world to bring
him round a little."  King Louis XV., who had no love and scarcely any
remembrance, preserved all his life some affection for the Regent, and
sincere gratitude for the care which the latter had lavished upon him.
The Duke of Orleans had never desired the crown for himself, and the
attentions full of tender respect which he had shown the little king had
made upon the child an impression which was never effaced.

The preparations for war with Spain meanwhile continued; the Prince of
Conti was nominally at the head of the army, Marshal Berwick was
intrusted with the command.  He accepted it, in spite of his old
connections with Spain, the benefits which Philip V.  had heaped upon
him, and the presence of his eldest son, the Duke of Liria, in the
Spanish ranks.  There were others who attached more importance to
gratitude.  Berwick thought very highly of lieutenant-general Count
D'Asfeldt, and desired to have him in his army; the Duke of Orleans spoke
to him about it.  "Monseigneur," answered D'Asfeldt, "I am a Frenchman, I
owe you everything, I have nothing to expect save from you, but," taking
the Fleece in his hand and showing it, "what would you have me do with
this, which I hold, with the king's permission, from the King of Spain,
if I were to serve against Spain, this being the greatest honor that I
could have received?"  He phrased his repugnance so well, and softened it
down by so many expressions of attachment to the Duke of Orleans, that he
was excused from serving against Spain, and he contented himself with
superintending at Bordeaux the service of the commissariat.  The French
army, however, crossed the frontier in the month of March, 1719.  "The
Regent may send a French army whenever he pleases," wrote Alberoni, on
the 21st November, 1718; "proclaim publicly that there will not be a shot
fired, and that the king our master will have provisions ready to receive
them."  He had brought the king, the queen, and the prince of the
Asturias into the camp; Philip V. fully expected the desertion of the
French army in a mass.  Not a soul budged; some refugees made an attempt
to tamper with certain officers of their acquaintance; their messenger
was hanged in the middle of Marshal Berwick's camp.  Fontarabia, St.
Sebastian, and the Castle of Urgel fell before long into the power of the
French; another division burned, at the port of Los Pasages, six vessels
which chanced to be on the stocks; an English squadron destroyed those at
Centera and in the port of Vigo.  Everywhere the depots were committed to
the flames: this cruel and destructive war against an enemy whose best
troops were fighting far away, and who was unable to offer more than a
feeble resistance, gratified the passions and the interests of England
rather than of France.  "It was, of course, necessary," said Berwick,
"that the English government should be able to convince the next
Parliament that nothing had been spared to diminish the navy of Spain."
During this time the English fleet and the emperor's troops were keeping
up an attack in Sicily upon the Spanish troops, who made a heroic
defence, but were without resources or re-enforcements, and were
diminishing, consequently, every day.  The Marquis of Leyden no longer
held anything but Palermo and the region round AEtna.

Alberoni had attempted to create a diversion by hurling into the midst
of France the brand of civil war.  Brittany, for a long time past
discontented with its governor, the Marquis of Montesquiou, and lately
worked upon by the agents of the Duchess of Maine, was ripe for revolt;
a few noblemen took up arms, and called upon the peasants to enter the
forest with them, that is, to take the field.  Philip V. had promised the
assistance of a fleet, and had supplied some money.  But the peasants did
not rise, the Spanish ships were slow to arrive, the enterprise attempted
against the Marquis of Montesquiou failed, the conspirators were
surrounded in the forest of Noe, near Rennes; a great number were made
prisoners and taken away to Nantes, where a special chamber inquired into
the case against them.  Three noblemen and one priest perished on the
scaffold.

Insurrection, as well as desertion and political opposition, had been a
failure; Philip V. was beaten at home as well as in Sicily.  The Regent
succeeded in introducing to the presence of the King of Spain an unknown
agent, who managed to persuade the monarch that the cardinal was shirking
his responsibility before Europe, asserting that the king and queen had
desired the war, and that he had confined himself to gratifying their
passions.  The Duke of Orleans said, at the same time, quite openly, that
he made war not against Philip V. or against Spain, but against Alberoni
only.  Lord Stanhope declared, in the name of England, that no peace was
possible, unless its preliminary were the dismissal of the pernicious
minister. The fall of Alberoni was almost as speedy as that which he had
but lately contrived for his enemy the Princess des Ursins.  On the 4th
of December, 1719, he received orders to quit Madrid within eight days
and Spain under three weeks.  He did not see the king or queen again, and
retired first to Genoa, going by France, and then finally to Rome.  He
took with him an immense fortune.  It was discovered, after his
departure, that he had placed amongst the number of his treasures, the
authentic will of Charles II., securing the throne of Spain to Philip V.
He was pursued, his luggage ransacked, and the precious document
recovered.  Alberoni had restored order in the internal administration
of Spain; he had cleared away many abuses; Italian as he was, he had
resuscitated Spanish ambition.  "I requickened a corpse," he used to say.
His views were extensive and daring, but often chimerical; he had reduced
to a nullity the sovereign whom he governed for so long, keeping him shut
up far away from the world, in a solitude which he was himself almost the
only one to interrupt.  "The queen has the devil in her," he used to say;
"if she finds a man of the sword who has some mental resources and is a
pretty good general, she will make a racket in France and in Europe."
The queen did not find a general; and on the 17th of February, 1720,
peace was signed at the Hague between Spain and the powers in coalition
against her, to the common satisfaction of France and Spain, whom so many
ties already united.  The haughty Elizabeth Farnese looked no longer to
anybody but the Duke of Orleans for the elevation of her children.

So great success in negotiation, however servile had been his bearing,
had little by little increased the influence of Dubois over his master.
The Regent knew and despised him, but he submitted to his sway and
yielded to his desires, sometimes to his fancies.  Dubois had for a long
while comprehended that the higher dignities of the church could alone
bring him to the grandeur of which he was ambitious; yet everything about
him seemed to keep them out of his reach, his scandalous life, his
perpetual intrigues, the baseness, not of his origin, but of his
character and conduct; nevertheless, the see of Cambrai having become
vacant by the death of Cardinal de la Tremoille, Dubois conceived the
hope of obtaining it.  "Impudent as he was," says St. Simon, "great as
was the sway he had acquired over his master, he found himself very much
embarrassed, and masked his effrontery by ruse; he told the Duke of
Orleans that he had dreamed a funny dream, that he was Archbishop of
Cambrai.  The Regent, who saw what he was driving at, answered him in a
tone of contempt, 'Thou, Archbishop of Cambrai! thou hast no thought of
such a thing?'  And the other persisting, he bade him think of all the
scandal of his life.  Dubois had gone too far to stop on so fine a road,
and quoted to him precedents, of which there were, unfortunately, only
too many.  The Duke of Orleans, less moved by such bad reasons than put
to it how to resist the suit of a man whom he was no longer wont to dare
gainsay in anything, sought to get out of the affair.  'Why! who would
consecrate thee?'  'Ah! if that's all,' replied Dubois, cheerfully, 'the
thing is done.  I know well who will consecrate me; but is that all, once
more?'  'Well! who?' asked the Regent.  'Your premier almoner; there he
is, outside; he will ask nothing better.'  And he embraces the legs of
the Duke of Orleans,--who remains stuck and caught without having the
power to refuse,--goes out, draws aside the Bishop of Nantes, tells him
that he himself has got Cambrai, begs him to consecrate him,--who
promises immediately,--comes in again, capers, returns thanks, sings
praises, expresses wonder, seals the matter more and more surely by
reckoning it done, and persuading the Regent that it is so, who never
dared say no.  That is how Dubois made himself Archbishop of Cambrai."

He was helped, it is said, by a strange patron.  Destouches, charge
d'affaires in London, who was kept well informed by Dubois, went to see
George I., requesting him to write to the Regent, recommending to him the
negotiator of the treaties.  The king burst out laughing.  "How can you
ask a Protestant prince," said he, "to mix himself up with the making of
an archbishop in France?  The Regent will laugh at the idea, as I do, and
will do nothing of the sort."  "Pardon me, sir," rejoined Destouches, "he
will laugh, but he will do it, first out of regard for your Majesty, and
then because he will think it a good joke.  I beseech your Majesty to be
pleased to sign the letter I have here already written."  King George
signed, and the adroit Dubois became Archbishop of Cambrai.  He even
succeeded in being consecrated, not only by the Bishop of Nantes, but
also by Cardinal Rohan and by Massillon, one of the glories of the French
episcopate, a timid man and a poor one, in despite of his pious
eloquence.  The Regent, as well as the whole court, was present at the
ceremony, to the great scandal of the people attached to religion.
Dubois received all the orders on the same day; and, when he was joked
about it, he brazen-facedly called to mind the precedent of St. Ambrose.
Dubois henceforth cast his eyes upon the cardinal's hat, and his
negotiations at Rome were as brisk as those of Alberoni had but lately
been with the same purpose.

Amidst so much defiance of decency and public morality, in the presence
of such profound abuse of sacred things, God did not, nevertheless,
remain without testimony, and his omnipotent justice had spoken.  On the
21st of July, 1719, the Duchess of Berry, eldest daughter of the Regent,
had died at the Palais-Royal, at barely twenty-four years of age; her
health, her beauty, and her wit were not proof against the irregular life
she had led.  Ere long a more terrible cry arose from one of the chief
cities of the kingdom.  "The plague," they said, "is at Marseilles,
brought, none knows how, on board a ship from the East."  The terrible
malady had by this time been brooding for a month in the most populous
quarters without anybody's daring to give it its real name.  "The public
welfare demands," said Chancellor d'Aguesseau, "that the people should be
persuaded that the plague is not contagious, and that the ministry should
behave as if it were persuaded of the contrary."  Meanwhile emigration
was commencing at Marseilles; the rich folks had all taken flight; the
majority of the public functionaries, unfaithful to their duty, had
imitated them, when, on the 31st of July, 1720, the Parliament of Aix,
scared at the contagion, drew round Marseilles a sanitary line,
proclaiming the penalty of death against all who should dare to pass it;
the mayor (_viguier_) and the four sheriffs were left alone, and without
resources to confront a populace bewildered by fear, suffering, and, ere
long, famine.  Then shone forth that grandeur of the human soul, which
displays itself in the hour of terror, as if to testify of the divine
image still existing amidst the wreck of us.  Whilst the Parliament was
flying from threatened Aix, and hurrying affrighted from town to town,
accompanied or pursued in its route by the commandant of the province,
all that while the Bishop of Marseilles, Monseigneur de Belzunce, the
sheriffs Estelle and Moustier, and a simple officer of health, Chevalier
Roze, sufficed in the depopulated town for all duties and all acts of
devotion.

The plague showed a preference for attacking robust men, young people,
and women in the flower of their age; it disdained the old and the sick;
there was none to care for the dying, none to bury the dead.  The doctors
of Marseilles had fled, or dared not approach the dying without
precautions, which redoubled the terror.  "The doctors ought to be
abolished," wrote Dubois to the Archbishop of Aix, "or ordered to show
more ability and less cowardice, for it is a great calamity."

Some young doctors, arriving from Montpellier, raised the courage of
their desponding brethren, and the sick no longer perished without help.
Rallying round the bishop, the priests, assisted by the members of all
the religious orders, flew from bedside to bedside, and from grave to
grave, without being able to suffice for the duties of their ministry.
"Look at Belzunce," writes M. Lemontey; "all he possessed, he has given;
all who served him are dead; alone, in poverty, afoot, in the morning he
penetrates into the most horrible dens of misery, and in the evening, he
is found again in the midst of places bespattered with the dying; he
quenches their thirst, he comforts them as a friend, he exhorts them as
an apostle, and on this field of death he gleans abandoned souls.  The
example of this prelate, who seems to be invulnerable, animates with
courageous emulation--not the clergy of lazy and emasculated dignitaries,
for they fled at the first approach of danger, but--the parish-priests,
the vicars and the religious orders; not one deserts his colors, not one
puts any bound to his fatigues save with his life.  Thus perished twenty-
six Recollects and eighteen Jesuits out of twenty-six.  The Capucins
summoned their brethren from the other provinces, and the latter rushed
to martyrdom with the alacrity of the ancient Christians; out of fifty-
five the epidemic slew forty-three.  The conduct of the priests of the
Oratory was, if possible, more magnanimous.  The functions of the sacred
ministry were forbidden them by the bishop, a fanatical partisan of the
bull Unigenitus; they refused to profit by their disqualification, and
they devoted themselves to the service of the sick with heroic humility;
nearly all succumbed, and there were still tears in the city for the
Superior, a man of eminent piety."

[Illustration: Belzunce amid the Plague-stricken----96]

During more than five months the heroic defenders of Marseilles struggled
against the scourge.  The bishop drew the populace on to follow in his
steps, in processions or in the churches, invoking the mercy of God in
aid of a city which terror and peril seemed to have the effect of
plunging into the most awful corruption.  Estelle, Moustier, and
Chevalier Roze, heading the efforts attempted in all directions to
protect the living and render the last offices to the dead, themselves
put their hands to the work, aided by galley-men who had been summoned
from the hulks.  Courage was enough to establish equality between all
ranks and all degrees of virtue.  Monseigneur de Belzunce sat upon the
seat of the tumbrel laden with corpses, driven by a convict stained with
every crime.

Marseilles had lost a third of its inhabitants.  Aix, Toulon, Arles, the
Cevennes, the Gevaudan were attacked by the contagion; fearful was the
want in the decimated towns long deprived of every resource.  The Regent
had forwarded corn and money; the pope sent out three ships laden with
provisions; one of the vessels was wrecked, the two others were seized by
Barbary pirates, who released them as soon as they knew their
destination.  The cargo was deposited on a desert island in sight of
Toulon.  Thither it was that boats, putting off from Marseilles, went to
fetch the alms of the pope, more charitable than many priests,
accompanying his gifts with all the spiritual consolations and
indulgences of his holy office.  The time had not come for Marseilles and
the towns of Provence to understand the terrible teaching of God.
Scarcely had they escaped from the dreadful scourge which had laid them
waste, when they plunged into excesses of pleasure and debauchery, as if
to fly from the memories that haunted them.  Scarcely was a thought given
to those martyrs to devotion who had fallen during the epidemic; those
who survived received no recompense; the Regent, alone, offered
Monseigneur de Belzunce the bishopric of Laon, the premier ecclesiastical
peerage in the kingdom; the saintly bishop preferred to remain in the
midst of the flock for which he had battled against despair and death.
It was only in 1802 that the city of Marseilles at last raised a monument
to its bishop and its heroic magistrates.

Dubois, meanwhile, was nearing the goal of all his efforts.  In order to
obtain the cardinal's hat, he had embraced the cause of the Court of
Rome, and was pushing forward the registration by Parliament of the Bull
Unigenitus.  The long opposition of the Duke of Noailles at last yielded
to the desire of restoring peace in the church.  In his wake the majority
of the bishops and communities who had made appeal to the contemplated
council, renounced, in their turn, the protests so often renewed within
the last few years.  The Parliament was divided, but exiled to Pontoise,
as a punishment for its opposition to the system of Law; it found itself
threatened with removal to Blois.  Chancellor d'Aguesseau had vainly
sought to interpose his authority; a magistrate of the Grand Chamber,
Perelle by name, was protesting eloquently against any derogation from
the principles of liberty of the Gallican Church and of the Parliaments.
"Where did you find such maxims laid down?"  asked the chancellor,
angrily.  "In the pleadings of the late Chancellor d'Aguesseau," answered
the councillor, icily.  D'Aguesseau gave in his resignation to the
Regent; the Parliament did not leave for Blois; after sitting some weeks
at Pontoise, it enregistered the formal declaration of the Bull, and at
last returned to Paris on the, 20th of December, 1720.

Dubois had reconciled France with the court of Rome; the latter owed him
recompense for so much labor.  Clement XI. had promised, but he could not
make up his mind to bring down so low the dignity of the Sacred College;
he died without having conferred the hat upon Dubois.  During the
conclave intrigues recommenced, conducted this time by Cardinal Rohan.
The Jesuit Lafitteau, who had become Bishop of Sisteron, and had for a
long while been the secret agent of Dubois at Rome, kept him acquainted
with all the steps taken to wrest a promise from Cardinal Conti, who was
destined, it was believed, to unite the majority of the suffrages.  "Do
not be surprised," he adds, "to hear me say that I go by night to the
conclave, for I have found out the secret of getting the key of it, and I
constantly pass through five or six guard-posts, without their being able
to guess who I am."