DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS

many debts?’ ‘Sire, I shall inquire of my steward, and have the honour of rendering an account to your majesty.’ At Versailles the nobles fawned on the king, his ministers, and favourites; in Paris they re- venged themselves for the prostitution of their self-respect by vilifying the very persons from whom they had craved and received their honours. But not satisfied with lampooning the court and the govern- ment—lampoons which were greedily taken up and believed by the public—they vented in verse and in song their mutual jealousies and rivalries, thereby discrediting themselves and their order. Unfor- tunately their intellectual culture—their one re- deeming feature—proved one of the chief elements in their ultimate destruction. At no time in history was society so refined, so polished, so cultivated, as the French society of the eighteenth century. While devoting the gravest study to such trifles as the step of a minuet, the perfection of a bow, or the originality of a costume, it was animated with a very frenzy of intellectual activity. Every author whose writings showed any merit, whose wit pleased their fancy, or whose teachings appealed to their sentiment, was welcomed with open arms by the nobles and members of the wealthy middle class. Foremost amongst the great writers of the day were Voltaire, the son of a