The dissipations of the reign of Louis XV., the orgies
of that fatal and egotistic period, have produced an effete
generation, in which manners alone survive the nobler vanished
qualities,--forms, which are the sole heritage our nobles have
preserved. The abandonment in which Louis XVI. was allowed to perish
may thus be explained, with some slight reservations, as a wretched
result of the reign of Madame de Pompadour.
The grand equerry, a fair young man with blue eyes and a pallid face,
was not without a certain dignity of thought; but his thin, undersized
figure, and the follies of his aunt who had taken him to the Vilquins
and elsewhere to pay his court, rendered him extremely diffident. The
house of Herouville had already been threatened with extinction by the
deed of a deformed being (see the "Enfant Maudit" in "Philosophical
Studies"). The grand marshal, that being the family term for the
member who was made duke by Louis XIII., married at the age of eighty.
The young duke admired women, but he placed them too high and
respected them too much; in fact, he adored them, and was only at his
ease with those whom he could not respect.
Pages:
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272