child of four years old. His great-grandfather had tried to provide for
his good by leaving the chief seat in the council of regency to his own
illegitimate son, the Duke of Maine, the most honest and conscientious
man then in the family, but, though clever, unwise and very unpopular.
His birth caused the appointment to be viewed as an outrage by the
nobility, and the king's will was set aside. The first prince of the
blood royal, Philip, Duke of Orleans, the late king's nephew, became
sole regent--a man of good ability, but of easy, indolent nature; and
who, in the enforced idleness of his life, had become dissipated and
vicious beyond all imagination or description. He was kindly and
gracious, and his mother said of him that he was like the prince in a
fable whom all the fairies had endowed with gifts, except one malignant
sprite who had prevented any favour being of use to him. In the general
exhaustion produced by the wars of Louis XIV., a Scotchman named James
Law began the great system of hollow speculation which has continued
ever since to tempt people to their ruin. He tried raising sums of money
on national credit, and also devised a company who were to lend money to
found a great settlement on the Mississippi, the returns from which were
to be enormous. Every one speculated in shares, and the wildest
excitement prevailed. Law's house was mobbed by people seeking
interviews with him, and nobles disguised themselves in liveries to get
access to him. Fortunes were made one week and lost the next, and
finally the whole plan proved to have been a mere baseless scheme; ruin
followed, and the misery of the country increased. The Duke of Orleans
died suddenly in 1723. The king was now legally of age; but he was dull
and backward, and little fitted for government, and the country was
really ruled by the Duke of Bourbon, and after him by Cardinal Fleury,
an aged statesman, but filled with the same schemes of ambition as
Richelieu or Mazarin.