Thus D'Aiguillon rose again, and culminated.

And with him there rose Maupeou, the banisher of Parlements; who plants you a refractory President 'at Croe in Combrailles on the top of steep rocks, inaccessible except by litters,' there to consider himself.
Likewise there rose Abbe Terray, dissolute Financier, paying eightpence in the shilling,--so that wits exclaim in some press at the playhouse, "Where is Abbe Terray, that he might reduce us to two-thirds!" And so have these individuals (verily by black-art) built them a Domdaniel, or enchanted Dubarrydom; call it an Armida-Palace, where they dwell pleasantly; Chancellor Maupeou 'playing blind-man's-buff' with the scarlet Enchantress; or gallantly presenting her with dwarf Negroes;--and a Most Christian King has unspeakable peace within doors, whatever he may have without.

"My Chancellor is a scoundrel; but I cannot do without him." (Dulaure, Histoire de Paris (Paris, 1824), vii.
328.) Beautiful Armida-Palace, where the inmates live enchanted lives; lapped in soft music of adulation; waited on by the splendours of the world;--which nevertheless hangs wondrously as by a single hair.

Should the Most Christian King die; or even get seriously afraid of dying! For, alas, had not the fair haughty Chateauroux to fly, with wet cheeks and flaming heart, from that Fever-scene at Metz; driven forth by sour shavelings?
She hardly returned, when fever and shavelings were both swept into the background.

Pompadour too, when Damiens wounded Royalty 'slightly, under the fifth rib,' and our drive to Trianon went off futile, in shrieks and madly shaken torches,--had to pack, and be in readiness: yet did not go, the wound not proving poisoned.