"I do not inquire into the theory of councils," said the able Dubois to the Regent by the mouth of his confidant Chavigny; "it was, as you know, the object of worship to the shallow pates of the old court.

Humiliated by their nonentity at the end of the last reign, they begot this system upon the reveries of M.de Cambrai.

But I think of you, I think of your interests.

The king will reach, his majority, the grandees of the kingdom approach the monarque by virtue of their birth; if to this privilege they unite that of being then at the head of affairs, there is reason to fear that they may surpass you in complaisance, in flattery, may represent you as a useless phantom, and establish themselves upon the ruin of you.

Suppress, then, these councils, if you mean to continue indispensable, and haste to supersede the great lords, who would become your rivals, by means of simple secretaries of state, who, without standing or family, will perforce remain your creatures." The Duke of Antin, son of Madame de Montespan, one of the most adroit courtiers of the old as well as of the new court, "honorless and passionless" (_sans honneur et sans humeur_), according to the Regent's own saying, took a severer view than Dubois of the arrangement to which he had contributed.