Parliament having persisted, and declaring that the accusations against the Duke of Aiguillon attached (_entachaient_) his honor, Louis XV., egged on by the chancellor, M.de Maupeou, an ambitious, bold, bad man, repaired in person to the office, and had all the papers relating to the procedure removed before his eyes.

The strife was becoming violent; the Duke of Choiseul, still premier--minister but sadly shaken in the royal favor, disapproved of the severities employed against the magistracy.

All the blows dealt at the Parliaments recoiled upon him.
King Louis XV.

had taken a fresh step in the shameful irregularity of his life; on the 15th of April, 1764, Madame de Pompadour had died, at the age of forty-two, of heart disease.

As frivolous as she was deeply depraved and baseminded in her calculating easiness of virtue, she had more ambition than comported with her mental calibre or her force of character; she had taken it into her head to govern, by turns promoting and overthrowing the ministers, herself proffering advice to the king, sometimes to good purpose, but more often still with a levity as fatal as her obstinacy.