And when the end came, France had lost every inch of territory on the North American Continent, and had ceded her vast possessions, extending from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, to England and Spain.
So while England was steadily building up a world-empire, penetrated with the forces of a modern age, France, loaded with debt, was taxing a people crying for bread--taxing a starving people for money to procure unimaginable luxuries and pleasures for Madame du Barry, who had succeeded to the place once, held by Madame de Pompadour.

Did she desire a snowstorm and a sleighride in midsummer, these must be created and made possible.

And one may see to-day at Versailles the sleigh in which this mad caprice was realized.
The various instructors of Louis XV.

had not taught him anything about mind and soul processes.

They were quite unaware that there had commenced a movement in the _brain_ of France, which was going to liberate terrific forces--forces which would sweep before them the work of the Richelieus and the Mazarins and the Colberts as if it were chaff.
The human mind was probing, questioning doubting, everything it had once believed.