"Louis XV" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... walls, adorned with magnificent portraits (one of the best is Stanislas, and better still is Louis XVI, a proud baby in the arms of a handsome mother); imagine beautiful Louis XV chairs, tables, and sofas scattered about, with the light of prism-hung chandeliers glinting on old brocades and tapestries: flowers everywhere, in Chinese bowls and tall vases; against this background a group of lovely girls multiplied by many mirrors into a large company; ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... command of a corps of Indian allies which was to accompany the expedition under General Bradstreet to raise the siege of Detroit, which important place had been long invested by a great Indian chief, Pontiac, who still carried on the war on behalf of King Louis XV. This enterprise was successful, and British control was extended to many places in central Canada. Henry returned to Fort Michili-Makinak and regained much of the property which he had lost in the Indian attacks. As some compensation for his former sufferings ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... that in this long and wicked reign Louis XIV. was sowing the wind from which his descendants reaped the whirlwind. It was the despotism of Louis XIV. and of Louis XV. which ushered in that most sublime of all earthly dramas, ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... taking of Quebec. I therefore found in the character of Doltaire—which was the character of Voltaire spelled with a big D—purely a creature of the imagination, one who, as the son of a peasant woman and Louis XV, should be an effective offset to Major Stobo. There was no hint of Doltaire in the Memoirs. There could not be, nor of the plot on which the story was based, because it was all imagination. Likewise, there was no mention of Alixe Duvarney in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... said the king, "and still it is true. I have formed a treaty with England—this matter is settled! I have been an ally of Louis XV.; I have nothing to complain of in him. I love him; well, am I now his enemy? I hope that there may be a time when I may again approach the King of France. Pray tell him how anxiously I look forward to this time. Tell him I am much ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... various and delightful exercises of the faculties of memory, taste, and judgment, in the company of persons distinguished for their knowledge and genius. For, with all the social intercourse for which Paris was celebrated in the reign of Louis XV. the local objects at Rome gave a higher and richer tone to conversation there; even the living vices were there less offensive than at Paris, the rumours of them being almost lost in the remembrance of departed ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... Marefoschis had got together all their best furniture and plate, and the palace was filled with torches and wax lights; a funereal illumination in a funereal place, it must have seemed to the little Princess of Stolberg, fresh from the brilliant nattiness of the Parisian houses of the time of Louis XV. ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... ancient Venetian family, it was pleasant to see at least one of the palazzos of the ancient republic handsomely furnished, and having the appearance of cheerful occupation. Among the portraits are some that could scarcely have been expected to survive the Revolution of 1792—as Louis XIV.; Louis XV. when a boy; some of the princesses, aunts of Louis XVI.; also the dauphin, father of the latter monarch. There is likewise a beautiful cabinet of Marie Antoinette. Such articles, we presume, must have been obtained from the palaces at the downfall of royalty, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... jumping into the Elster; the others, Napoleon pointing a cannon, the defence at Clichy, and the two Mazepas, all in gilt frames of the vulgarest description,—fit to carry off the prize of disgust. Oh! how much I prefer Madame Julliard's pastels of fruit, those excellent Louis XV. pastels, which are in keeping with the old dining-room and its gray panels,—defaced by age, it is true, but they possess the true provincial characteristics that go well with old family silver, precious china, and our simple habits. The provinces are provinces; they are only ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... of Henri II. of France to his wedded wife, Catherine de Medicis, and the misplaced affection of Louis XV. for Madame du Barry, were the remote but real causes that helped to ruin the House of France. Without the amour of Henri II., there would have been no Jeanne de Valois; without the hope that Louis XV. would stick at nothing to please Madame du Barry, the diamond necklace ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... designation, and would be embarrassed to tell for what monument the mysterious stone which the Executive Council of the Revolution laconically calls the "pied d'estal" served as a base. This stone had borne the statue of Louis XV. ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... a half passed before the Place de Greve, in Paris, again witnessed the torment of a fanatic for an attack upon the sacred person of a King. On January 5, 1757, Louis XV. was slightly wounded by a young Frenchman, Robert Franc,ois Damiens. The injury was not severe, and the King's recovery was soon complete. Such an attack, however, was a capital offence, and it was determined that the criminal should not only lose his life, ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... Rohan. With the first, his majesty, the late King of France, dined once a year; with the second, the Emperor of Austria dined once a month. I know, therefore, how a sovereign should be treated. When he visited the Prince de Soubise, Louis XV. called himself in vain the Baron de Gonesse; at the house of M. de Rohan, the Emperor Joseph was announced as the Count de Packenstein; but he was none the less emperor. To-day, your grace also receives ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... about 1749, Paris. M. Chouquet, in his "Catalogue Raisonne" of the instruments at the Paris Conservatoire, described a Guitar by this maker, made for a daughter of Louis XV. ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... writers' model, former queen of France. Was a great friend of Louis XV. and helped make the dances at Versailles a success. She always preferred marcel waves to pompadours. Ambition: To have and to hold. Address: See ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... various epochs, had been carried upstairs. There was a great carved chest of the Renaissance period, a table and chairs which dated from the reign of Louis XIII, an enormous bedstead, style Louis XIV, and a very handsome wardrobe, Louis XV. In the middle of these venerable old things a white porcelain stove, and the little toilet-table, covered with a pretty oilcloth, seemed out of place and to mar the dull harmony. Curtained with an old-fashioned ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... Troyes, not far from that of the Cinq-Cygnes. These two old houses and the bishop's palace were long the only stone mansions at Troyes. The marquis sold Simeuse to the Duc de Lorraine. His son wasted the father's savings and some part of his great fortune under the reign of Louis XV., but he subsequently entered the navy, became a vice-admiral, and redeemed the follies of his youth by brilliant services. The Marquis de Simeuse, son of this naval worthy, perished with his wife on the scaffold at Troyes, leaving twin sons, ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... energetic action of a supreme or of a centralized power, laugh at the trepidation of ours. But the fault is not in the principle of self-government, but in the accident which brought to the helm such an amount of inexperience. Monarchy with a feeble head is even in a worse predicament. Louis XV., the Spanish and Neapolitan Bourbons, Gustavus IV., &c., are ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... The reign of Louis XV. commenced in 1715. By letters-patent which he issued on the 16th of January, 1716, he granted permission to all the merchants in his kingdom to engage in the African trade, provided their ships were fitted out only in the five ports of Rouen, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... actually pick up a French crown-piece, worth about a dollar and six cents, near high-water mark, on the still moist sand, just under the abrupt, caving base of the bank. It was of a dark slate-color, and looked like a flat pebble, but still bore a very distinct and handsome head of Louis XV., and the usual legend on the reverse, "Sit Nomen Domini Benedictum," (Blessed be the Name of the Lord,)—a pleasing sentiment to read in the sands of the sea-shore, whatever it might be stamped on,—and I also made out the date, 1741. Of course, I thought at first that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... nucleus of the British Museum, and who resided at Chelsea; nor shall we forget the Chelsea china manufactory, one of the earliest porcelain manufactories in England, patronized by George II., who brought over German artificers from Brunswick and Saxony. In the reign of Louis XV. the French manufacturers began to regard it with jealousy and petitioned their king for special privileges. Ranelagh, too, that old pleasure-garden which Dr. Johnson declared was "the finest thing he had ever seen," deserves a word; Horace ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... died at Vincennes. The Duke of Orleans, when regent of the kingdom, continued to live in the Palais Royal; and therefore, in order to have the young king, Louis XV. near him, he fixed his majesty's residence, in the first year of his reign (1715) at Vincennes, till the palace of the Tuileries could be prepared for him. In 1731, the trees in the forest of Vincennes being decayed with age, were felled, and acorns were ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... like it all the better for being less serious, less heroic, less militant, and more what the French call bourgeois, just as you may like the style of Louis XV better than that of Louis XIV,— Madame du Barry better than Madame de Montespan,—for taste is free, and all styles are good which amuse; but since we are now beginning with the earliest, in order to step down gracefully to the stage, whatever it is, where you prefer to stop, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... into fainting-fits, and that his plain dress had an enormous influence on public opinion; but, alas! we have also to take account of the statement by an eminent critic to the effect that Franklin, at his previous presentation to Louis XV, had worn court dress, and that he wore similar gorgeous attire at various other public functions, with the inference that he was prevented from doing so, when received by Louis XVI, only by the fact that somehow his court dress ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... under the care of Madame Campan. This illustrious lady was familiar with all the etiquette of the court, and was also endowed with a superior mind highly cultivated. At the early age of fifteen she had been appointed reader to the daughter of Louis XV. Maria Antoinette took a strong fancy to her, and made her a friend and companion. The crumbling of the throne of the Bourbons and the dispersion of the court left Madame Campan without a home, and caused what the world ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... qualification for the position in which he had placed her—namely, extreme personal beauty. She was indeed kind-hearted and amiable, and among the temptations of a court as dissolute as was that of Louis XV. she preserved her reputation unspotted. But she was narrow-minded and unintellectual, a bigoted Catholic, and so blinded by national and religious prejudices that many of the most fatal mistakes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... Paris. Henceforward the quiet convent belongs no more to history. From the windows of their cells the nuns could behold the laying out of the Champ de Mars and the erection of the new military school decreed by Louis XV. But they were not destined to witness the Festival of the Republic, which took place on the Champ de Mars, since in 1790 the convent was suppressed and the nuns dispersed. The buildings still remained, and were devoted to various public uses till they were swept away to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... find a budding Faublas, who looked the part to admiration, and put him in mind of his own young days. So, making no allowance for the difference of the times, he sowed the maxims of a roue of the Encyclopaedic period broadcast in the boy's mind. He told wicked anecdotes of the reign of His Majesty Louis XV.; he glorified the manners and customs of the year 1750; he told of the orgies in petites maisons, the follies of courtesans, the capital tricks played on creditors, the manners, in short, which furnished ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... Canadian officers, in the military uniforms of Louis XV., stood leaning on their swords, as they conversed gaily together on the broad gravelled walk at the foot of the rampart. They formed the suite in attendance upon the Governor, who was out by sunrise this morning to inspect the work done during ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... importance at his will. Then, however great his discernment and however strong his desire to reach the truth, it is doubtful if he ever will. In history, as elsewhere, absolute truth escapes mankind. Louis XIV, Louis XV, Madame de Maintenon, Madame de Pompadour, Louis XVI, even Napoleon and Josephine, so near our own times, are already quasi-mythical characters. The Louis XIII of Marion de Lorme seemed until very lately to be accurate, but recent discoveries show ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... anything French, but I wonder in what part of France he has travelled. Besides the well-known historic chateaux of Chaumont, Chenonceaux, Azay-le-Rideau, Maintenon, Dampierre, Josselin, Valencay, and scores of others, there are quantities of small Louis XV chateaux and manoirs, half hidden in a corner of a forest, which the stranger never sees. They are quite charming, built of red brick with white copings, with stiff old-fashioned gardens, and trees ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... very spacious, well laid out in walks and lined with trees. Large basins inlaid with stone, fountains and statues add to the grandeur of these gardens; they extend from the Tuileries as far as the Place Louis XV parallel to the Seine, and are separated by a wall and parapet and a beautiful cast iron railing from the Quai, and on the other side from the Rue de Rivoli, one of the new streets, and the best in Paris for pedestrians. On the side ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... author, it is to be supposed, {357} of the antiquated, unfashionable, and false style which the word "Rococo" is employed to designate. The use of the word is said to have first arisen in France towards the end of the reign of Louis XV. or the beginning of that of Louis XVI., and it is now employed in the above senses, not only in architecture, but in literature, fashion, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... exquisite period, which might be called the adolescence of the style Louis XV, Audran and his collaborators produced another marvellous and inspired set of portieres. These were executed for the Grand Dauphin, to decorate his room in the chateau at Meudon, and were called the Grotesque Months in Bands. The most self-sufficient of pens would falter ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... in 1719, four years after the accession of Louis XV., a puny infant, to the French throne, and in the midst of the Regency of the Duke of Orleans. The scene was a broad walk in the Tuileries gardens, beneath a closely-clipped wall of greenery, along which were ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... miser could stop her Marie had laid her hand on a small colored engraving of Louis XV. on horseback; to her amazement it turned, and she saw, in a room beneath her, the Marquis de Montauran, who was loading a musket. The opening, hidden by a little panel on which the picture was gummed, seemed to form ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... chintz designs Miss Morgan's Louis XVI dressing-room Miss Marbury's chintz-hung dressing-table A corner of my own boudoir Built-in bookshelves in a small room Mrs. C.W. Harkness's cabinet for objets d'art A banquette of the Louis XV period covered with needlework A Chinese Chippendale sofa covered with chintz The trellis room in the Colony Club Mrs. Ormond G. Smith's trellis room at Center Island, New York Looking over the tapis vert to the trellis A fine old ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... of the day, but since the days of Louis XI. part of the sub-structure of the abbey buildings had been converted into fearful dungeons, and the day came when the abbey became simply a most remarkable prison. In the time of Louis XV., a Frenchman named Dubourg—a person who has often been spoken of as though he had been a victim of his religious convictions, but who seems to have been really a most reprehensible character—was placed in a wooden cage in one of the damp ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... were not notorious, that in her veins flowed the best blood in Chicago. The dining-room was a fitting frame to her fragile beauty, for Isabel had caused the house, a replica of a palace on the Grand Canal at Venice, to be furnished by an English expert in the style of Louis XV; and the graceful decoration linked with the name of that amorous monarch enhanced her loveliness and at the same time acquired from it a more profound significance. For Isabel's mind was richly stored, and her conversation, however ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... this new body of economic thinkers was Francois Quesnay,(17) a physician and favorite at the court of Louis XV. Passing by his ethical basis of a natural order of society, and natural rights of man, his main doctrine, in brief, was that the cultivation of the soil was the only source of wealth; that labor in other industries was ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... When he reached the shore of Lake Superior, west of where Fort William now stands, an old Indian guide, gave him a birch bark map, which showed all the streams and water courses from Lake Superior to Lake of the Woods, and on to Lake Winnipeg. This was when the "well-beloved" Louis XV. was King of France, and George II. King of England. It was heroic of Verandrye to face the danger, but he was a soldier who had been twice wounded in battle in Europe, and had the French love of glory. By carrying his canoes over the portages, ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... Then came Louis XV., who was too feeble to maintain even the poor decent restraints imposed by Louis XIV.; so the serf-mastering caste became active in a new way, and their leaders in vileness unutterable became at last ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... Philip Duke of Orleans, Regent of France in the minority of Louis XV., a believer in judicial astrology, though ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... ostentation in the king and the great aristocracy created a demand which the genius of the age supplied. The heights that had been reached could not be maintained. There were eminent engravers still; but the zenith had been passed. Balechou, who belonged to the reign of Louis XV., and Beauvarlet, whose life was protracted beyond the reign of terror, both produced portraits of merit. The former is noted for a certain clearness and brilliancy, but with a hardness, as of brass or marble, and without entire accuracy of design; ...
— The Best Portraits in Engraving • Charles Sumner
... reading Rosenkrantz's "History of Poetry" [Footnote: "Geschichte der Poesie," by Rosenkrantz, the pupil and biographer of Hegel] all day: it touches upon all the great names of Spain, Portugal, and France, as far as Louis XV. It is a good thing to take these rapid surveys; the shifting point of view gives a perpetual freshness to the subject and to the ideas presented, a literary experience which is always pleasant and bracing. ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... grossness to be embodied in the same individual; in the eighteenth century, man was, inwardly as well as outwardly, refined, mild, kind, a friend of pleasure; and therein lies the fundamental difference between the honnete homme of Louis XIV. and the homme du monde of Louis XV. The seventeenth century type of man is midway between that of the sixteenth and eighteenth—more polished and less gross than the former, yet lacking the knowledge and culture ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... fact the well-knit, athletic young figures looked uncommonly well in the garments a la mode in Yaque. One would have said that if the garments followed Deuteronomy fashions they had at all events been cut by the scissors of a court tailor to Louis XV. The result was beautiful and bizarre, but it did not suggest stageland because the colours ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... to breakfast with the Colonel, who named eight or nine for the meal. Nine Mr. Honeyman agreed to with a sigh. The incumbent of Lady Whittlesea's chapel seldom rose before eleven. For, to tell the truth, no French abbot of Louis XV. was more lazy and luxurious, and effeminate, than ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... history he has recently published, and which forms the subject of this article,—"A Philosophic History of the Reign of Louis XV."[2] We regret the title: we have an instinctive aversion to soi-disant philosophic histories. Those that really are so, invariably shun the name. Robertson, in his first volume of Charles V.; Guizot in his "Civilisation Europeenne;" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... have had a bon voyage on your trip from la belle France, and my wife and I are looking forward to welcoming you to our city. Although I cannot say, as your great king Louis XV. so justly remarked, "L'etat, c'est moi," yet I believe that I can entertain you comme il faut during your stay here. But all bon mots aside, would you care to join us this afternoon in a ride around the city? If you say the word, voila! we shall ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... was erected, Louis XIV. endowed it with the revenue of two abbacies, those of Benevent and L'Estrio. About thirty years ago, the then bishop, finding it difficult, considering the distance, to recover the revenues of them, by consent of Louis XV., resigned the same to the clergy of France, to be united to a particular revenue of theirs, styled the economats, applied to the augmentation of small livings, in consideration of which, the bishop of this see has ever ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... Sulkouski, who had just been appointed ambassador to the Court of Louis XV. The prince was the elder of four brothers and a man of great understanding, but a theorist in the style of the Abbe St. Pierre. He read the letter, and said he wanted to have a long talk with me; but that being ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... that there were no bad periods; he would say that, to be sure, the style of the First Napoleon's Empire was not a very fortunate style,—too stiff, too absurdly pseudo-classic, unworthy of France, a poor enough successor of the dainty and playful art of Louis XV, or the somewhat more refined and restrained art of Louis XVI: but he would say that it was art still, and the period a not wholly inartistic period; and even of the dull times of the Napoleon of Peace, ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... was that in the last century a grand-uncle of the present Delaherche had built the monumental structure that had remained in the family a hundred and sixty years. There is more than one cloth factory in Sedan that dates back to the early years of Louis XV.; enormous piles, they are, covering as much ground as the Louvre, and with stately facades of royal magnificence. The one in the Rue Maqua was three stories high, and its tall windows were adorned with carvings of severe ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... Louis XV.—Ce tableau, qui a ete execute vers 1635, ne fut paye a van Dyck que 100 livres sterling. En 1754, il faisait partie, suivant Descamps, du cabinet du marquis de Lassay. On trouve cette note dans les memoires secrets de ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... however, the fine facade of the Louvre, the Place de Louis XV., the astonishingly brilliant spectacle of the Palais Royal, Notre Dame, a few handsome bridges, and the drives ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... ill-matched curiosities, where ivory netzkes on tables surrounded Barye bronzes and Dresden figures, there lacked some evidence of an individual character that would give a dominant tone, an original key, to the collection. This worldly dwelling, with its white lacquered bed and Louis XV. canopy and its heads of birds carved in wood like the queen's bed at Trianon, vaguely resembled the ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... the Court of Louis XV. carried extravagance as far as the famous Egyptian queen. She melted a pearl,—they pulverized diamonds, to prove their insane magnificence. A lady having expressed a desire to have the portrait of her canary in a ring, the last Prince ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... visit to a charming little Louis XV chateau standing quite on the edge of the forest—just room enough for the house, and the little hamlet at the gates; a magnificent view of the forest, quite close to the lawn behind the chateau, and then sweeping ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... before the popes from their high watch-tower of the Vatican had hurled on these secret gatherings the anathema of condemnation, they were interdicted in England by the Government of Queen Elizabeth; they were checked in France by Louis XV. (1729); they were prescribed in Holland in 1735, and successively in Flanders, in Sweden, in Poland, in Spain, in Portugal, in Hungary, and in Switzerland. In Vienna, in 1743, a lodge was burst into by soldiers. The Freemasons ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... astonishing, the partisans of those two opposite systems were at once prevalent, and at once employed, and in the very same transactions—the one ostensibly, the other secretly, during the latter part of the reign of Louis XV. Nor was there one court in which an ambassador resided on the part of the ministers, in which another, as a spy on him, did not also reside on the part of the king. They who pursued the scheme for keeping peace on the continent, and particularly with Austria, acting ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... and how the mental peculiarity of each began, and also exactly when and how that mental peculiarity passed away. We have an idea of Queen Anne's time, for example, or of Queen Elizabeth's time, or George II.'s time; or again of the age of Louis XIV., or Louis XV., or the French Revolution; an idea more or less accurate in proportion as we study, but probably even in the minds who know these ages best and most minutely, more special, more simple, more unique than ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... most unlucky throughout the year, and in former times no one who could possibly avoid it began any work, or entered on any undertaking on this anniversary. To marry on Childermas Day was specially inauspicious. It is said of the equally superstitious and unprincipled monarch, Louis XV., that he would never perform any business or enter into any discussion about his affairs on this day, and to make to him then any proposal of the kind was certain to exasperate him to the utmost. ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... day of May, the year 1745, was fought in Flanders the battle of Fontenoy. The Duke of Cumberland, Koenigsegge the Austrian, and the Dutch Prince of Waldeck had the handling of something under fifty thousand English. Marshal Saxe with Louis XV at his side wielded a somewhat larger number of French. The English and their allies were beaten. French spirits rode on ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... accord, and the Swiss column divides in two. One body of 250 men turns to the right, reaches the Assembly, lays down its arms at the King's order, and allows itself to be shut up in the Feuillants church. The others are annihilated on crossing the garden, or cut down on the Place Louis XV. by the mounted gendarmerie. No quarter is given. The warfare is that of a mob, not civilized war, but primitive war, that of barbarians. In the abandoned palace into which the insurgents entered five minutes ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Parton has described Aaron Burr as suited to many very incongruous conditions in life. If we were to select an epoch in history and a form of society for which he was best adapted, we should place him in France daring the Regency and the reign of Louis XV. There, where a successful bon-mot established a claim to office, and a well-turned leg did more for a man than the best mind in Europe, Burr would have risen to distinction. He might have shone in the literary circles at Sceaux, and in the petits ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... the edge of the bluff to see the sun go down. We rubbed our eyes. Was this real, or were we looking into some showman's box? It seemed like the Petit Trianon adapted to an island in the Atlantic, with Louis XV. and his marquises playing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... heaps of Ollendorfish kind of sentences, I was given some "sirop" and water, and conducted to bed by Victorine. She is a big dump with a shiny complexion, and such a very small mouth, and I am sure I shall hate her, she isn't a bit good-natured-looking like Jean. The house is really fine Louis XV., and my bedroom and cabinet de toilette are delicious, so is my bed; but the attitude of Agnes—such a conscious pride in the superiority of France—nearly ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... Memoirs show us, in Italy, France, Germany, Austria, England, Switzerland, Belgium, Russia, Poland, Spain, Holland, Turkey; he met Voltaire at Ferney, Rousseau at Montmorency, Fontenelle, d'Alembert and Crebillon at Paris, George III. in London, Louis XV. at Fontainebleau, Catherine the Great at St. Petersburg, Benedict XII. at Rome, Joseph II. at Vienna, Frederick the Great at Sans-Souci. Imprisoned by the Inquisitors of State in the Piombi at Venice, he made, in 1755, the most famous escape in history. ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... life in being elected King of Poland and being ousted from his throne, and who, at this time a refugee in France, had found a compensation for some of his misfortunes in marrying his daughter to Louis XV. He lived eight years at Chambord and filled up the moats of the castle. In 1748 it found an illustrious tenant in the person of Maurice de Saxe, the victor of Fontenoy, who, however, two years after he had taken possession ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... it before—you are down fifteen times! Every alternate space has your name over again. 'Lalage Virtue as Madame Dubarry. Fred Smith as Louis XV. Lalage Virtue as the Dubarry. Felix Sumner as the Due de Richelieu. Lalage Virtue as la belle Jeanneton.' By the way, that is all rot. Cardinal Richelieu died four or five hundred years before ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... Olivier le Daim, the barber; if you would, under Mary de Medicis, be glorious, be Sillery, the Chancellor; if you would be a person of consideration, be La Hannon, the maid; if you would, under Louis XV., be illustrious, be Choiseul, the minister; if you would be formidable, be Lebel, the valet. Given, Louis XIV., Bontemps, who makes his bed, is more powerful than Louvois, who raises his armies, and Turenne, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... of Louis XV, statues, parks, monuments, churches, great arches that once were the outer gates, and many miles of quays redolent, not of the sea, but of the wine to which the city gives ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... mansion. The house once occupied by the French commandant was wrapped in the national colors. It had been the first State House of Illinois. A hundred years before—just one hundred years—Kaskaskia Commons had received its grand name from his most Christian Majesty Louis XV, and it then seemed likely to become the capital of the French mid-continent empire in the New World. The Jesuits flocked here, zealous for the conversion of the Indian races. Here came men of rank and military glory, ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... for the influence of Tammany grafters, and twenty years hence a Madame Pompadour may be dwelling not far from the White House and controlling the fate of the nation with her small hands, as she did for two decades when Louis XV was king. History has sufficiently shown that these are the logical consequences of the sensualization of a rich people, whose mind is filled with sexual problems. Are we to wait, too, until a great revolution or a great war shakes the ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... better men than Selwyn have had the same, and Macaulay accuses Penn of a similar affection. The best known anecdote of Selwyn's peculiarity relates to the execution of Damiens, who was torn with red-hot pincers, and finally quartered by four horses, for the attempt to assassinate Louis XV. On the day fixed, George mingled with the crowd plainly dressed, and managed to press forward close to the place of torture. The executioner observing him, eagerly cried out, 'Faites place pour Monsieur; c'est un Anglais et un amateur;' or, as another version goes, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... greatest popularity that sovereign ever possessed. It was not until after the overthrow of the Fox-and-North Coalition that he found himself popular, and so he remained unto the end. The change that he wrought, and the power that he wielded in the State,—a power as arbitrary as that of Louis XV.,—were the fruits of his personal character, and that character was the consequence of the peculiar education which he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... on which the old man's daughter lay was one of those beautiful white and gold carved bedsteads such as were made in the Louis XV. period. By the sick woman's pillow was a very pretty marquetry table, on which were the various articles necessary to this bedridden life. Against the wall was a bracket lamp with two branches, either of which could be moved forward or back by a mere ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... all in splendid frames. Stroeve had always been very proud of his taste. He had never lost his appreciation for the romantic atmosphere of a studio, and though now the sight of it was like a stab in his heart, without thinking what he was at, he changed slightly the position of a Louis XV. table which was one of his treasures. Suddenly he caught sight of a canvas with its face to the wall. It was a much larger one than he himself was in the habit of using, and he wondered what it did there. He went over to it and leaned it towards him so ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... and humanity," he answered, "plead in favour of these poor creatures, and I refuse to return them under any less than the direct order of the King." The King, to his credit—it was Louis XV.—stood firm also. Beauveau it was, likewise, who refused support to Maupeou's infamous scheme to stifle the whole magistracy and rule the country without ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... beyond the ferry. Yet as far as I could see there was no actual sign of any struggle. It was merely as though the grass had been flattened by the trailing of a woman's skirt across it. Examination showed, too, imprints of Louis XV. heels in the soft clay bank. One print was perfect, but the other, close to the edge, gave evidence that the foot had slipped, thus establishing the spot as that where the unfortunate young lady had fallen into ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... aristocracy soon becomes contemptible. That organization of society is most aristocratic which confers great political and social privileges on a few men, and retains these privileges from generation to generation, as in France during the reign of Louis XV. The state of society at Rome under the republic, favored the monopoly of offices among powerful families. It was considered very remarkable for even Cicero to rise to the highest honors of the state with his magnificent genius, character, attainments, and services; but he shared ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... best illustrating this purpose is the Chateau roof, Louis XV style; the main building being 43 feet square, with a rear addition 25 by 29 feet; the plan illustrating the arrangement of rooms, verandah, etc. The first floor gives double parlors, (one of which may be used as a bed-room or library,) a sitting-room ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward
... and his minister, count d'Aranda, followed the example of Portugal. The Jesuits were banished from Spain, February 28, 1767; and in the night between April 2 and 3, they were put, five thousand in number, on transport vessels, and sent to Rome. King Louis XV. and the duc de Choiseul used the same process in France. The attempt of Damiens, January 5, 1757, and an alleged scandal in the administration of the property of the order at la Martinique were taken up as pretexts for punishment, and the order was banished in 1764. King Ferdinand ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... in 1715. Louis XV., his heir, was a sickly child, not yet five years old. Philip would have been regent during his youth, and his heir in case of his death, had he not renounced all claim to the French throne. He was too weak and irresolute in himself to take any steps to gain this position, ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... Society. He contributed many papers to the Philosophical Transactions, and was the author of several works. In the eighteenth century Jean Baptiste de Silva, of a Portuguese Jewish family, became one of the leading physicians of Paris, consulting physician to Louis XV, and the friend of Voltaire, who remarks, "C'etait un de ces medecins que Moliere n'eut ni pu ni ose rendre ridicules." One of the special treasures of my library is a volume of the Henriade superbly bound by Padeloup, ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... not tell me in a more tactful manner that we have been married five months!" replied the Duke, whose repartee made his fortune in the reign of Louis XV. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... fresh examples of the generally recognised fact that the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light. The recovery from the very jaws of death of King Hezekiah, of Louis XV. of France, while as yet undetected and bien-aime, and of the present Prince of Wales, may, none the less probably, have been in part due to the prayers offered up for the first by himself, for the second, according to President Henault and ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... details. He raised Prussia to the first rank in Europe. Russia was coming in as a European power, and Spain was then as great as France or England, partly because of her former greatness, but as much from the sagacity of her sovereign and the talents of her statesmen. Louis XV. had lessened the weight of France, and George III. had degraded England. The Austrian house had suffered from its failure before Frederick. All things combined to make of Prussia the most formidable of European nations during the last half of Frederick's reign. When he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... which she kept in a jewelled Louis XV snuff-box, and had a perfect tartar of a maid, who ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... troops began to advance towards the city. The Prince de Lambesc, who commanded a body of German cavalry, approached by the Place of Louis Xv., which connects itself with some of the streets. In his march, he insulted and struck an old man with a sword. The French are remarkable for their respect to old age; and the insolence with which it appeared to be done, uniting with the general fermentation they were ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... conceivable torture for the attempted assassination of Louis Quinze. He ran through the catalogue of torments so that we all shivered, winding up with a contemptuous, "And all that for just pricking the skin of that scoundrel Louis XV." ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and he was an old man, poor, a commoner, and sick almost to death. But in 1757 William Pitt was called to the English helm, accepted the responsibility, and steered the country from her darkest to her most brilliant hour. The campaigns which drove the soldiers of Louis XV. out of America were the first chapter of the movement which ended in the expulsion of the British from the territory of the United States. Catholicism and Protestantism were arrayed against each other for the last time. Pitt was the man of the people; his ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... my stay I felt a desire, one I had never known before, to rummage in the old Louis XV bookcase that stood near my bed. There among the volumes in their century-old bindings, where the worms, never disturbed, slowly bored their galleries, I found a book made of thick rough old-fashioned paper, and this ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... the men and the coquetry of the women. The insipid uniformity of these pictures was unfortunately too often seasoned by the corruption of moral principles which, more especially after the age of Louis XIV., it became, under the Regency of Louis XV., the fashion openly to avow. In this period the favourite of the women, the homme a bonnes fortunes, who in the tone of satiety boasts of the multitude of his conquests too easily won, was not a character ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... called first at Legume's studio; they found him in the Via Margutta, (in English, Malicious street,) in a light, airy room, furnished with a striking attention to effect. On his easel was a painting of the required size, representing Louis XV. at Versailles, surrounded by his lady friends. By making the figures of the ladies small, and crowding them, Legume managed to get a hundred or two on the canvas. A period in their history to which Frenchmen ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... performance itself also recalled the days and manners of the court of Louis XV. Between each tableau, which was lighted solely from the raised stage, the lights were put out, and the whole room left in complete darkness. Whenever this happened, the sounds of immoderate kissing ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... seldom been lower than they were in 1759, when the energy of William Pitt had imparted itself to the whole of the alliance which was acting against Louis XV. That year, Charles III. ascended the Spanish throne. For some time he was apparently disposed to continue the judicious system of neutrality which had been adopted and pursued by his predecessor; but in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... manner rather than her beauty. Her complexion was olive, her eyes large and black, the best of all her features; her mouth somewhat big, but with bright red lips and admirably even teeth. Tonight she was costumed as a lady of the time of Louis XV, with powdered hair, which was marvelously becoming to her. She took almost no part in the conversation, but seemed satisfied to be merely a listener, constantly turning her serene gaze from one speaker to another, and often ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... musket; but it was a fatal invasion of the principle of beauty to adopt a permanent cock. There is no doubt that the flat cocked hat, the small three-cornered pinched hat of the days of Louis XIV. and Louis XV., gave much smartness to the soldier, and much neatness to the civilian; the change, too, corresponded with other alterations of dress, from the loose and flowing, to the tight and succinct principle; but picturesque effect was entirely lost; all the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... rest of the little crowd. He drew Ronicky and Jerry Smith into a little apartment which opened off the hall. It was furnished with an almost feminine delicacy of style, with wide-seated, spindle-legged Louis XV. chairs and a couch covered with rich brocade. The desk was a work of Boulle. A small tapestry of the Gobelins made a ragged glow of color on the wall. Frederic Fernand had recreated an atmosphere two hundred ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... except the ladies presented at the court. At the end of one year she gave birth to a son who went, like so many others, God knows where! for as long as Queen Mary lived no one ever knew what became of the natural children of Louis XV. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... embassadors presented to him their credentials, and the Marquis of Chetardie, the French minister, reverentially approaching the cradle, made the imperially majestic baby a congratulatory speech, addressing him as Ivan V., Emperor of all the Russias, and assuring him of the friendship of Louis XV., sovereign of France. ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... respectability. But the youth and maid often desired to exercise their own freedom and choice. On May 7, 1651, the General Court ordered a fine and punishment against those who "seeke to draw away y'e affections of yong maydens." In the time of Louis XV, of France, the following decree was made: "Whoever by means of red or white paint, perfumes, essences, artificial teeth, false hair, cotton, wool, iron corsets, hoops, shoes, with high heels, or false tips, shall seek to entice into the bonds of marriage any male ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... and all history attests it, a close connexion between religion and sensuality. No student of human nature need be surprised at Louis XV. falling on his knees in prayer after debauching a young virgin in the Parc aux Cerfs. Nor is there anything abnormal in Count Cenci, in Shelley's play, soliciting God's aid in the pollution of his own daughter. It is said that American camp-meetings often wound up in ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... room splendidly panelled with dark, carved boiserie Louis XV., the most beautiful of its kind I had ever seen—only it was so dimly lit with the same shaded lamps one could ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... likes to see his flat or villa furnished with much red plush upholstery and a profusion of gilt and lacquer. But that is his idea; and maybe it is in no worse taste than is a mixture of bastard Elizabethan with imitation Louis XV, the whole lit by electric light, and smothered with photographs. Possibly, he will have his outer walls painted by the local artist: a sanguinary battle, a good deal interfered with by the front door, taking place ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... his son with continued dignity and calm. The vagaries of Irish temper ordained otherwise. Kenny glanced at the fragments of a statuette conspicuously rearranged on a Louis XV table almost submerged in the chaotic disorder of the studio, and lost ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple |
