An edict of 1705, recalling that, in 1690, _la noblesse au premier degré_ had been bestowed upon the president, councillors, and other officers "of our _Cour de Parlement de Paris_;" that in 1691 the same privileges had been granted to the presidents, councillors, and other officers "of our _Cour des Aydes de Paris_;" in 1704, on the officers of the _Chambre des Comptes_, granted also this nobility to the presidents, treasurers-general of France, avocat, procureur, and _greffier en chef_ of the bureau of finance. In the following year, the privileges of this nobility were granted to the _échevins_, the procureur, the greffier, and receiver of the city of Paris, and the _prévôt_ of the merchants was given the title of chevalier. Following the ancient traditions of the French monarchy, the king preferred to see himself served by the men of the middle classes, rather than by the powerful lords, whose _rôle_ was reduced to that of obsequious courtiers in his antechamber, but, "in working with the bourgeois, the grandson of Henri IV wished to remain always _le roi des gentilshommes_."
In the person of Louis XV the most ignoble vices of a man were united to those of a king, but he had sufficient intelligence to foresee the calamity that was coming. "The thing will last at least as long as I do," he said, "my successor may get out of it the best way he can." And to Madame Pompadour is credited the famous saying: "After us, the deluge." When the minister Choiseul was disgraced, in 1770, half the nobles deserted the court to follow him to his estate of Chanteloup, near Amboise,--so much had the splendor of Versailles, that great glory of the reign of the _Roi-Soleil_, departed!
There were thirteen parlements and four provincial councils in France having sovereign jurisdiction in civil and criminal cases; the authority of the Parlement of Paris covered two-fifths of the kingdom. The chambres des comptes, the cours des aides, and the cours des monnaies judged all cases relating to the imposts, to the coinage, and to bullion. The grand conseil, the requêtes de l'Hôtel, the tribunal of the University of Paris, the capitaineries royales, etc., had each a special jurisdiction. Certain persons could only be judged by certain tribunals. In 1735, the Parlement having despatched its first president and several of its members to the king, then at Compiègne, to remonstrate with him, Louis XV informed them that he "forbade his Parlement to meet, to issue any decree, or to deliberate in any manner on the affairs of State; that they were to assemble only to receive his orders and to execute them, and that they had better not constrain him to make them feel the weight of his authority." In September of the same year, he summoned them to a bed of justice at Versailles, contrary to all precedent, and when they returned protesting, all the presidents and conseillers des enquêtes and requêtes were summarily banished to different cities in the kingdom by lettres de cachet. In 1753, the whole body was sent into exile, at Soissons, and to replace it the king created a _chambre royale_, which held its sittings at the Louvre, but which, though duly registered at the Châtelet _au très exprès commandement du roi_, was received with such contempt for its authority and such general levity that the members "became so well accustomed to it that they frequently assembled laughing, and made jests of their own decrees." The Parisians, who ridicule everything, declared that these members enjoyed themselves greatly at the masked ball during the Carnival, because none of them were _recognized_.