Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
S.A. Bent, comp. Familiar Short Sayings of Great Men. 1887.
Duc d’Orléans
[Regent of France during the minority of Louis XV.; born at St. Cloud, 1674; served in the army of Italy and Spain; regent from 1715–1723, a period of general profligacy, of which he gave the example; died December, 1723.]
Tell your master that France has always been the asylum of unhappy princes.
To an ambassador who remonstrated with him, when regent, for harboring the exiled king of Poland, father of the future wife of Louis XV.When the prime minister Dubois, the infamous preceptor of the regent, was dying, the latter wrote to one of his companions, whom the cardinal had banished, inviting him to return; using the simple formula, “Dead dogs do not bite.”On the marriage of two poor persons, he said, “Hunger has wed Thirst” (La faim a epousé le soif).He insisted, when regent, on the power of pardon being intrusted to him, saying, “I have no objection to having my hands tied from doing harm, but I will have them free to do good.” The last words of Charles V. of France, called “the Wise” (1337–1380), were, “I find that kings are happy but in this, that they have the power of doing good.”
