Publisher's Synopsis
This may sound somewhat sly, but French children, before Rousseau had made them thefashion, were kept in the background, and were reduced to picking up intelligence as bestthey could without any sense of its being dishonourable to do so; and, indeed, it was moreneglect than desire of concealment that left their uninformed.This was in 1719, four years after the accession of Louis XV., a puny infant, to the Frenchthrone, and in the midst of the Regency of the Duke of Orleans. The scene was a broad walkin the Tuileries gardens, beneath a closely-clipped wall of greenery, along which weredisposed alternately busts upon pedestals, and stone vases of flowers, while beyond layformal beds of flowers, the gravel walks between radiating from a fountain, at presentquiescent, for it was only ten o'clock in the forenoon, and the gardens were chieflyfrequented at that hour by children and their attendants, who, like Estelle and Ulysse deBourke, were taking an early walk on their way home from mass.
