the French King with some one of Castillian nobility, and it is not the character of the Spaniard to take kindly to the shattering of hopes because of a blacksmith's daughter. The conditions had reached such a stage that they involved the territory of the new world. Spaniards had been endeavoring to get a foothold in the valleys of the Arkansas and the Platte, and it was under the direction of the French ministry that Mallet brothers traversed the wilderness in 1739.

It may be noted that during the latter part of Lady Pompadour's sway over King Louis, that the French people were seized with a spasm of interest in literature. This was indeed one of the great epochs of France, and was likely brought about by the skeptic, Voltaire, who jarred upon the super-sensitive religious inclinations of the time, and so suited the French temperament of that period, that it provoked their sluggish intellects, drugged with long

years of excesses and vices, into some sort of natural action. In passing it may be well to add that after the death of Pompadour, when Madame Du Barry became the favorite of the degenerate king, the French government practically collapsed.

Mallet brothers, carrying the French flag into the wilderness, was the wise work of . Cardinal Fleury, and it was the same force that prompted the expedition of Verendrye into northern Wyoming in 1740.

Whatever feeble collateral history there is available at this time, was probably inspired by Lady Pompadour. And from Duiderot, one of the famous scriveners of the time, and from De Margry, are the only references to the journey, that I have been able to find. I would give much for the manuscript of Tommy Chaunavierre, but he is passed; and the family long scattered to other lands.