Chapter II: Part 2

That d'Argenson, from the point of view of the Government at least, was successful, there is little reason to doubt. The chief features of his administration may be lightly reviewed. In addition to his work of routine as superintendent "de justice, police, et finance," he kept an intelligent watch for the appearance of abuses, and also for possibilities of reform. His province, on the frontier of Flanders, involved him in duties of a "military even more than of a judicial or financial character."[115] The condition of the troops engaged his attention; he early discovered that "the army contractors are great rascals," and that the men were being defrauded of a part of their rations; he introduced a reform which was afterwards adopted throughout the French army, and for which he is careful to claim the credit.[116] In another direction he showed the liberal tendencies which afterwards distinguished him. In time of abundance, he permitted the exportation of corn, and derived a useful revenue from the sale of the license.[117] In the same connection too, he succeeded with much address in averting one of the periodical bread panics which were caused by the restrictions on the interchange of corn.[118] With a pitiful regard for the soldiers and the common people, he had a formidable hatred of knaves in authority. Having disposed of the "fraudulent contractors," he turned his attention to "quelques coquins de bourgeois," who availed themselves of the custom of extending the term of municipal tenure upon great occasions, to enjoy their offices at the expense of their fellow citizens. He took the opportunity of the consecration of Louis XV. at Rheims--at which, by the way, d'Argenson himself was present[119]--to post a proclamation "at all the cross-roads of my towns," requiring the elections to proceed as usual.[120] In short, he went to work in such a way as to open the eyes of his oldest friends to the real ability concealed behind his unpromising exterior.[121] But with all his success, he had good reason to be dissatisfied with his position. He had escaped with great luck at the beginning of the Mississippi crash,[122] but before it was over he was badly hit. His father-in-law, M. Méliand, Intendant of Lille, "had been kind enough" to remit his wife's dowry in Bank notes at a time when the notes were only useful as waste paper.[123] There were other disappointments in store for him. In May, 1721, his father died. The old man, regarding the Chevalier, now to be the Count, as the real hope of his family, had bequeathed to him the whole of his personal property, leaving the Marquis d'Argenson burdened with the family estates.[124] Moreover, M. Méliand showed no disposition to retire in his favour from the rich Intendancy at Lille, for which d'Argenson had naturally hoped;[125] and meanwhile, his own establishment at Valenciennes was involving him in expenses which he was ill prepared to meet. In the midst of these embarrassments an event occurred which seemed to open a prospect of escape. To explain it, a slight retrospect will be necessary.

Shortly after his marriage, and about a year before leaving Paris, he had formed an intimacy with a Madame de G----,[126] whom we recognise from his description of her as "sincere, affectionate, faithful, reasonable, and generous," as a type of those virtues which d'Argenson especially loved, and of which he was inclined to suspect the absence in women generally, and in his own wife in particular. Madame de G---- had a cousin, the wife of the Ambassador to Sardinia. In the winter of 1719, this lady returned from Turin, without visible means of subsistence. But there was always a royal road to affluence open to bankrupt ladies-of-fortune, and with no unnecessary delay Madame de Prie was "administered"[127] to that libidinous dyspeptic, the Duc de Bourbon. Shortly afterwards, "we"--that is, M. le Duc, Mesdames de Prie et de G----, and young d'Argenson were "en partie carrée"; at last the dream of his youthful years was realised, and d'Argenson was able to make a fine figure as an intimate of "the first prince of the blood."[128] The "Partie" was broken up by d'Argenson's departure for Valenciennes, and it lingered in his mind merely as a pleasant memory. He was soon to recall it with more lively concern. At the end of November, 1723, business called him to Paris. On the day of his return, he had an interview with the Regent, and remarked how ill he looked.[129] On the following evening, at Valenciennes, he was standing by the chimney corner talking to a friend when a courier was announced. It was the 3rd of December: d'Orléans was dead. We can well imagine with what feelings d'Argenson must have heard that his illustrious patron of the "Partie carrée" had become the ruler of France, and that a lady who had already offered him "les dernières faveurs,"[130] had succeeded to the footstool of Madame de Parabère. Evidently it was not at Valenciennes that the golden eggs were going to be laid. Moreover, his brother was for the second time chief of the Parisian police;[131] he had lately been appointed Chancellor of the Orléans household; in a word, he could be of infinite service. If any doubts remained as to the wisdom of his course, they were dispelled by a letter[132] from his uncle, the Marquis de Balleroy, advising him to use no delay in taking his place at the Council of State. His mind was made up; and on the 28th of December, 1723, he wrote to M. le Duc, resigning the Intendancy of Hainaut.

Eight days afterwards (January 4, 1724), he writes to Madame de Balleroy:

"I have said goodbye to the provincial dignity. Thank heaven! Thank heaven!"

But d'Argenson had not more reason to thank heaven than usual. He soon discovered that, with all his masterly calculation, it was the worst thing he could have done. His brother had not found favour in the eyes of Madame de Prie;[133] and as chancellor of the House of Orléans, he was not acceptable to M. le Duc.[134] The latter, so far from welcoming d'Argenson to the Council of State, was simply incensed at his untimely resignation;[135] it may even have been this that decided him to dismiss Count d'Argenson from the Lieutenancy of Police immediately afterwards. In fact, we have here a first glimpse of one side of d'Argenson's nature, which we shall meet continually in more august, if not to him more important, affairs. He was endowed with a conceptive faculty of the first order; it is the breadth, the intimate grasp of his conceptions, with the complex character behind them, that constitute his enduring claim to remembrance. But he had the attendant weakness of the man of many devices, an eager, unquestioning faith in the efficacy of his own plans; and upon that rock his fortunes were continually splitting. His power of combination and his belief in his own strategy were constantly leading him into precipitate action, and involving him in difficulties against which a man of more sluggish imagination and narrower mind would never have had even to guard. It was not that his strategy was weak; it was generally powerful, and often profound; but the moment it left his study, it became stiff, useless, and often ridiculous, for want of those small political and social arts which his brother possessed to perfection. We can easily imagine the course which that brother would have taken had he been in d'Argenson's place. He would have addressed to M. le Duc a delightful letter of congratulation, reminding him playfully of the old days of the "Part Carrée," and closing with protestations of renewed zeal for his service. He would then have spent the next six months in finding or contriving, honestly or otherwise, a pretext for at once returning to Paris and gratifying his powerful patron. Unhappily such a course was too slow and small and politic for d'Argenson's temperament; his resignation was disastrous; and as chance would have it, it was nearly twenty years before the brothers recovered the ground they now lost. Certainly, in d'Argenson's case at least, it was not for want of effort. After a few months at the Council, he discovered that there were "too few opportunities of serving the public in this business of judge, where one has scarcely a vote for the thirtieth part of a decree."[136] The Intendancy of Paris became vacant; he tried to obtain it; but Madame de Prie was inexorable, and the appointment was refused.

"As for me, I was good for nothing. I was merely an old friend, who had been good enough to be unwilling to take advantage of her kindness."[137]

We shall meet again with this amiable weakness for explaining his failures by reasons which are less correct than they are complimentary to himself. Even yet he did not give up hope. His marriage with Mademoiselle Méliand had given him a right to expect the reversion of the Intendancy of Lille.[138] He now tried to arrange for its transference to him; but M. Méliand drove a hard bargain and the negotiation fell through.

We now reach one of the turning-points in d'Argenson's life. Never was a man more commendably eager to distinguish himself, to play his part in the world, and to preserve an honourable name in honour by contributing his share towards the "Bien Public." He now saw himself, chiefly through his own lack of patient adroitness, banished to the obscurity of private life. He found misfortune a stern mistress, but her lessons were as worth learning as they were hard to learn. It was indeed at this time of disappointment that his mind became imbued with what is rarest and greatest in his political thought. While his brother, in the Orléans household, strove, by all the arts of which he was a master, to win his way back to power, d'Argenson withdrew entirely from the scene. He called to mind the words of his father, that "a lofty and ambitious man will have all or nothing;" and, in M. Aubertin's phrase, he became content with nothing that he might have all. For some years we hear nothing of him; it is only in 1731 that he again appears upon the scene under the protection of the minister Chauvelin.

His life in the interval must be reserved for another chapter. In the present, but one word remains to be said; it is perhaps the most important of all.

We are already in a position to appreciate d'Argenson as of a peculiarly complex nature; and its complexity is the more puzzling from the fact that the sterling ore of character is combined with traits, not of wickedness, but of weakness. He possesses in abundance those qualities which men love and admire; and yet we scarcely become intimately acquainted with him upon any single occasion without being tempted to laughter. The reason is only too clear. His real loftiness of spirit is yoked with a kind of halting timidity, with which the unhappy experience of his earlier years had afflicted him; and for such a man, to be sublime was too often to appear ridiculous. Occasionally amusement deepens to an even less pleasant feeling; for he held, and he had a right to hold, strong opinions upon men and things; and he sometimes records them in terms so unmeasured as to awaken sympathy with his unheard opponents and to arouse suspicion as regards himself. Moreover, he is himself so simply ingenuous as not to understand the necessity of discreet suppression; and he pursues, with painful circumstance, those moods of irritation, disappointment, disillusion, those momentary vices of temper, which all men perhaps are small enough to feel, but few are great enough to be able to record. Such failings might be taken for what they are worth--which is very little--were it not that, magnified out of all proportion by some of d'Argenson's most influential critics, they have been made the basis for conceptions of his character which are too ungenerous to be critically just. Faults they are, undoubtedly; but in reading, day after day, the revelations of his Journal, one feels that in this man, with all his failings, there is something verily great; and that morally, he towers above the ready cox-combs who laughed at him while he lived, or who have sneered at his memory when it alone remained.

It is, then, with keen curiosity that one seeks for something which will explain this persistent faith in d'Argenson, nor is the quest in vain. Here and there among the pages of his Journal, buried amid much that is ephemeral and often worthless, one comes across passages which are perfect gems of feeling and expression. They show us d'Argenson at his best, and enable us to divine what is best in him. Among the first hundred pages there are at least three such episodes standing out in fine relief. One is the tale of the parrot that troubled the repose of the Intendant of Hainaut.[139] Another, even more charming and suggestive, is the story of Kakouin, the pet boar which was given him by St. Contest, his friend of the Entresol, and which came to such an untimely end.[140] Read in the light of many that follow, these pages reveal such a perfect beauty of heart, such a faultlessness of emotional touch, as is as rare as it is lovely; they spring, pure and clear, from the depths of the man's soul, wholly undarkened by that turgidity of feeling to which the enthusiasm of humanity afterwards gave birth.

It was not alone to the pets of his own household that d'Argenson's heart was given. There was room in it left for the "brutes" of La Bruyère, "whose faces, when they rose upon their feet, were as the faces of men." One day, in the year 1725, he travelled four leagues to the village of Sezanne, through which the young Queen, Maria Leczinska, was to pass on her entry into France. His account of what he saw there forms the third of those pictures of this date which enable us to penetrate to the heart of the man, and to follow him afterwards with an unfailing respect. In the course of the narrative he says:

"The harvest and the crops of all sorts were in danger of perishing; they could not be gathered for the continual rains; the poor labourer was looking out for a moment of dry weather in order to get them in. Yet for all that this whole district was beaten with several scourges. The peasants had been carried off to put the roads by which the Queen was to pass into fit condition; and they were only the worse, so much so that Her Majesty often thought she would drown; they had to drag her from her carriage by main force as they could. In several places she and her suite were swimming in the water, which lay over the whole country, and that in spite of the infinite pains expended by a tyrannical ministry."[141]

And further on he says:

"In the evening, after supper, I went for a stroll round the market-place of Sezanne. For a moment the rain had ceased. I spoke to some poor peasants, who had their horses with them, attached to the tail of a cart, and standing in the night without provender. Some of them told me that their horses had had nothing to eat for three days.

They were harnessing ten in the place of four; judge how much of them remained!"[142]

One can scarcely pretend, by fragments of translation, to convey even a shade of the impression produced by these whole passages, and by many that deserve to stand beside them. After reading them, and allowing them to leaven and lighten one's whole conception of d'Argenson's character, it is with keen pleasure we meet with a luminous remark in the pages of one of his most accomplished critics:

"C'est par le coeur, en effet, que son esprit est grand," says M. Aubertin;[143] and it is the happiest word that has been devoted to d'Argenson.

We have but to accept it, and we are enabled to remit to their due place those small distempers, those accidents of the inauspicious moment, which have often hardened the regard of criticism; we see how very little they appear by the side of what was greatest and best in d'Argenson. Qualities are virtuous in proportion as they are necessary; and events have thrown a suggestive light upon the relative value of the various virtues in the France of the Eighteenth Century. We see that there was something more real and rare than those elegant adornments, those small dexterities, which were then so dearly prized: that they afford but thin subsistence for a society bereft of honesty, devotion, depth of vision, and soundness of heart. Those qualities d'Argenson possessed, and the children of this world laughed at him. Their generation does not last for ever; and we, who are on the hither side of 1793, may be excused for thinking that, with all the failings that whetted their wit, there were very few among them who could be mentioned in a breath with the man they honoured by their laughter.

D'Argenson could feel, but he was no sentimentalist. The years which he now passed in obscurity were among the happiest and most fruitful of his life.

III.

1724-1744.

The Entresol--Political struggles--Relations with Cardinal Fleury--D'Argenson and Voltaire.

Among the influences which connected d'Argenson with the tradition of the late reign were his relations with that curious and not very admirable person,[144] the Abbé de Choisy. It would appear that during the closing years of his life the harlequin abbé was on terms of some intimacy with his young relative;[145] and shortly before his death in 1724, he placed in d'Argenson's hands a collection of manuscripts,[146] from which the published remains of de Choisy are principally derived.[147] Among them was a record which d'Argenson might recall with a certain melancholy interest.[148] It seems that in 1692, de Choisy's rooms at the Luxembourg became the headquarters of a little company of thirteen men, among whom were Fontenelle and Perrault, and others distinguished in literature and society.[149] They met for discussions upon politics, theology, and moral science, and in fact all those questions of more pressing and immediate concern which the constitution of the three existing Academies ignored. It may well be imagined that such an organisation could scarcely commend itself to the favour of the Monarch who, a few years afterwards, was to break the heart of Vauban; and before a year had passed, the Academy of the Luxembourg came to an untimely end. The collapse was natural enough, for these were the palmy days of the older _régime_; its vices were still to be revealed, and as yet the discussion of political subjects by unauthorised persons might well have seemed an impertinence. Thirty years after, the matter had assumed a different aspect. Disasters abroad and miseries at home, which had stirred the patriotism of Vauban, the ferment created by the advent of the Regency, the widespread concern for questions of administration aroused by the rise and fall of the great "System," and, lastly, the object lesson in political fatuity afforded by the ministry of the Duc de Bourbon, all contributed to raise matters of government to a place of primary interest; and it is not surprising that about a year after the publication of the "Lettres Persanes," a serious and successful attempt should have been made to organise and define political thought. In 1722 the Abbé Alary invited a number of gentlemen connected with the administrative and diplomatic services to meet in his rooms in an entresol in the Place Vendôme, which became for about eight years the home of the memorable "Club de l'Entresol." The idea of this, the first of French political societies, was probably suggested by Bolingbroke, an intimate friend of Alary, who may have hoped to find, in a little cabinet of embryo statesmen, some mild consolation for his banishment from Whitehall. Certain it is that the English politician did much to give it a successful start; and a year afterwards (July, 1723) we find him writing to the perpetual president, Alary:[150]

"You will give my kind regards to our little Academy. If I were not sure of seeing them again next month, I should be quite miserable. They have confirmed my taste for philosophy; they have revived my old love for literature; how grateful I am to them!"

In 1725, upwards of a year after his return from Valenciennes, d'Argenson became a member of the Entresol;[151] and some time afterwards he had the honour of introducing a man whose whole life was devoted to insisting upon the paramount importance of political concerns--his friend and master, the Abbé de St. Pierre.[152]

It is a curious fact that the man who received the record of the ill-starred society of the Luxembourg should have become the historian of its successor; for it is from d'Argenson that our knowledge of the Entresol is mainly derived. Several years after its suppression, he sat down to record his reminiscences of "a little organisation, whose history, at present unknown to many people, will soon be forgotten by all the world."[153] Events are grouped very differently by the redressing hand of time, and, apart from the interest attaching to it in connection with the life of d'Argenson, the Entresol is in no danger of being forgotten.

Its meetings[154] were held on Saturday evenings, and lasted from five o'clock till eight. The time was spent in the recital of political news, conversation on passing events, the reading of papers, and open discussion. The procedure, though carefully ordered, was sufficiently elastic, and on extraordinary occasions--as when His Excellency Horace Walpole appeared to advocate the maintenance of the understanding with England[155]--might be entirely suspended. Not the least useful member of the Entresol was d'Argenson himself; he joined in its labours with his usual industry and zeal. He made it his business to extract the political intelligence from the leading newspapers--those of Holland[156]--at the same time maintaining a correspondence with Florence[157] and Brussels. In addition to this, he undertook the department of canon law, with which his position on the ecclesiastical committee of the Council of State peculiarly fitted him to deal.[158] In connection with this subject, he read to the society a series of papers in which he argued strongly for the independence and the pre-eminence of the civil power. His conclusions might have been less absolute had he known that they were one day to rise up in judgment against him in the shape of two formidable quarto volumes.[159] In the general debates he took an active part, and his discussions with St. Pierre upon the innumerable projects which the latter presented to the society were recalled by him with lively pleasure.

Though devoted to political research, "the good Entresolists" were careful to exclude even the suggestion of pedantry. They formed a sort of "club" on the English model. "We had all sorts of pleasant things, comfortable seats, a good fire in winter, and in summer windows opened upon a pretty garden. There was no dinner or supper, but tea was to be had in winter, and in summer lemonade and cooling drinks. The gazettes of France, Holland, and even the English papers, were always to be found there." In a word, it was "un café d'honnêtes gens."[160] On the summer evenings, when the meeting was over, they used to go for a stroll round the terrace of the Tuileries, discussing the questions that had arisen in the debate. In the winter they "went straight home, and always with a fresh regard for the Entresol."[161]

It may well be imagined that a society of this kind must have inspired a very warm feeling among those who were privileged to take part in it; and d'Argenson is affectionately anxious to make it clear that its ultimate dissolution was in no way due to failure of interest. We might well believe it from the letters of one of its most distinguished members, the hero of Dantzig, Count de Plélo, whose appointment to Copenhagen in 1728 was largely due to the prestige he acquired as a member of the Entresol.[162] From the cold solitudes of the Baltic he writes to the President: "O! this accursed climate! Am I never again to breathe the air of the Entresol?"[163] and again, "A person accustomed to read the Gazette at the Entresol finds it very dry reading all alone at Copenhagen."[164] And then, when the crisis came and the society was no more, he writes:

"I can imagine how keenly you feel the unhappy fate which has befallen the Entresol. Would you ever have believed that anything so innocent could fall under suspicion? Surely something out of the common must have happened since my departure, or else the great ones of the earth have very little to do."[165]

The attitude of the "great ones" is not without interest. Even Cardinal Fleury had been compelled to breathe the air of the Regency; and upon succeeding to the authority of the Duc de Bourbon, he was inclined to look graciously upon the nascent society.[166] Nor was his protection hastily withdrawn, for in the winter of 1730 he appointed its president Curator of the King's Library, and thither the meetings of the Entresol were transferred.[167] In the following summer it received a further earnest of ministerial approval in the preferment of Alary to the tutorship of the Children of France.[168] In the elation produced by these marks of favour the members threw off their accustomed reserve, and the proceedings of the Entresol acquired a notoriety which was little to the mind of its more cautious spirits.

"I tired myself to death in recommending moderation and discretion, even in regard to the name of the Entresol; for I kept saying to them: 'You will see that one fine morning the Government will ask us what we are about.'"[169]

But d'Argenson's efforts were powerless to withstand the vain temerity of some of the members; the fatal day arrived at last; and at one of the meetings in the autumn of 1731, Alary appeared with the announcement that he had a poniard in his heart, and that the days of the Entresol were numbered.[170] There was no gainsaying the will of the Cardinal, and the dissolution was effected in decent silence. But it was not accepted without an effort. A little conspiracy was formed among the more earnest members, with d'Argenson for one of the ringleaders; the day of meeting was changed to Wednesday; the black sheep were excluded; and it was hoped that by absolute silence and a careful avoidance of ministers, they would be able to hold on until the storm had blown over. Yet scarcely three meetings had been held when d'Argenson fell into the hands of Chauvelin, who extracted from him a promise that no further effort would be made to revive the beloved society.[171] There was no more to be said.

D'Argenson's personal disappointment was keen enough, nor was he slow to appreciate the public loss. He writes reproachfully: "It is surprising that so many sciences are cultivated in Europe, whilst there is not a single school of public law. Why should not theoretic knowledge be as useful to society in general as to societies in particular? You aspire to employment in the public service, and you cannot qualify yourself by preliminary practice; for this is the fashion which has been introduced into France in our day: people say, 'When I am appointed ambassador, when I am raised to the Ministry, I will learn the duties of my post.'"[172]

It was not upon d'Argenson that the loss fell; his political apprenticeship was already complete. On those Saturday evenings in the Place Vendôme, he had learnt to think clearly and boldly upon public questions; and the doors of the Entresol were scarcely closed when he resolved to turn his acquirements to account.

He was now in his thirty-seventh year. His affairs, which had often given rise to embarrassment, had been arranged by the recent sale of Réveillon (December, 1730);[173] there appeared to be no further obstacle in the way of a successful career. He was not slow in adopting the only means by which a political aspirant could bring himself under the notice of the governing powers--the presentation of gratuitous advice; and it was at this time that he began that series of memoirs which was continued until after his accession to the ministry, and which would have been such an invaluable treasury of contemporary history and thought.[174] Unhappily they all perished in the burning of the library of the Louvre in 1871,[175] and our only knowledge of them is derived from fragmentary notices published before that date. The series appears to have begun in December, 1731; and it is pleasant to find that here again that amiable influence which had appeared so early in d'Argenson's career was present to lend him a guiding hand. A memoir which d'Argenson proposed to present against the arbitrary distribution of the taille (December, 1731), was scored with annotations by St. Pierre, who advised that it should be cut down, that certain vague views about things in general should be excised, and that the author should confine himself to a single point. "He must not give occasion to say, 'He is a fine talker, he is an eloquent speaker, _qui bat la campagne_.'"[176] St. Pierre was himself too melancholy a proof of the wisdom of his own advice for d'Argenson to reject it lightly; and in May, 1732, we find him writing:

"I was several months without meddling with affairs of state; I did not wish to give myself out for a maker of memoirs."[177]

This wholesome caution was not long sustained, nor indeed was it really necessary. The time was one of keen political excitement. It was in this very summer of 1732 that the great conflict of old French privilege and tradition against the arrogant zeal of the Ultramontane party reached its acutest stage; and it happened that that was the question of all others with which d'Argenson was competent to deal. He had been for some years a member of the ecclesiastical committee of the Council, and at the Entresol, as we have seen, he had been charged with the department of canon law.[178] Upon the questions at issue he entertained ideas at once liberal and politic. He admitted in principle the plea of ecclesiastical authority; but as a politician he deprecated any encouragement of its supporters in their factious proceedings against the Jansenists; the attitude of the Government in regard to heterodoxy should be simply one of passive disapproval. But it was no longer time to think of principles and policies; the matter had now resolved itself into a fierce conflict of privilege between the Crown and the Parlement of Paris. On the 13th of June the Parlement accepted an appeal in the teeth of direct orders from the King. The reception was quashed by a decree of Council, and four magistrates were sent to join Pucelle in exile. The Chambers of Inquests and Requests immediately resigned.[179] D'Argenson's views upon the crisis were strong and clear. They were laid before the Ministry; and the author received a letter from Chauvelin, the Warden of the Seals, to the effect that two hours' conversation with him would be of material service to the Government. He set out at once for Compiègne, halted a moment for breath, scribbled out a "policy complete," and presented it to Chauvelin in a secret interview which lasted from five o'clock in the morning until nine.[180] In the whole of the discussions he appears to have taken a prominent part; he was kept informed, by secret channels, of the deliberations of the Cabinet;[181] and he seems to have been treated throughout as an active and esteemed adviser.

The nature of his advice we are at no loss to determine. Among the documents destroyed at the Louvre was one written by d'Argenson when the struggle was at its height. It is in the form of a letter from an Englishman to a Frenchman.[182] In the course of it he says:

"Wherever the sovereignty may reside, it is necessary that authority should be entire, without partition, and should bow to the judgments of God alone." He proceeds to urge the necessity of doing away with the superior courts, or of placing them absolutely at the disposal of the Crown. In replying to the objection that that would establish "a veritable Turkish government," he reveals the secret of his peculiar attitude with regard to royalty in France. "What of it?" he rejoins. "You live in France under a despotic authority. The die is cast, so to speak. You must either obey it or destroy it entirely." Its only restraint must be that imposed by "opinion, reason, delicacy, public spirit. Is it not the case that for two centuries the progress of authority in France has been that of peace, art, and morality, and is it not increasingly active in suppressing violence, whether public or private?"

How far d'Argenson is to be credited with the policy adopted is a secret which is buried with Chauvelin and Fleury. Had he been the moving spirit in the government, its measures could not have been in stricter conformity with his advice. By a declaration of the 18th of August, appeals were withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the Parlement, and the chambers of Inquests and Bequests were suspended. A "Lit de Justice" followed on the 2nd of September, and upon the 7th the chambers of Inquests and Requests were scattered to the four winds.[183]

This policy, which d'Argenson had perhaps inspired, was not consistently pursued. It was not for the last time that Chauvelin had betrayed the Cardinal into bold and decisive action, nor the last time that Fleury regretted it. His will was absolute, and before three months had elapsed the declaration and the _lettres de cachet_ were withdrawn, and the Parlement returned in triumph.

In dealing with d'Argenson's action as Minister, it has been usual to attribute its strange inconsequence to his own weakness and oscillation of mind. The indictment is a hazardous one to prefer against the son of Marc René d'Argenson; and here it is only necessary to say that in nothing that he ever wrote or did has there appeared to be sufficient ground for it. There seem to have been few men who have formed their ideas with a more quick decision, or have clung to them with a more sane tenacity. His mind cut into the interests which engaged it sharp and clear as a diamond; the very fault of it was that it was incapable of those politic shifts, those timely irresolutions, which have often been the making of smaller men. Indeed, there is even ground for suggesting that if, in judging the events of d'Argenson's ministry, his own real share in them be scrupulously weighed, there may remain no reason to reject the opinion formed of him, in the beginning of their relations, by one of the ablest men of his own day, the Warden of the Seals himself. It is worth remarking that at this very time Chauvelin was so impressed with his intrepidity of mind that he thought of him as a possible premier president of the Vacation Chamber, designed to supersede the Parlement;[184] in other words, as the foremost instrument of the stringent measures contemplated by the Crown and the most conspicuous target of a virulent Opposition.

Nor is this the only reply to an imputation which the mere turning of d'Argenson's pages might almost suffice to dissipate.

Why, it may be asked, was this offer not accepted? D'Argenson himself shall furnish the answer, surely as pathetic as it is fatally true. He shrank at Chauvelin's suggestion, protesting that "at bottom he must be aware of my defects, and that, besides several others, I had that of being what is called shy and timid; I had been badly brought up; my father, when I was young, had given all the preference to my brother;[185] he had only known me during the last two years of his life when I was in the public service." Upon a word of deprecation, he repeated "it had not been the case in the latter time, and when he once knew me, the matter changed completely."[186]

Indeed his new patron could not help regarding him with interest, and at the same time with embarrassment. He never tired of urging him to conquer the weakness which dogged his life. He invited him to his house, "where all France crowded," and asked him to regard it as his own;[187] he exhorted him to lose no opportunity of making himself at home with the world and the Court. He said "that before all things it was necessary to rescue me from the position in which I was, from a sort of obscurity."[188] His counsels were as assiduous as they were disinterested;[189] and they were at last heard with impatience by the man who felt that the power to follow them had passed for ever beyond his reach.

"But," he represented at last, "provided that I am known to you, and to the King and the Cardinal, as I see I am known to his Eminence, and as you have told me I am to his Majesty, what does it matter whether I am known to the rest?"[190]

Indeed he felt such dependence to be his one resource. Some years afterwards he was called to what was, in the circumstances of the moment, the most important post in the French Government, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He brought to the proof a devotion to the King which had been the growth of generations; he placed at his service a ripe wisdom, a capacity for firm, constructive statesmanship, such as few of the ministers of the reign possessed. All he asked was a free hand, and firm and kingly support; for he knew that he could not have maintained himself for an hour amid the clang of policies and the machinations of intrigue. He threw himself proudly and confidently upon the loyalty of the King. He only learnt that the staff on which he leaned was a bruised reed when it went into his hand and pierced it.

It was to no mistiness of mind or constitutional indecision that the vagaries of his ministry were due; but simply to the fact that his voice was drowned by the clamour of the Council, and his position sacrificed by the desertion of the King.

D'Argenson could not fail to attract remark, but he was not strong enough to make himself necessary. Chauvelin had received him with curiosity and unfeigned regard; but after a time he lost the freshness of originality, and his shrinking eccentricity alone remained. The Minister treated him not unkindly. He put him off with promises, and was lavish of countenance and encouragement; and d'Argenson passed a couple of years in continual expectation of preferment, and in constant labour in the directions suggested by his patron. It was at this time that he began those researches upon foreign politics which were afterwards to prove so fruitful; and his Journal is henceforth enriched with discussions of the interests of France abroad, interesting in themselves, and often admirable for breadth and originality of view. They suggest that though d'Argenson may have been a student and a recluse, a pedant he certainly was not. One of them, presented to Chauvelin in 1734 in the form of a memoir, enables us to bring into just focus the relations between d'Argenson and his political mentor. It was criticised with his usual directness and vigour by St. Pierre, who, after pointing out its faults and admonishing the author, exhorts him not to be discouraged. "At your age," he says,[191] "I was very far from thinking so profoundly upon public affairs," and he predicts a brilliant future as the reward of his perseverance. It is in mentioning this same memoir that d'Argenson sums his opinion, repeatedly expressed, of the man who had been so long his friend. "No one knows this admirable citizen, and he does not even know himself. He has given to the public a number of his political works; he has his eyes fixed upon a goal too far removed from us; and so it happens that he repeats himself, is always harping upon the same themes, and is not appreciated. For all that, he is deeply versed in modern history, present and past; he is an able man; and he has given himself up to a branch of philosophy, profound and abandoned by all the world, namely, the true method of political action most conducive to human happiness."[192]

It was no such fate that d'Argenson designed for himself; and with keen anxiety did he watch for an opening which would enable him to reap the fruit of his researches. For a long time he had been secure in the friendship of the minister; but that resource appeared to be failing him; nor was he reassured by his keen-witted brother, who warned him that Chauvelin spent his days in a continual course of duplicity. D'Argenson's apprehensions were soon confirmed. In July, 1734, upon rumours of a congress to arrange the preliminaries of peace, he offered to act as one of the plenipotentiaries.[193] His services were declined. The same fate awaited a request preferred by him shortly afterwards in favour of a relative. "I was mortified, and I see that I was only agreeable and accredited at the Court, in so far as I was useful; c'est un commerce!" he exclaims, flinging down his pen in disgust.[194] He took it up again to write to Chauvelin, informing him that there were some estates for sale in Touraine, of which the minister might be glad to have the refusal. He received in reply a letter[195] which, considering their former friendship, seems cruelly cold. It is barbed with that icy politeness with which one declines an intimacy no longer desired. In November the refusal of some vacant places which he had a right to expect, and which had been directly promised,[196] sufficed to complete his discomfiture; he could see but the wreck of those ambitions which had charged his Journal with energy and fire; and throughout the year 1735, the silence of disillusion is scarcely broken.

Not the least of d'Argenson's embarrassments[197] had come from a quarter where a happier man would have found but help and encouragement. It was in the course of the year 1733 that the relations between d'Argenson and his wife ended, by mutual consent, in a judicial separation.[198] As the conduct of the husband has given rise to animadversions which are often more true than charitable, it may be worth while to dwell upon it for a moment. D'Argenson had been married in the winter of 1718[199] to Mademoiselle Méliand, daughter of the Intendant of Lille. The passive form is used advisedly, for the transaction was arranged between the two families like the transfer of land;[200] and d'Argenson was only introduced to his betrothed a few days before the ceremony took place. The lady who became his wife "would be fifteen next January";[201] and d'Argenson, as we learn from some amusing letters to Madame de Balleroy, was not a little embarrassed by his new _rôle_ of "elderly husband."[202] Notwithstanding, he accepted it with dutiful complaisance; and for some years his attitude towards his young wife was one of affectionate loyalty, not ungraced by a certain kindly amusement. About the time of their return from Valenciennes, the relations between them changed for the worse. Madame d'Argenson was a woman in fact as in name; her character had developed, and she proved to be a person of average brain and strong nerve, the very antithesis of her husband. Circumstances were not wanting to sharpen these radical differences of character, and to provide occasions of offence. Her husband's affairs were in disorder,[203] and his political success was long in coming; while the philosophy which was to him excuse and consolation kindled in his wife but impatient scorn. She took upon herself the cares of the household, regarding herself, and possibly not without reason, as its sole support; while her husband chafed against a solicitude which he looked upon as mere vexatious interference.[204] A conservative in these matters as in so many more, he probably told her that a wife who was worth anything would know her place, and she may have replied that she had indeed good reason to know it only too well. She held ideas upon it which raise one's opinion of her, and which were very unusual in her day. "It is this too," says her husband, "which has led her to affect an air of absolute independence. She has formed a narrow-minded conception of all that concerns the proper submission of a wife, and she is up in arms against everything which detracts from the position of women in the world. She has far too exalted an idea of the dignity of the mistress of a house, and thinks very little of that of the master,"[205] etc. The position at last became unbearable; and Madame d'Argenson resolved to defy that sacred tradition which guarded legal relationship in old French families, and to look forward to "a position of scandal as one would long for Paradise." Her will was inflexible; the separation took place, and one at least of the parties profited by it to return to a better mind. D'Argenson, looking back upon his married life, writes of it as reasonably and contritely as a man can do when he regrets the past and is sorry for his own share in it. In speaking of the separation, he says that "the world has done me the justice to believe that I had not deserved it, that I did everything I could to avoid it, and that I acted in the matter with a good feeling and generosity seldom met with."[206] For the truth of that statement we have the written testimony of Madame d'Argenson's own counsel;[207] and it is surely her husband's only reparation, as it is his best excuse, that for three and twenty years he loyally fulfilled the burdensome obligations which his own past misdoing may have contributed to entail.

By the beginning of 1736, d'Argenson appears to have taken fresh heart; for his Journal is resumed, and with it the interest of the ministry in him. He is spoken of now as a possible Minister of War, again as a Premier President of the Parlement of Paris, and then as the representative of France in Portugal. One report is of curious interest. It mentioned him as the first minister of Stanislas in Lorraine. The "république de Platon," for which d'Argenson was destined by Voltaire, would have been unwontedly near the earth had his friend become "Secretary of State" to the first of the bourgeois kings.[208] Upon this occasion at least, rumour was not without foundation; the intention to appoint him to Lisbon was tacitly acknowledged;[209] and in November, he was roundly taken to task by Chauvelin for having been indiscreet enough to mention it to his brother.[210]

The appointment had not yet been ratified when an event occurred which had a lasting influence upon d'Argenson's life. On the 20th of February, 1737, after a month of ominous rumours, Chauvelin was disgraced.[211] The cause of his fall, ostensibly some obscure intrigue with the King of Sardinia, was really the discovery of an attempt to secure himself at Court independently of the Cardinal.[212] Some remarks which d'Argenson devoted to the incident, reflect in brief the tone of his Journal, and exhibit the writer in his most characteristic mood. After speaking of Chauvelin as "the scape-goat" of the ministry, and attributing his fall to an exaggeration of finesse, he goes on to observe, "With regard to that, there is no denying that his ideas are too great and lofty for the State." ... "I am not very sorry that he is no longer our Minister; for I only care for a bourgeois policy, by which one lives on good terms with one's neighbours and is content to arbitrate between them; and so may have a long time to work consistently for the prosperity of the interior and the happiness of every Frenchman."[213] His satisfaction was not wholly unalloyed. "I cannot help regretting the loss of such a fine opportunity of expelling for ever from Italy the Emperors of Germany. There can be no doubt that it was possible; and we should have had all Europe behind us if, acting with frank good faith, we had strengthened the lesser powers with the spoils of the House of Austria in Italy, without attempting in any way to secure them for the House of Bourbon. We had only to make this resolution understood at Madrid by some one who knew his own mind, and who would say to them once for all, 'Will you have all or nothing?' in order to give to Spain the Two Sicilies, which has been done by arrangement; or, if the worst came to the worst, to form a general league to act against Spain and the Emperor combined. For what better view could there be than that of giving prosperity to Italy, and banishing war for ever from the peninsula."[214] D'Argenson's regret is almost passionate. "I will say more. His Eminence will be ever answerable before God for having lost this opportunity, only obtained at the cost of so much blood. The effort, fruitless though it has been, has perhaps quenched our star."[215]

Together with the seals, Chauvelin had held the portfolio of Foreign Affairs; and with regard to it d'Argenson writes:--

"The Foreign Ministry is still a-begging. I did not ask for it, but it has been done on my behalf. At first my principal care was to avoid the self-reproach of doing anything which should savour of satisfaction at my friend's disgrace. For this I have not only the testimony of my conscience, but also of M. Chauvelin. The poor man writes to tell me he has one consolation in that I am now known for what I am worth.

"I am worth little, but I burn with love for the happiness of my fellow-citizens; and if that were known, I should certainly be desired in office."[216]

About the same time he speaks of Count d'Argenson, who, with very little regard for the happiness of his fellow-citizens, was very much more successful. "Le cadet" had just been appointed Director of the Press,[217] and d'Argenson writes:--

"Here is my brother, who has thrown himself for all he is worth into the party of the Molinists. What a pity it is that a brother of mine should think only of himself, should desire nothing but for himself, should be in everything the centre of his circle! Such a passion excludes public spirit. It leaves no room for that love of the common good, which one should long for after one's simple happiness, and far before one's own aggrandisement; for what folly is grandeur, and the thirst for power!... For the remarkable thing is that my brother cares more for a place which comes to him through an underground channel, through a party and through an intrigue, than by the way, simple and noble though it be, of capacity recognised and employed."[218] Which was all very true, and at all of which that amiable sceptic would have laughed good-naturedly.

If the strait and narrow way was a little arduous, it was none the less resolutely pursued; and in April, 1737, d'Argenson was able to write: "To-day has been a great day for me. The King has appointed me his ambassador in Portugal."[219] The charge, in the circumstances of the moment, might well have been an important one; and it was gratefully undertaken as a step to higher things.

"My whole design, in accepting the post which the King has just conferred upon me, has been to fit myself and to render myself eligible for office in the Ministry."[220] In the elation of the moment, he reviews his chances of succeeding to the Chancellorship, which promised to become vacant by the withdrawal of D'Aguesseau. "Now, at the King's age and in the circumstances of the reign, the man who becomes Chancellor with the cognisance of affairs of state, might well become first minister, by reason of the priority of rank which his office bestows. Et voilà comme on se laisse aller à des pensées ambitieuses!" the philosopher concludes,[221] with that characteristic laugh at his own weaknesses.

D'Argenson's intimacy with the fallen minister had awakened some misgivings in the mind of the Cardinal; and the new ambassador takes occasion to remark: "With regard to all that, my course is very easy; simplicity and straightforwardness will always be my warrant against the suspicion of such connections, with which my name has never been mixed up."[222]