He appears to be recording the first brush between the forces of the Parlement and of the Crown, and the opening of the hot battle which ended, exactly three years later (August 28, 1720), at Pontoise.[84] The young councillor was soon to be even more deeply interested in the progress of events. Five months afterwards (January 28, 1718) his father became Warden of the Seals, and President of the Council of Finance; and it was soon plain, from the threatening attitude of the Parlement, that their redoubtable enemy had not entered the ministry one moment too soon. For the present, indeed, the Government was content to hold its hand; for Dubois, the demon of the play, had not yet returned from London, where he was sedulously wooing the Hanoverian interest.[85] As for d'Argenson, his heart wavered 'twixt love for his father and loyalty to his brethren of the long robe. He had recourse to argument—for the Marquis was by this time impressed with his son's substantial worth.[86] "A tout ce que je lui exposai" the black-bearded minister had but one reply: "My good fellow! that Parlement of yours, has it any troops? For our part, we have 150,000 men! That's what it all comes to." "Et voilà parler en grand homme!" exclaims his son,[87]with an admiration which is the more natural for its inconsistency. But the "grand homme" was preparing to act. On August 16th Dubois arrived in Paris bearing a treaty of alliance with England; and the great coup d'état which crushed the pretensions of the Parlement and silenced the opposition to Law, followed upon the 26th.[88]

In December d'Argenson married,[89] and cast about for the means to feather his nest. Retiring discomfited from the Palais de Justice, he took refuge, like many an irate but thrifty parliamentarian, in the Rue Quincampoix. In November, 1719, when the tide of elation was in full flood and trembling on the ebb, we hear that d'Argenson "is in for (y est pour) 500,000 livres."[90] Three weeks afterwards, by decree of the 1st of December, the Bank and the Treasury refuse to receive cash. Before the end of the year the shares are falling.[91] On the 3rd of January M. d'Argenson withdraws from the control of the finances; on the 5th, Law takes the helm as Controller-General, and proceeds with the series of desperate decrees designed to save the credit of the Bank.[92] Upon one of the commissions which followed in quick succession d'Argenson was appointed[93] to serve as Master of Requests.[94] He could do so with a light heart. Warned in time, he had managed to extricate himself; and in a letter of the 22nd of February, 1720, we read: "Talking of shares, no one is coming off more prettily than M. d'Argenson l'aîné; he has just completed the purchase of an estate on the Réveillon road; it is his principal acquisition."[95]

Meanwhile he had obtained a provision of another kind. The Warden of the Seals, on withdrawing in January from the control of the finances, had managed, with his usual dexterity, to cover his retreat. Directly afterwards, to the no small scandal of St. Simon,[96] the young Chevalier was entrusted with the Lieutenancy of Police, while the elder brother, Count d'Argenson, received a seat at the Council of State, with an immediate promise of the Intendancy of Maubeuge. Thus it was that about the middle of March,[97] 1720, d'Argenson set out for his seat of government at Valenciennes, leaving Paris to face the appalling ruin created by the crash of the great "System." Though removed from the centre of the drama, a place was reserved for him in the final act. On the 21st of May appeared the suicidal decree which shattered what vestige of credit remained. It was inspired by d'Argenson's father,[98] and cost him the seals. He fell in the beginning of June. In July Law's carriage was wrecked under the very windows of the Regent in the court of the Palais Royal. In December the great adventurer took to flight; and Count d'Argenson had the supreme satisfaction of arresting him at Valenciennes, and, by an order from Paris, detaining his jewel case, the last resource of the broken man.[99] Personally the young Intendant has not much reason to complain. The "System" had left him with the valuable property of Réveillon; he was already a Councillor of State; and at the age of twenty-six he was comfortably established at Valenciennes as the chief magistrate of the important frontier province of Hainaut.

"I am sure I shall entreat you so much that you will come here; my house is not at all bad; it is scarcely in order, but you will find it even better than they usually are. An opera is coming to Valenciennes; we have very pretty lansquenet, ombre, picquet—you get plenty of that in the country[100]—quadrille and even brélan; a carriage; this summer your choice of drives, if you wish to see a country quite new to you, the towns in the environs. In a word, what shall I tell you? You will see people who love you very much, though I am speaking of one who does not know you yet, but for whom I bespeak your friendship."

In this letter, a few weeks after his arrival, when the house-warming is complete, d'Argenson commends himself, his establishment and his young wife, to his trusted and right loyal friend, Madame de Balleroy. We may glance for an instant at this remarkable lady. At the age of nineteen, by a marriage with a country nobleman, she was widowed of the bright buoyancy of life at Paris; and amid the flat fields and uneventful hedgerows of Normandy[101], her heart yearned for the patter of the distant pavement. Her forlorn beauty, her wasted wit, drew round her a little army of friends, held faithful by the affectionate discipline of pity; and in the goodly company of correspondents who reflect for her the gaieties of the Regency,[102] not the least honourable place is held by her nephew d'Argenson.

Certain features which his letters disclose must be brought for a moment into relief. In the first place, he shows himself a devoted friend and a dutiful correspondent; in the latter regard he is a shining example to his brilliant young brother.[103]

Moreover, we occasionally come across a story, which, if we forget the manners of the time, it seems as strange that a gentleman should have been able to write as that a lady should been willing to read. Yet it is comforting to find, in reading such passages, that if there is an utter absence of delicacy or reserve, there is an equal freedom from mere smirking prurience; the man's breath is tainted by the fashion of the time, but at least his heart is whole.

Sometimes again d'Argenson's feeling for the ideal, which explains so many of amiable vagaries, is seen taking wing and soaring away to the sound of his own laughter.

"I mean my bust (February 18, 1718[104]) to be in the library of Balleroy, with that of Pico de la Mirandola, and some great personage or other who, after all, could do no more than read. The proposal, perhaps, is not very reasonable as yet;[105] of the two, I am more like the latter."

In one letter we get a glimpse of d'Argenson's most cherished interior, and so of the man who loved it.

"I assure you, Rouillon (Réveillon) is becoming a fine house. In a gallery on the wing will be my library, with a little reading-room at one end, plenty of desks, sofas, cushions, upholstery in morocco—all the novelties of Holland; and from the windows a vista of avenues, kitchen gardens, woods, meadows, sheep. Won't you be charmed with it when you are at Paris this summer?" (August 8, 1722).[106]

His occasional reference to "le cadet" is interesting, in the light of their subsequent relations. With a touch of good-natured envy he remarks, "My brother is surpassing himself as Chief of Police. He is a perfect courtier; in that regard he has nothing to learn" (August 8, 1722).[107]Perhaps indeed the most precious thing about these letters is the light they throw upon the real character of the younger brother, and on d'Argenson's subsequent portrait of him. A comparison of the young "Chevalier" who writes over his own signature, with the eternal "Mon Frère" of d'Argenson's Journal, enables us to estimate the personal equation in d'Argenson's political criticism. It tends to suggest that the impression of high colouring, exaggeration, unfairness, which is left by the perusal of many of his more trenchant pages, is due, not to the intrinsic falsity of his judgments, but to the violence and heat with which they are pronounced. We see that to many of his indictments the question, "Well! what of it? how could he help it?" would have been at least a valid reply; and we suspect that had d'Argenson judged his own contemporaries with that same deep-sounding charity which, after a century and a half, one can claim no credit for applying to himself, we should have been spared much of that bitterness which he expends so lavishly upon the men of his time, and above all upon his brother, Count d'Argenson. So far as one can see, the truth was this. Marc Pierre was his mother's son, the blood of the Caumartins in every vein.[108] In him the rough-hewn strength of the d'Argenson character was fashioned to a form of lightness and grace; and losing in massiveness, it gained in charm. He had his father's strength without his seriousness; his power of work without his love of it. He impressed his contemporaries[109] by his singular union of facile effectiveness with absolute unconcern. Such a passage as this, which appears in a letter of 1715,[110] needed no signature for identification.

"At last, my dear aunt, the taxes are achieving what all the preachers in the world have never dared to undertake. Luxury is no more. The balls of the Opera and Comedy are as deserted as the ante-chamber of M. Desmarets or M. de Pontchartrain.[111] The churches are rather more patronised than they were; there, for example, you see men of business who have not yet been taxed, praying, at the foot of the altar, for a lot more pleasant than has fallen to their companions; you see poor Molinists beside themselves at the triumph of their adversaries, and sighing for the re-establishment of Jesuit influence. There you see many a young girl in tears, sorrowing for the purse of the financier who used to keep her in such gay profusion, and crying out upon the harshness of the powers that be at present, who work to construct their own fortunes before taking thought for that of their mistresses. Even me you see there now and again, vastly puzzled as to where I shall dine or sup, and turned pious for want of something better to do."

After reading such a passage as this, a new light breaks upon one of the first notices of Count d'Argenson that appear in the Journal, and upon a thousand more that follow at intervals for nearly thirty years.

"It is certainly true that my brother has not the secret of attaching to himself the men whom he serves. His lack of interest is the principal cause; it lays him open to the charge of insincerity in friendship."[112]

It is here, in this "distraction," implicit in every line of that youthful letter, that we touch the real foundation for those continual charges of cold cleverness, absence of principle, paltriness of aim, pettiness of means, with which Count d'Argenson is pursued. It was this that divided the brothers with a severance of interest that nothing could bridge. At the outset of life their roads diverged. The one led to greatness through labyrinths of littleness; the other was the way of honest, impotent, disdainful obscurity. The simple truth was that the younger brother, keen, accomplished, utterly careless, was free to choose the pleasanter of the two; for the elder, it was barred from the beginning. His estrangement from the world had wholly unfitted him for the arts of complaisance and intrigue; and there was something within him which protested that they were as far beneath him as they were beyond his reach. D'Argenson went his own way; he found that it led nowhither. He was to learn that without those arts which he coveted and despised, devotion, disinterestedness, were no passport to power; yet, it is good to reflect, he would never consent to lose his devotion in the ignobler interests of a private life. When the last word is said, it may be found that of the two brothers it was he who had chosen the better part; and that if, in spite of him, knowledge and justice require us to count small blame to the one, we may ascribe with equal heartiness all honour to the other.

This in anticipation; for d'Argenson is still at Valenciennes, without a thought that the unlikeness of character revealed in these letters to Madame de Balleroy will ever lead to open estrangement.

It was about the middle of March, 1720, that d'Argenson took over his province. He left behind him at Paris at least one person who would watch his career with lively interest. In 1718, in the salon of Madame de Lambert, he had been introduced to a man, whose recent expulsion from the French Academy for some shrewd criticisms of the late reign had given him credit among the younger spirits—the Abbé de St. Pierre.[113] We can easily imagine how d'Argenson must have been attracted to a man, who had his own breadth and generosity of mind, and who was crippled like himself by the lack of those social arts which would have secured for his opinions a perilous respect. The regard appears to have been mutual; and when d'Argenson made his first venture in public life, it was under the auspices of the utopian abbé. A letter which survives, addressed by him to the Intendant of Valenciennes,[114] is alone sufficient to suggest the influence which inspired d'Argenson with his political philosophy.

St. Pierre encourages him to attempt a reform in the distribution of the taille; and incidentally he remarks:

"Those states are the best governed where justice between individuals is most exactly observed; there the people are more prosperous than elsewhere. It were to be desired that there were never favours to hope for from a minister, but only justice for which to apply to him; for it is seldom that favour to one is not injustice to another."

He concludes his letter with the words:

"I have a great desire to be able to watch your new government, and I expect your success will soon persuade plenty of people besides myself that you are worthy of high office."

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 cœur, 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.