1630-1721.
D'Argenson's Ancestry.
There are occasions when the craft of the critic becomes especially
delightful, and at the same time especially dangerous. Delightful, when
the material in which he works is new and unessayed; dangerous, from
the besetting temptation to be content with accredited methods, and to
neglect that watchful regard to the texture of the clay, which alone
can suggest the conditions of successful treatment. Of such delicate
fabric is a man made, here and there. It is as if for a moment the
common matter had been thrown aside wearily, as if Nature, when she
wrought him, had been toying with an inspiration, sometimes happy,
often unhappy. In dealing with such a man, the critic will proceed very
patiently and tenderly. He will beware of presenting him, morally or
otherwise, in the light of the prevailing prejudice; nor will he erect
his own provincialities of opinion as a final measure of wisdom or
worth. Rather will he let the man go his own way and tell his own tale,
content if he may but follow and hear and understand, without sitting
in the gate to judge him.
That criticism, in the case of the Marquis d'Argenson,[1] has not
always been chastened to this wholesome deference, there will be
occasion to notice at a later date. We may remark at once how necessary
it was. D'Argenson was indeed no ordinary man. The character with which
destiny had endowed him was but poorly adapted to the social medium in
which it was to move; and to the great world where moral commonplace is
law, he was a stranger. He dwelt, as such men do, in a little world of
his own creating, peopled with his own pleasures and his own pains. His
only critic was his conscience: himself was his sternest judge: and he
knew no tribunal but the midnight silence, when the glow was dying on
the hearth. He was an original, in short, and as an original he must be
treated.
When we are puzzled by the character of any among the illustrious dead,
and when other resources fail us, a saunter in the portrait gallery of
the old house is often pregnant with suggestion. Of such a privilege it
will be well to avail ourselves in the present instance. The time will
be very well spent.
In the days when Mazarin was king, France had no more able or trusted
servant than René de Voyer, Count d'Argenson. He was a nobleman of old
Touraine--one of his ancestors had sailed with St. Louis[2]--and now in
these latter days, he worthily fulfilled the promise of his name by a
rich devotion to his country and her master. Mazarin knew his worth. He
commends him to Cardinal Grimaldi as "_huomo versato e prudente_,"[3]
a phrase which is translated in an earlier letter to d'Argenson
himself, where he compliments him on "_la prudence et l'adresse_" with
which he had governed the Catalans.[4] His life was passed amid the
stress and movement of affairs, the scene changing as circumstances
of delicacy and danger called for the intervention of an accomplished
hand. Only once, in 1640, is the sequence of activity broken, to reveal
to us a sidelight of character which is brightly suggestive. Released
for a time from the cares of administration--he had fallen into the
hands of the Spaniards[5]--he employed the leisure so rudely thrust
upon him in translating Thomas à Kempis, and in composing a treatise on
"The Wisdom of a Christian." Years after, now grown old in the King's
service, he laid aside the sword and robe, to don the cassock and die a
servant of the Church.[6]
The portrait is broadly drawn, but already the features are clearly
marked.
We pass on to his son, René II.[7] We are at once arrested. Were it
not for the doublet and hose of the seventeenth century, we should
mistake him for his own grandson. Young René de Voyer was destined,
like his father, for the diplomatic service. His political pilgrimage
had scarce begun when a cloud fell across his path. A rumour got abroad
to the effect that the youthful diplomatist would be also a poet, and
moreover, that he gave more time to religious exercises than was good
for a young man who had the world before him. And so it was that when
d'Argenson left for Venice with the King's commission, there was some
misgiving in exalted circles; prayer and praise might be all very
well, but they were not among the recognised resources of earthly
diplomacy. Be that as it may, d'Argenson succeeded in commending
himself to the citizens of the Republic.[8] At home he was not so
fortunate. As his grandson observes, the embassy was a mistake.[9] In
the first place, the thousand little complaisances, respectable and
other, which were among the first conditions of comfort at court, were
quite beyond him. Practically they filled him with despair, morally
with disgust. Moreover he was cursed with that species of reserve
which often comes of extreme humility, and is almost always attributed
to extreme pride. When things went wrong at headquarters, he took to
railing against the vices of the great; he fell out with Mazarin as
he afterwards did with Colbert; and finally, after a few years of
thankless labour, he was dismissed, and the door of advancement was
closed against him. D'Argenson accepted his fate. He shut himself up
on his country estates, consoling himself with the thought that he
was an injured man.[10] But he was not of the men who can sit down
and nurse their disappointments. Though cruelly broken, he set to
work to repair his fortune and to repair his life. In the provinces
of France, on the slopes of Touraine, there was plenty of work for a
willing hand, as events too clearly proved. In that work d'Argenson
found refuge from his manifold chagrins. The rest of his life--he was
still but thirty-two[11]--was devoted to the development of his estates
and to the welfare of his dependents. "Interested in the improvement
of education and manners in the country, he gathered the peasantry
together for lectures, instructing them himself, and exhorting them to
the practice of their duties."[12] So he died, a failure, of a kind;
one of those rich-souled men who are never successful until they fail.
He bequeathed to posterity a number of devotional works, a "Paraphrase
of the Prophet Jeremiah," an "Exposition of the Book of Job," and
others of a like character. Yet, though entrenched behind numerous
theological quartos, his orthodoxy was sadly open to attack. Having
built a church, he dedicates it to the "Eternal Father," in scandalous
disregard of the company of the saints.
Already it is apparent that we have to deal with men of singular force
of character and fulness of soul. Evidently it was no mere freak
of fortune which made the grandson of this luckless ambassador the
greatest political moralist of his time.[13] Practical vigour, moral
depth, they are in the blood of the d'Argensons. They look down upon
us from the last canvas before which it is necessary to linger, the
portrait of "Mon Père."
At the climax of the Grand Age, ere the slope of Avernus had yet begun,
the King's justice was administered in the district of Angoulême by as
strange a magistrate as ever shocked the susceptibilities of a court.
He was in the prime of life, tall, dark, with striking features, and
a glance that was charming and might be terrible. A strange figure
did he make in that district court of Angoulême, as he sat dispensing
justice quick and plentiful, patching up suits, cutting down fees,
driving a vigorous pen through venerable formalities, and fondling
the muzzle of his great hound, who sat blinking placidly upon the
fuming functionaries, without the faintest sense of his unwarrantable
intrusion.[14] So things went on until, in 1694, a special commission
for the reform of abuses in the administration of justice appeared
in Angoulême. My lords discovered, probably with equal surprise, the
absence of abuses, and the presence of an extraordinary man. Of his
capacity as a magistrate they had ample evidence before them; and the
lighter experiences of a commission on circuit were sufficient to
convince them that M. d'Argenson was excellent company, a man brimful
of life and energy, whose wit sparkled with his wine.[15] To leave
him to rust in a provincial court was of course out of the question.
He was plied with hearty invitations to Paris and generous promises
of service. "As a matter of fact, my father was not an ambitious
man";[16] and it was only after much solicitation that he was decoyed
to the capital, and introduced by M. de Caumartin, his friend of the
commission, to the reigning Controller-General. Three years afterwards,
at the age of thirty-nine, he was appointed chief of the Parisian
police; and for twenty years and more, from the time of Ryswick to
well on in the Regency, he became "the soul, always in action, scarcely
ever in evidence,"[17] the soul of the great metropolis.
Henceforth his life was an eventful one. Criticism, caricature,
opinion of all sorts, fastened upon it as a delectable morsel; its
incidents were recorded, politely in the pages of contemporary memoirs,
impolitely upon the walls of Paris. With the events themselves we are
not concerned; we pursue them only for the character of the man. This
is no place to relate how, when the woodyards of the Porte St. Bernard
were on fire, he saved a quarter by the sacrifice of his clothes;[18]
how in the year of Malplaquet, when bread was nine sous a pound and the
Quartier du Temple took the pavement, he risked his life in confronting
the mobs;[19] or to recall the memorable day when he presents a 'lettre
de cachet' to the Abbess of Port Royal with a request for compliance
within fifteen minutes;[20] or later, when, in the King's name, he
was called upon to entertain one "François Marie Arouet, twenty-two,
of no profession," in the Bastille,[21] and to be immortalised as a
worthy successor of Cato in six tearfully cheerful verses.[22] He
received the highest eulogy known to the classicism of the time. "He
was made to be a Roman," writes Fontenelle,[23] his fingers trembling
with unwonted enthusiasm, "and to pass from the Senate to the head
of an army." And the daily routine was no less imposing. In toil
unceasing, he forgets the distinction between night and day,[24] eats
when he must, sleeps when he can. We see him dictating letters to four
secretaries at a time,[25] dining in his carriage as it rattles over
the stones,[26] vouchsafing an audience to a La Rochefoucauld at two
in the morning.[27] His pleasures when he could snatch them were rich
and strong. He had a lusty interest in life and living, and a hearty
contempt for the Talon Rouge. D'Argenson's heels were of good cow-hide,
and not wholly free from the mould of Touraine. His boon companions
were not ministers and great lords, but "unknown men of the lower
ranks," with whom, it is important to notice, "he was more at home
than with people of more exalted station."[28] "In a gentlemanly way,
he was fond of wine and women."[29] In the latter regard, his tastes
were too catholic to be altogether creditable; but "he preferred nuns,"
as his son remarks, with a smile of remembrance at the old days. In
fact, he had rigged up a lodging in the precincts of the Convent de la
Madeleine de Traisnel; and all the magnificence of Versailles was less
to him than an evening in the company of the Lady Superior.[30] But not
even the charms of Madame du Veni could wean him from his devotion to
duty. Paris never had such a chief of police.[31] Evil-doers trembled
at the name of him; mobs, whether in the galleries of Versailles or in
the faubourgs of Paris, quailed beneath his glance. They might well.
When he liked, "he had a face that was frightful, and recalled those
of the three judges of hell!"[32] But there is another side to all
this. St. Simon, who liked him less than he admired him, says that "in
the midst of his painful functions, he was always to be touched by
the voice of humanity;"[33] and there is a little picture, from the
hand of Fontenelle, which tells so much that it must be placed upon
the line. It is the picture of an audience at the bureau of police.
"Surrounded and deafened by a crowd of people of the lower orders,
most of them hardly knowing what had brought them there, violently
agitated about matters of the most trifling nature and often only
half understood, accustomed not to rational speaking but to senseless
noise, he had neither the carelessness nor the contempt which the
applicants and their affairs might well have induced; he gave himself
up whole-heartedly to the meanest details, ennobled in his eyes by
their necessary relation to the public good; he suited himself to ways
of thinking the lowest and the most gross; he talked to every one in
his own tongue."[34] And so for the space of one-and-twenty years Marc
René d'Argenson went his way, more loved and feared than any man in
Paris. But that was not all.
In September, 1715, the Grand Monarque died; and Liberalism gathered
up the reins and went cantering gaily into a morass. After three
years, d'Argenson was called upon to help it out. These were the days
of the great "System," and of the encampment in the Rue Quincampoix.
The Regent, abandoning his chemical researches, had been studying
alchemy under John Law. For some time the great Experiment had been
going well, altogether too well, it appeared, as difficulties gathered
round it one by one. One obstacle had to be removed, cost what it
might. On acceding to power, Orleans, in the innocence of his heart,
had restored to the Parlement the right of remonstrance. Messieurs of
the Long Robe had so far presumed upon his confidence as to attempt to
use it. Strong measures became necessary, and a strong man. The old
chancellor, d'Aguesseau, retired, and in January, 1718, d'Argenson
received the seals.[35] On the 26th of August the crisis had come, and
King and Parlement were face to face in the hall of audience at the
Tuileries. "At last all was arranged and the assembly had resumed their
seats. For a few moments"[36] there was a dead silence, while the gaze
of many besides St. Simon was fixed upon a solitary seat below the
King. "Motionless on his bench sat the Warden of the Seals, his look
bent upon the ground, while the inward fire that played from his eyes
seemed to penetrate every heart." He rose and delivered his memorable
speech. The Parlement began their remonstrance, when suddenly the voice
of d'Argenson rang clear and crushing: "What the King requires is
obedience, and upon the spot!"[37] and the protest was silenced as by a
"clap of thunder." It was a day of bitter humiliation for the Parlement
and of triumph for their old enemy.
Other events of his ministry were less impressive, but not less
important. As President of the Council of Finance (January, 1718),
he succeeded during his first year in extinguishing arrears to the
amount of sixteen million livres;[38] and he was the first to apply
the system of direct collection (Régie) in regard to certain of the
taxes.[39] As a financial minister he had only one failing. His homely
prejudice in favour of honest dealing sometimes got him into trouble
with the Regent;[40] but their occasional quarrels were only on the
surface; and when d'Argenson was dismissed, as he was in June, 1720,
for speeding the Bank upon its downward way,[41] he was allowed to
keep his emoluments and his violet robe:[42] and a few years after he
had quitted office, the Regent sent him a purse of gold, which was an
annual perquisite of the Warden of the Seals.[43]