1694-1724.
Youth and early manhood--Intendant of Maubeuge.
"I returned after supper at one o'clock. The man told me that his
honour, the Chief of Police, desired to see me. It was to copy out
fifteen circular letters to as many Intendants, and not to retire
till it was done; my brother had already finished his task--an equal
number--and my father had told him to go to bed. I took some coffee,
and retired at four o'clock."[48]
He is a young man, very dark, with clear-cut features, his eye glancing
with a rough vivacity as he plies his pen with nervous hand. There is
a future before him; and, though he cannot be more than eighteen or
nineteen,[49] he has already a past.
René Louis de Voyer d'Argenson was born at Paris in 1694, in the same
year as two puissant men whose fortunes were to intersect his own, the
Englishman, Henry St. John, and his friend and countryman Voltaire. Two
years later he was joined by his brother, Marc Pierre, known to history
as the astute and charming Count d'Argenson. His father, who had but
lately come to Paris, was as yet known only as a rising Master of
Requests; his mother was a sister of the distinguished de Caumartin, M.
d'Argenson's patron and sponsor in the official world. Among his other
natural endowments, the young René Louis possessed, and was possessed
by, an expansive imagination; he early conceived and resolved upon a
career. Before he was well in his teens, he was leading his brother
along those devious courses by which a wholesome boy was to be turned
into a fine gentleman and a man of the world.
"We were not born libertines, but are become so. I saw all the sights,
I was at all the gatherings, I knew all the women. I thought to myself,
what a fine figure I was making in the world."[50]
The boys were not overburdened with parental solicitude. "My mother
was good-natured and indulgent, and a clever woman; our escapades did
not induce her to interfere with our habits."[51] The annoyance came
from another quarter. The boys had a tutor, who is described with
the true d'Argenson stroke as "fou, imbécile, ignorant, libertin, et
hypocrite;"[52] one of those persons who, when you have executed some
very bad drawings and love them very dearly, will vent his spleen by
tearing them up.[53] It became too much for mortal endurance; and when
one day the tutor "advanced upon his desk," the boy received him with
doubled fists.[54] From that time forward d'Argenson went his way in
peace; and the little rake's progress was proceeding apace, when it
was overtaken by one of those strokes of destiny which it is equally
impossible to foresee and to resist.[55]
He was sent to school.
In 1709, at the age of fifteen, he went with his brother to the Jesuit
College of Louis-le-Grand, which had become, under the patronage of the
Great King, the most fashionable of French public schools.[56] Thither,
thirty years later, he was followed by another d'Argenson--one who,
in the fulness of time and the sunshine of circumstance, was to leave
a record, not of maimed and weary aspiration, but of rapid, resolute
achievement--Anne Robert Jacques Turgot. But the lad was busied
with other thoughts. From "a man of the world who could count his
conquests,"[57] he had dwindled to the compass of a mere schoolboy; and
his heart was heavy over his fallen state. Occasionally the boys acted
tragedies at the College; and as d'Argenson sat in the amphitheatre,
pilloried in his hateful gown, a glimpse of some fair spectator whom he
had known in happier days would cover him with unutterable shame.[58]
But he had the tenacity of purpose which distinguished his race; his
time would come; and the modest treasure he was able to amass from the
savings of his pocket-money, was dissipated upon those rare occasions
when he could shake off the class-room dust from his feet, and plume
himself in the great world again. "Why," he asks, with that strange
recurrent smile of his, "why should one laugh at such an ambition?
Surely it is upon the same canvas that that of conquerors is built
(bâtie)!"[59] He possessed that keen, yet kindly humour of the man who
knows himself, and can laugh at himself, without ceasing to be himself.
One incident in his school career he never forgot. It began with
pea-shooters, and ended with a tragedy. One morning, as the venerable
professor of rhetoric, Père Lejay,[60] entered the class-room, he was
received with a raking fire of peas. The culprit platoon consisted of
the Duc de Boufflers, Count d'Argenson, and his faithful apparitor,
Marc Pierre. Boufflers received a flogging, and died from the effect
of it. His father was only a duke. But when it came to the sons of M.
d'Argenson, the retributive rod was stayed by the timely remembrance
of that dark and dangerous person: Jesuitical discretion came into
play,[61] and the youthful malefactors escaped. It is curious that the
brothers should have lived, the one to be the powerful patron of the
Jesuits, the other to attack them, for the eyes of posterity, with a
weapon which carries further than a "Sarbacane."
But the young Count d'Argenson was not long to trouble the repose of
his spiritual task-masters. He was to complete his education in another
school, deemed no less necessary to the training of the whole and
perfect man. From the sallow austerity of the reverend fathers, with
their hard beds and their unspeakable soup, he passed to the gracious
converse of ladies' society, where knowledge was savoured with a joyous
sweetness, and where the rewards of success were great indeed. Dreaming
long afterwards of the year 1712 and of the gallantries of that golden
age, he sighs regretfully over the hearts that fell, and over those
that might have fallen had the siege been pressed.
"What a fool I was not to have profited by them! I have repented at
leisure."[62]
A votary of pleasure, he was never its slave; and an event was
approaching which was soon to engage him in the more sober interests of
life. On the morning of September 1st, 1715, the eyelids of the Grand
Monarque closed upon a long and fateful chapter in French history;
and the hearts of men beat high again with the generous hopes of a
newer time. France, and the humblest of her children, d'Argenson, had
reached the parting of the ways. The "epic of royalty"[63] was over;
the epic of revolution was about to begin. In the development of the
drama d'Argenson was to bear a modest, but no mean part. He was now
twenty-one. The time for dreaming had passed away; the time for action
was at hand. On the threshold of his career, we may pause to gather up
those early half-conscious political impressions, which, in the case of
quick-minded men, have a real, if only half-recognised, influence upon
the direction of future thought.
He had been but a boy of eight when great events occurred.[64] We
can well imagine with what childish pleasure he must have watched the
stirring of the troops in Paris on the renewal of the great War; and
the wide-eyed wonderment with which he may have heard how an army of
France was cutting down French citizens for the pleasure of those
great black men, whom every one laughed with and called abbé; and how
everybody said that one Cavalier was as brave as he was beautiful, and
that he and the like of him should have been at Blenheim! And then,
as he grew in wit, the excitement of boyhood may have been clouded,
if ever so little, by the growing desolation, as defeat followed upon
disaster. He could remember how haggard men began to cry for bread;
until at last, in 1709, the stones of Paris rose in mutiny, and his own
father, the Chief of Police, went in fear of his life.[65] And through
it all there was no comfort, but only men said that this Great King had
been too great, that he had aroused the alarm of Europe, and that at
last Europe had turned to bay. And then when the peace had come, and
the people were beginning to breathe, Jesuit and Jansenist reopened
their feud and reviled each other in the name of God; while d'Argenson
suspected, what his friend Arouet and the wits who supped with the
Grand Prior disdainfully averred,[66] that there was no truth to be
found upon either side, but only arrogant unspirituality. And now the
King, great though he had been, had gone the way of little men; and
the hearts of his own people rejoiced, even as the nations whom he had
humbled in the dust.
D'Argenson never forgot those fatal years. They haunted his memory and
moulded his thought; and he could realise the gravity of the course
before him, when, in 1716, he began his career as a councillor of the
Parlement of Paris. Shortly afterwards, he received his first official
appointment as Director of the Press.
As yet he had excited no great hopes. His father saw but little of him,
and was inclined to regard him as rather a fool; the paternal hopes
were centred upon his brother, the pleasing, popular and imposing Marc
Pierre, then a young man of twenty. This unhappy partiality left a
fatal mark upon the character of the elder son; and though d'Argenson
never speaks of his father but with affection and respect,[67] he
cannot disguise how deeply he felt it. And yet, it is curious to
remember, he was before all things else his father's son. He inherited
from him his passion for work;[68] to him he owed that instinctive
regard for "le bien public,"[69] which afterwards ripened into absolute
devotion; from him he drew that soundness of heart and incisiveness
of mind which are d'Argenson's prime distinction as a thinker and
a man. But there was another strand in the stout complexity of the
father's nature, something which had led him, when he came to Paris,
to shun the companionship of the great, and to seek his pleasure in a
self-chosen society of the baser sort,[70] which had surrounded his
life with the infernal obscurity of a magician's cell,[71] something of
self-sufficience, of self-contentment, self-concentration. That too,
for his own confusion, d'Argenson had inherited. It might have remained
harmless; but nourished by his father's indifference and neglect, it
grew with the rankness of a noxious weed. He came to find comfort in
his own society. As his own company became dearer to him, so did the
distance widen between himself and his fellows. Alone, he could be
natural, forceful, even great at times; in society, he was pursued by
a haunting self-distrust, which attracted disparagement and very often
ridicule. As yet, it is true, beyond a touch of depreciation here and
there,[72] we see very little of it; the energy of youth and his own
strength of will enabled him to fight with his misfortune. But it had
afflicted him with one disability which no effort, however determined,
could overcome. It had rendered him for ever incapable of coping with
the blatancy, the loud insistence, the insensate, trumpet-tongued
vulgarity, with which every man of affairs is called upon to deal; and
he relates an incident in his present experience as Director of the
Press which shows that he was as helpless in the face of it now as he
afterwards proved in the more august circle of the Council of State. He
was arranging some matter with Machault,[73] who was then in charge of
the police; his colleague was for carrying things off with a high hand;
d'Argenson laid down his pen, looked at the man, rose, and retired
from the business.[74] It was an act of weakness, but the weakness was
invincible.
In spite of it, and of those defects of manner which led others
to hold him in such scant esteem, there was one person who
believed in d'Argenson, his aunt, Charlotte Emilie de Caumartin,
Marquise de Balleroy. In one of the earlier letters of that famous
correspondence[75] in which most of the materials for his life at
this period are preserved, he tries to excuse his slackness in the
friendly office of literary purveyor. "If I am not sending you any
books," he writes (March 23, 1717), "it is not for want of will. I have
brought misfortune on the Press. My censorial severity is silencing
all our authors." There were more solid reasons for the unwonted lull
in the activity of the Press Bureau.[76] There were no authors to
silence. The literary efflorescence of the Grand Age was long since
dead; while the new spirit, which was to be so fruitful in trouble
to d'Argenson's successors, was only fermenting beneath the surface.
It made its appearance with the "Lettres Persanes," which came--from
Holland--in 1721. The Censor was not even made the tool of a political
party. It is true that the battle of the "Constitution"[77] was raging
as fiercely as ever; but Madame de Maintenon had disappeared, and it
was no concern of Philippe d'Orléans. When the Government at last
interfered (by declaration of October 7, 1717),[78] it was to proscribe
the publications of both parties. It is very clear, and it is worth
remarking, that d'Argenson was in entire accord with the policy of the
Regent. His father, still in command of the police, was constantly
behind the scenes, and was under no illusion as to the character of the
actors.[79] He used to tell Marais that "if the Jansenists were rogues,
the Jesuits were as bad, and that he held the proofs with regard to
both of them."[80] The attitude of the son may readily be guessed. His
one desire was for peace. In a letter to the Marquise (April 2, 1717)
he describes a political brochure by one of her friends as "too bad
to read, and not silly enough to laugh at. The Abbé de Guitaut had no
reason to write that he detested the Constitution, and he had every
reason to refrain from publishing his letter."[81] In short, he viewed
the controversy with much concern, and the "Constitution" with none
whatever.
Another question was coming to the front, which touched him more
nearly as parliamentary councillor (Conseiller au Parlement). The Bank
was flourishing, and in August, 1717, the Mississippi Company was
successfully floated.[82] On the 2nd of September d'Argenson writes a
letter:--
"Our Court of Parlement has received a scurvy compliment." It was a
question of money, and they "desired explanations." The Regent replied
"that it would be a strange thing if the factious opposition of the
Parlement were to arrest the course of those advantageous measures
which he wished to secure for the public; that we had no right to
meddle with matters of finance; and that he would not suffer the royal
authority to be made light of so long as it were entrusted to his
care."[83]
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 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.