1747-1757.
A momentous decade--The Journal--Private life.
It was on the 10th of January, 1747, that d'Argenson's ministry came
to an end. For a year or so he found it a little hard to support
his banishment from power; but it is plain that after that time his
personal ambitions were gradually forgotten amid the press and play of
wider interests. It is true that he never quite dismisses his hopes of
office, and that he even fondles the pretty, courtier-like phrase with
which he will accept an invitation to return; but there is none of the
ardent, even feverish anticipation which clouds the period before his
ministry; and we feel that when he speaks of his own prospects it is
with the smiling, tranquil air of a man who is fond of pleasant dreams.
He was far from being unhappy. The ten years that preceded his death
were a period when a man of d'Argenson's character will desire rather
to watch than to work.
Though his outward life meanwhile was devoid of incident, it was
inwardly full of stir and excitement. Throughout these years society in
France was passing through the most critical of all its phases. Men's
veins were tingling with that new wine with which the old bottles were
already bursting; while across the history of the time is writ the word
of omen--Revolution. It is this that lends to d'Argenson's pages such
a vivid power and fascination.
The chief interest of his retirement was the composition of that
Journal which is, and which he evidently designed to be, the most
important commentary on a momentous period. He spared no pains to
obtain direct and definite information, securing correspondents at the
Court, in the Parlement, in the army, and in every department of the
public service; while in handling events he added to the industry of
the chronicler the grasp and acumen of a political expert. It is from
these pages that we catch the impression of d'Argenson's power. We feel
that a man cannot act in one year like a blind, blundering doctrinaire,
and write like a statesman in the next. It may be useful to glance very
lightly at the history of the time as it appeared to one of its most
sagacious observers. In doing so we are in the hands of a cicerone who
is not satisfied to speak by rote.
In December, 1747, after speaking sorrowfully of the national
prospects, d'Argenson writes:--
"Will any one have the hardihood to propose an advance towards
republican government. So far as I see, the people are utterly unfitted
for it; the nobility, the great lords, the tribunals, accustomed
as they are to servitude, have never turned their thoughts in that
direction, and they have no inclination of the kind. Still these ideas
are coming, and a habit is readily formed among the French."[379]
Two years after these words were written a profound change had taken
place. The terms of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle had created grave
discontent; and it was fanned to the heat of fury by the news that the
idol of the Parisian populace, the English Prince Charles Edward, was
to be expelled from France. His violent arrest at the doors of the
Opera aroused bitter indignation, which d'Argenson shared.
"This 'garrotting' will be an eternal disgrace for France. We shall
be put, no doubt, by the side of Cromwell, who beheaded his king. For
no purpose whatever we have garrotted the lawful heir to this Crown.
Nay more, he had been useful to us, and we were indebted to him for an
effective diversion which placed Brussels in our hands. It will be long
before people have done talking of this" (December, 1748).[380]
People did more than talk. The event gave rise to some of the most
venomous tirades that indignation ever wrung from helplessness; and
curiously enough, it was the starting point of that alert and violent
opposition which vexed the country for forty years. The excitement
occasioned by it had not subsided when a renewal of the great struggles
between the Crown, the Clergy, and the Parlement, gave a new motive
to popular passion. The clergy refused to administer extreme unction
to those who had not accepted the Bull Unigenitus; they were opposed
by the resolution of the Parlement of Paris; the Crown interfered on
behalf of the clergy; and Church and Crown united their forces in an
endeavour to coerce the Parlement. At the same time the attempt of the
Controller-General Machault to force the vingtième upon clergy and
people alike united the Church and the Parlement in opposition to the
Crown. The Crown, incapable of pursuing a policy of its own, allowed
itself to be buffetted between the two parties; it was regarded with
alternate scorn and fury; and popular feeling rallied in support of
the outraged Parlement of Paris. The Church too was feared, hated, and
afterwards despised;[381] and every day added to the influence and
prestige of the rising party of Enlightenment.[382]
D'Argenson's attitude throughout the controversy may be summed in
a single word. He was with the Parlement against the Church, and
with both against the Crown. It is often an occasion of wonder that
Machault's proposal to bring the clergy under the ordinary fiscal
arrangements of the realm should have met with such violent opposition.
In a single sentence d'Argenson reveals the reason:--
"These pamphlets" (for proving "that the King has the whole right and
jurisdiction over the property of the clergy") "have been unfavourably
received, their cause, their object, being nothing but money, the need
of money, the Treasury already so full of money, the Ministry appearing
to think so little of relieving the burden of the people, the Court
spending right and left; and not a wise reformation of the clergy. That
is the thing to excite the people against the soundest principles."[383]
Such a passage alone is sufficient to show the deep distrust into which
the Government had fallen. The organ of that distrust was the Parlement
of Paris. D'Argenson at first had trembled for its existence; he soon
saw that the forces behind it were irresistible.
"In the general commotion," he writes, "the Parlement of Paris has
nothing more to fear. The entire nation is rising in opposition to
ungoverned and arbitrary will, and they have the Parlements at their
head" (April, 1752).[384]
So acute an observer could not fail to see that the most alarming
features of the struggle were the indirect results which it might
produce. It had scarcely begun when he devoted to it one of the boldest
and most penetrating of all his reflections.
"I am afraid that all this, if pushed too far, may produce some great
outbreak. Men may arise who, under colour of the clerical cause, will
sustain the cause of the nation. With little merit or ability of their
own, these men will obtain influence, they will secure the affection
of the people. Let no one say that such men exist no longer. The
statue is in the block of marble; the meanest of men will rise to the
occasion. Even to-day mark how many writers there are of learning and
enlightenment. For some years the wind has been blowing from England
upon these materials; the materials may catch fire. Look at the tone
of the remonstrances against the vingtième prepared by the Parlements
and the Estates. These Attorneys-General of Parlement, these syndics
of Estates, such might be these great men I speak of; the whole nation
might catch fire, the Nobility throwing in its lot with the Clergy,
and afterwards the Third Estate. If the result were that it became
necessary to summon the States-General of the Realm, they would find
occasion to regulate the finances and the demands of money for the
future. Those Estates would not assemble in vain. Let the men in power
have a care; they would be very much in earnest" (December, 1750).[385]
D'Argenson's apprehensions were soon confirmed. A year later he writes:
"To-day the popular mind is occupied with this approaching revolution
in the government; people talk of nothing else, and every one is full
of it, even the bourgeois" (November, 1751).[386]
Among high and low the feeling was the same.
"The evil consequences of our absolute monarchy are finally persuading
every one, both in France and throughout Europe, that it is the worst
of all forms of government. Among men of enlightenment (_philosophes_)
I hear nothing but the confident assertion that even anarchy is to
be preferred to it; for it leaves to each inhabitant at least the
enjoyment of his property, and whatever disorders or acts of violence
may occur are to the prejudice of private people only, and not, as now,
to the body of the state" (September, 1752).[387]
These eight years of clamour and coercion, violence and weakness,
produced a very profound impression upon French society, and upon
d'Argenson himself.
"The opinion of the nation is gaining ground, and may lead us far. It
is remarked that never until to-day have the names of 'Nation' and
'State' been so frequently in use. Under Louis XIV. these two names
were never pronounced, and people had no idea even of their meaning.
Never has knowledge of the rights of the nation and of liberty been so
widely diffused as it is to-day. Even I, who have always made these
matters the subject of thought and study, had a very different mind and
feeling with regard to them. The change is due to the Parlement and the
English" (June, 1754).[388]
This last word suggests one final reflection, which is prompted by a
hundred passages of d'Argenson's Journal, and which, to us at least, is
of singular interest. Ten or twenty years before, Frenchmen had been
proud of their own government, and had laughed at that of England as a
masterpiece of absurdity. After 1750 a change took place. It was not
that they had begun to admire the English constitution or the balance
of powers commended by Montesquieu; of that they knew little and
comprehended less. What they were impressed with was none other than
that very spirit of noise and turbulence and apparent disorder which
they had before regarded with contemptuous wonder. As they watched
their country outstripped in the race, they came to feel that there
was some virtue in a rude independence: and that the government of
England, anomalous as it appeared, was consistent with national honour
and prosperity. If it be allowed, in deference to French protest, that
the influence of English philosophy upon the Revolution was slight
and circuitous, it is no less true that the influence of the English
people and polity was rapid, powerful and direct. In fanning the glow
of revolutionary feeling during these seven or eight years at least,
the comparative excellence of the English government was only less
operative than the worthlessness of the French. It is a fact of which
we hear very little, but with which d'Argenson at any rate was deeply
impressed.
Interlocked with the political battle, there proceeded a spiritual
conflict of far more broad renown. Again light had become darkness; and
out of the darkness came the world-old cry, "Let there be Light!" Again
with d'Argenson's bright intelligence may we watch the movement of
emancipation.
He gives us momentary glimpses of men then painfully struggling into
fame, and now as illustrious as their enemies are obscure. Here is the
great Encyclopædist, as he first appeared to d'Argenson:
"The man Diderot, author of the obscene book 'Bijoux Indiscrets' and of
the 'Aveugle clairvoyant,' has been examined in prison at Vincennes.
He received the magistrate with the pride of a fanatic. He was told
by the person who examined him that he was an insolent scoundrel, and
would remain there for a long time. This Diderot, when arrested, had
just finished the composition of a surprising book against religion,
entitled 'Le Tombeau des Préjugés'" (August, 1749).[389]
"Buffon, the author of the 'Natural History,' is beside himself with
apprehension at the success of his book. The devout party are furious,
and mean to have it burnt by the hand of the hangman. It is quite true
that it contradicts Genesis completely" (December, 1749).[390]
"Voltaire writes here that he is much pleased with his residence in
Prussia. He says he means to show how cleverly he can live with all
the world, since he is on the best of terms with the father of the
faithful--(the Pope, whose letter he has had printed at the head of his
tragedy of 'Mahomet')--and with the father of heretics, the King of
Prussia" (April, 1751).[391]
"Jean Jacques Rousseau of Geneva, a pleasing writer and a would-be
philosopher, says that men of letters should take these three vows, of
poverty, freedom, and truth. That has prejudiced the government against
him; he expressed these sentiments in certain prefaces; in consequence
he was spoken of in the private apartments, and the King observed that
it would be a good plan to have him locked up in Bicêtre. His Serene
Highness the Count de Clermont added that it would not be a bad thing
to let them give him a sound thrashing as well. People are afraid of
these free philosophers. My friend d'Alembert is one of them, and he is
threatened with the reprehension of our state Inquisitors. The Jesuits
are the prime movers in this system of inquisition" (April, 1753).[392]
In the very centre of light and learning, this Jesuit influence was at
work. Here is a little picture of an election to the Académie Française:
"Buffon, whose 'Natural History' is at present under examination by
the Sorbonne, and d'Alembert, of the Encyclopædia, are withdrawing in
fear of being suddenly branded; there will remain none but fools to
elect. I am acquainted too with Bougainville, who hoped for a place
but is suspected of Jansenism: and with the Abbé de Condillac, the
metaphysician, who, however, has spoken too freely of the soul....
It seems that everything is being done to establish the Inquisition
in France; and the more our priests are hated, the more hateful they
manage to make themselves" (June, 1753).[393]
To-day, penetrated with the power and impalpability of the spirit, we
have lost faith in the arm of flesh. To d'Argenson however, it seemed
as though the Unholy Office establishing in France would flourish as
fatally as its Spanish prototype.
"'Lettres de cachet' have been issued against the Abbés de Prades
and Yvon; the rumour runs that they are also out against Diderot,
the principal author of the Encyclopædia. Woe to the enemies of the
Jesuits! The French Inquisition is increasing in extent and power; it
is now to be reinforced by the bigotry of the Court.... Woe to the
honest men who go about their business and are sound of heart and mind,
but who are not sufficiently careful to control their tongues when
speaking of light and liberty!" (February, 1752).[394]
Among the "honnêtes gens tranquilles, qui ne maîtrisent pas leur
langue," none had more reason to tremble than d'Argenson. For some
time a remarkable political work of his[395] had been circulating
quietly among the Philosophic party; and his religious opinions were
at least as licentious as any to be found even among the clergy.[396]
By political profession he was an adherent of the Gallican Church; by
private conviction he was a deist after the manner of Voltaire, but
with none of Voltaire's apostolic bitterness. Deist or Gallican, he was
a confirmed enemy of obscurantism in all its forms.[397] His habitual
attitude towards it is prettily illustrated in the following passage:
"At last we shall see a ridiculous censure of the Sorbonne upon the
'Esprit des Lois' of President de Montesquieu, for they hold it to
contain many things contrary to revealed religion. This condemnation
will be a positive scandal, for the 'Esprit' is a philosophical book
universally admired, and honourable to our age and nation. This
Sorbonne, which is now no more than a carcass, will remind one of Fat
John remonstrating with the priest of the parish; and revealed religion
will suffer through its interference, instead of gaining by it" (March,
1753).[398]
The great movement was in its infancy when d'Argenson died; but he
lived long enough to see that there was much in the old society besides
the Sorbonne[399] which was "now no more than a carcass." He tells us
how Madame de Pompadour invited Diderot and d'Alembert to resume the
work upon the Encyclopædia which their Jesuit enemies had been unable
to continue: and his reflections from time to time enable us to measure
the growing influence of the Philosophic leaders. In May, 1754, was
written this eloquent tribute to their advancing power.
"It is averred that everything is preparing in France for a great
reform in religion. It will be a very different thing from that rude
Reformation, a medley of freedom and superstition, which came to us
from Germany in the sixteenth century. Both have been brought about
by the intolerable tyranny and avarice of the priests; but as our age
and nation are far more enlightened than that of Luther, we shall not
stop half way. Priest, priestcraft, revelation, mystery, all will be
banished; and we shall be content to see God through the greatness and
goodness of His works. It is in our own hearts that He has written His
law, His love, our gratitude, our hopes in Providence, and our fear
of its justice. As to the attributes of God, we are as wise as the
priests; we can adore Him by ourselves, and without the help of these
persons pious by profession, who call themselves the ministers of the
altar and who are only the drones of the hive" (May, 1754).[400]
And before blotting his page, he enables us to comprehend in a single
glance the parallel movements of the time.
"Soon with this reformation in religion will come the reformation
in government. Political tyranny is interlinked with ecclesiastical
tyranny. Against them are turned the two branches of the forward
movement,[401] the one in the direction of moderate democracy, the
other towards adoring God in mind and heart alone. We give up the
attempt to do anything more with these two forms of government, and
in politics and society we see matters as they ought to be.... Nature
tells us all that we need; we listen and follow her when the imposture
of tyranny exists no longer."[402]
We have only to compare Citizen d'Argenson with the former Absolutist
of 1732 to realise the rate at which France was travelling.
If the revolution, political and moral, was the chief, it was not
the only interest of d'Argenson's Journal. His pages reflect the
many-featured life of a great and old society.[403] We can only
advert to his luminous criticism of economics and finance:[404] his
strange apologies for the debauchery of the King: and the heart-sick
comparisons which he sometimes makes between the condition and
government of France and England. He beheld, with apprehension and
despair, the avowed resolution of the English nation to destroy the
colonial influence of France; he beheld, with astonishment and alarm,
the abandonment of the traditional French foreign policy by the Treaty
of Versailles in 1756. He was oppressed more than all by the critical
state of the interior. His descriptions of the French provinces are the
most striking examples of d'Argenson's power. They display, not merely
a mastery of facts, but a masterful hold upon their meaning; and they
are informed by the pure and unaffected habit of humanity which he had
learnt in an older than the Philosophic school. Again, "C'est par le
coeur que son esprit est grand!"
Unkindly were it to lay down the Journal without a grateful reference
to d'Argenson's style. It is a vexed question, though all that is
necessary has long been said with the noble generosity of Ste. Beuve.
Those of d'Argenson's friends who were gifted with a pretty wit used
to tell him that he wanted style. What they meant was that he wanted
stylishness. In those days, before Buffon had let in light upon the
darkness, the meaning of style was very undefined. People used the
word to denote delicacy and refinement. To those qualities d'Argenson
could never pretend. His diction was of a heterogeneous character,
the language of polite society mingling with expressions from the
gutter or the farmyard, or places more unsavoury still. The structure
of his sentences is often erratic, and he is never embarrassed by
the importunities of grammar. Such necessary niceties he regarded
with unconcern, or as a mark of coxcombry or pedantry; in learning
and literature he hated both. What he valued was mother wit; and he
was content to express it in his mother tongue. He was not inclined
to cavil at a word which had been good enough for Rabelais, nor was
French the less French for being Tourangeau, as that great master
proved. Such licence however as he took, he could well afford to take.
D'Argenson's style resembles his statesmanship. Delicacy, finesse,
those smaller aptitudes that come by practice, he had never been able
to acquire; yet he displays no slight command of the larger qualities
of style. His writing wins us, not by the charm of symmetry and grace,
but by the kind of rude dignity which comes of will and energy and
power. He cleaves his way to his own meaning with a certain two-handed
effectiveness by no means unimposing; and we have never to fear having
lost one jot or tittle of the idea he is trying to convey. Often
ungrammatical, he is never obscure. The reader has scarcely a knot to
unravel in the whole nine volumes of his Journal. Though unformed and
unrefined by art, his literary instinct is of the surest. He never
misses the point of a story, or fails to convey it to his readers.
His handling of episodes, grave, sure and convincing, compels the
regret that he was not born poor, in order that he might have achieved
distinction as a master of style. But the binding charm of d'Argenson
is his perennial flow and freshness. Brisk, alert, ever unwearied, his
reader cannot weary of him. His vitality scatters the dust from his
pages, leaving them bright as the day they were written. He is a foe,
as ever, to pomp and ceremony; his narrative opens readily, it closes
with a clasp. He has none of St. Simon's breadth of elaboration; yet
he has something which makes us feel, as we lay down the ninth volume,
that we owe the writer no grudge, and that if life were long enough, we
would open a tenth with unblunted curiosity and pleasure.
Indeed the style is a faithful reflection of the man--perhaps the
most faithful we possess. Known only through his acts, we know him
only as he was spoilt by his unhappy training. It is in his writings
that we see the real man, as he was by himself and as he strove to be
with others. In the world he was stiff, shy, rudely straightforward,
despising chicanery and abhorring clamour. Alone in his library he was
another being, free, natural, powerful, and great. From the windows he
could look out upon a world unthinking, heedless, the prey of knaves
and the sport of fools, and needing to be guided by a philosopher and
an honest man. His belief that he was wise and strong enough to give
such guidance may be called an illusion, if any one thinks it worth
while. Within those walls the illusion, if illusion it was, was a very
natural one; and natural or not, we have no right to complain, for
it has bequeathed to us one of the most interesting of journals and
revealed to us one of the most interesting of men.
D'Argenson's life during these last ten years is seen upon an engaging
background, the château and domain of Segrez, about thirty miles from
Paris. It was a very charming place, which its master loved, and was
fond of describing both with pen and pencil.[405] He used to liken
it to the Elysian Fields,[406] and if his own affectionate sketches
of it are to be trusted, the hyperbole may readily be pardoned. There
he passed the years of his retirement, organising his correspondence,
inditing his Journal, entertaining his friends, and protecting the
peasantry against the revenue officers.[407] Sometimes too in moments
of blissful idleness, he would prop himself up in that portable reading
cabinet which M. Aubertin has made so famous,[408] and laugh and weep
through a translation of "Tom Jones,"[409] a new book by that ingenious
writer, Mr. Henry Fielding. His life was broken by an occasional
visit to the Court or to his family estates in Touraine; and he was
constantly in and out of Paris. Often might he be seen descending
from the mud-bespattered coach, reading with affright and horror some
placards which the police had not yet torn down, condoling with one of
his learned friends in the agitated court of the Palais de Justice,
denouncing the Jesuits in the company of d'Alembert, or hurrying away
to preside at a meeting of the Academy of Letters.[410] But his heart
was always thirty miles away. We can picture him, after an exciting
month at Paris, arriving at Segrez, handing off his cloak, flinging
himself into the arms of some cherished chair, and dreaming of a week
of peace and solitude.
"Here I am again in the country for six days. I shall have less news of
the world and the Court, but far better news of myself. How delightful
it is to be at rest, in the company of oneself and one's books!
"Yesterday evening there was a beautiful aurora borealis, and
immediately afterwards the weather cleared up and the wind veered round
to the south. There is good promise for the harvest. The rain came
when it was wanted, and the crops, kept back by the cold weather we
have been having lately, are now coming forward in fine style."[411]
At this time d'Argenson presents a pleasant picture, the picture of a
man who has striven, and not in vain. He had not obtained all he had
hoped for, but what he had achieved was no little thing. It is easy
to have the defects of one's qualities; it is harder to acquire, as
d'Argenson had done, the very qualities of his defects. The vices of
his nature he had employed more usefully than many virtues. Cut off
from the many, he had won his way into the ranks of the elect; if he
could not be witty, he could at least be wise. Fortune had decreed
his failure as a politician: she could not deny him the secondary
distinction of being, as a political thinker, the foremost man of his
time. And this was the end of a lifelong struggle, not unworthy of
his stubborn blood. True that he had faults, and retained them to the
last; and to the last he strove to quell them. They were in spite of
him; his greatness was his own. Faults though they be, they are not
unamiable; their generous admission extorts generosity: and they have
forgiven them most readily who have known them best. If, under the pen
of M. Edmond Scherer[412] and others less distinguished than he, they
have been raised to a hateful prominence of contumely, they have been
reduced to their due place of utter subordination by the humanity and
the insight of an Aubertin[413] and a Ste. Beuve.
The Marquis d'Argenson died on the 26th of January, 1757. Rousseau five
years afterwards inscribed his epitaph--
"UN VRAI CITOYEN."[414]