Note (Back to main text) — HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION OF THE 20th OF MARCH. (continued 4)

We found also a number of minutes of laws and ordinances, written by the hand of this minister, and attesting by their laborious corrections, how destitute he was of readiness and of imagination. Frequently he made three or four foul copies, before he could give any consistency or connection to his ideas. His familiar style was dry and turgid: if the style exhibit the man, how I pity M. de Blacas! He took extreme pains to vary, himself, the form of his appointments (rendez-vous): and the trouble he gave himself, to say the same thing in several different ways, wonderfully reminded us of the billet-doux of the Bourgeois Gentilhomme: "Belle Marquise, vos beaux yeux me font mourir d'amour; d'amour mourir me font, belle Marquise, vos beaux yeux[107]."