Note 225 — Chapter XII

The Cardinal was drawn from the obscurity in which he had lived since his disgrace in 1758, for the purpose of this mission. He continued Ambassador at Rome until his death, in 1794, in his eighty-fifth year. A memoir of him, by the Abbé Feletz, of the French Academy, forms one of the best-written articles in the Biographie Universelle. It would be more valuable if it were less of an éloge. The Cardinal judged wisely in opposing the Austrian alliance: but like other French statesmen, he took care to make his opposition subservient to his interest. Indeed there is little either in his moral or political conduct to deserve commendation until he was securely settled at Rome. He owed his elevation entirely to Madame de Pompadour, whose favour he had earned by betraying to her the King’s intrigue with Madame de Choiseul—a secret with which that lady had imprudently intrusted him.—(See more of him in the Memoires de Duclos, vol. ii. p. 172; Lacretelle’s Histoire de France, vol. iii. p. 161.)—E.