V. 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 cœur 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]