There are occasions when the craft of the critic becomes especially delightful, and at the same time especially dangerous. Delightful, when the material in which he works is new and unessayed; dangerous, from the besetting temptation to be content with accredited methods, and to neglect that watchful regard to the texture of the clay, which alone can suggest the conditions of successful treatment. Of such delicate fabric is a man made, here and there. It is as if for a moment the common matter had been thrown aside wearily, as if Nature, when she wrought him, had been toying with an inspiration, sometimes happy, often unhappy. In dealing with such a man, the critic will proceed very patiently and tenderly. He will beware of presenting him, morally or otherwise, in the light of the prevailing prejudice; nor will he erect his own provincialities of opinion as a final measure of wisdom or worth. Rather will he let the man go his own way and tell his own tale, content if he may but follow and hear and understand, without sitting in the gate to judge him.

That criticism, in the case of the Marquis d'Argenson,[1] has not always been chastened to this wholesome deference, there will be occasion to notice at a later date. We may remark at once how necessary it was. D'Argenson was indeed no ordinary man. The character with which destiny had endowed him was but poorly adapted to the social medium in which it was to move; and to the great world where moral commonplace is law, he was a stranger. He dwelt, as such men do, in a little world of his own creating, peopled with his own pleasures and his own pains. His only critic was his conscience: himself was his sternest judge: and he knew no tribunal but the midnight silence, when the glow was dying on the hearth. He was an original, in short, and as an original he must be treated.

When we are puzzled by the character of any among the illustrious dead, and when other resources fail us, a saunter in the portrait gallery of the old house is often pregnant with suggestion. Of such a privilege it will be well to avail ourselves in the present instance. The time will be very well spent.

In the days when Mazarin was king, France had no more able or trusted servant than RenÉ de Voyer, Count d'Argenson. He was a nobleman of old Touraine—one of his ancestors had sailed with St. Louis[2]— and now in these latter days, he worthily fulfilled the promise of his name by a rich devotion to his country and her master. Mazarin knew his worth. He commends him to Cardinal Grimaldi as "huomo versato e prudente,"[3] a phrase which is translated in an earlier letter to d'Argenson himself, where he compliments him on "la prudence et l'adresse" with which he had governed the Catalans.[4] His life was passed amid the stress and movement of affairs, the scene changing as circumstances of delicacy and danger called for the intervention of an accomplished hand. Only once, in 1640, is the sequence of activity broken, to reveal to us a sidelight of character which is brightly suggestive. Released for a time from the cares of administration—he had fallen into the hands of the Spaniards[5]—he employed the leisure so rudely thrust upon him in translating Thomas À Kempis, and in composing a treatise on "The Wisdom of a Christian." Years after, now grown old in the King's service, he laid aside the sword and robe, to don the cassock and die a servant of the Church.[6]

The portrait is broadly drawn, but already the features are clearly marked.

We pass on to his son, RenÉ II.[7] We are at once arrested. Were it not for the doublet and hose of the seventeenth century, we should mistake him for his own grandson. Young RenÉ de Voyer was destined, like his father, for the diplomatic service. His political pilgrimage had scarce begun when a cloud fell across his path. A rumour got abroad to the effect that the youthful diplomatist would be also a poet, and moreover, that he gave more time to religious exercises than was good for a young man who had the world before him. And so it was that when d'Argenson left for Venice with the King's commission, there was some misgiving in exalted circles; prayer and praise might be all very well, but they were not among the recognised resources of earthly diplomacy. Be that as it may, d'Argenson succeeded in commending himself to the citizens of the Republic.[8] At home he was not so fortunate. As his grandson observes, the embassy was a mistake.[9] In the first place, the thousand little complaisances, respectable and other, which were among the first conditions of comfort at court, were quite beyond him. Practically they filled him with despair, morally with disgust. Moreover he was cursed with that species of reserve which often comes of extreme humility, and is almost always attributed to extreme pride. When things went wrong at headquarters, he took to railing against the vices of the great; he fell out with Mazarin as he afterwards did with Colbert; and finally, after a few years of thankless labour, he was dismissed, and the door of advancement was closed against him. D'Argenson accepted his fate. He shut himself up on his country estates, consoling himself with the thought that he was an injured man.[10] But he was not of the men who can sit down and nurse their disappointments. Though cruelly broken, he set to work to repair his fortune and to repair his life. In the provinces of France, on the slopes of Touraine, there was plenty of work for a willing hand, as events too clearly proved. In that work d'Argenson found refuge from his manifold chagrins. The rest of his life—he was still but thirty-two[11] —was devoted to the development of his estates and to the welfare of his dependents. "Interested in the improvement of education and manners in the country, he gathered the peasantry together for lectures, instructing them himself, and exhorting them to the practice of their duties."[12] So he died, a failure, of a kind; one of those rich-souled men who are never successful until they fail. He bequeathed to posterity a number of devotional works, a "Paraphrase of the Prophet Jeremiah," an "Exposition of the Book of Job," and others of a like character. Yet, though entrenched behind numerous theological quartos, his orthodoxy was sadly open to attack. Having built a church, he dedicates it to the "Eternal Father," in scandalous disregard of the company of the saints.

Already it is apparent that we have to deal with men of singular force of character and fulness of soul. Evidently it was no mere freak of fortune which made the grandson of this luckless ambassador the greatest political moralist of his time.[13] Practical vigour, moral depth, they are in the blood of the d'Argensons. They look down upon us from the last canvas before which it is necessary to linger, the portrait of "Mon PÈre."

At the climax of the Grand Age, ere the slope of Avernus had yet begun, the King's justice was administered in the district of AngoulÊme by as strange a magistrate as ever shocked the susceptibilities of a court. He was in the prime of life, tall, dark, with striking features, and a glance that was charming and might be terrible. A strange figure did he make in that district court of AngoulÊme, as he sat dispensing justice quick and plentiful, patching up suits, cutting down fees, driving a vigorous pen through venerable formalities, and fondling the muzzle of his great hound, who sat blinking placidly upon the fuming functionaries, without the faintest sense of his unwarrantable intrusion.[14] So things went on until, in 1694, a special commission for the reform of abuses in the administration of justice appeared in AngoulÊme. My lords discovered, probably with equal surprise, the absence of abuses, and the presence of an extraordinary man. Of his capacity as a magistrate they had ample evidence before them; and the lighter experiences of a commission on circuit were sufficient to convince them that M. d'Argenson was excellent company, a man brimful of life and energy, whose wit sparkled with his wine.[15] To leave him to rust in a provincial court was of course out of the question. He was plied with hearty invitations to Paris and generous promises of service. "As a matter of fact, my father was not an ambitious man";[16] and it was only after much solicitation that he was decoyed to the capital, and introduced by M. de Caumartin, his friend of the commission, to the reigning Controller-General. Three years afterwards, at the age of thirty-nine, he was appointed chief of the Parisian police; and for twenty years and more, from the time of Ryswick to well on in the Regency, he became "the soul, always in action, scarcely ever in evidence,"[17] the soul of the great metropolis.

Henceforth his life was an eventful one. Criticism, caricature, opinion of all sorts, fastened upon it as a delectable morsel; its incidents were recorded, politely in the pages of contemporary memoirs, impolitely upon the walls of Paris. With the events themselves we are not concerned; we pursue them only for the character of the man. This is no place to relate how, when the woodyards of the Porte St. Bernard were on fire, he saved a quarter by the sacrifice of his clothes;[18] how in the year of Malplaquet, when bread was nine sous a pound and the Quartier du Temple took the pavement, he risked his life in confronting the mobs;[19] or to recall the memorable day when he presents a 'lettre de cachet' to the Abbess of Port Royal with a request for compliance within fifteen minutes;[20] or later, when, in the King's name, he was called upon to entertain one "FranÇois Marie Arouet, twenty-two, of no profession," in the Bastille,[21] and to be immortalised as a worthy successor of Cato in six tearfully cheerful verses.[22] He received the highest eulogy known to the classicism of the time. "He was made to be a Roman," writes Fontenelle,[23] his fingers trembling with unwonted enthusiasm, "and to pass from the Senate to the head of an army." And the daily routine was no less imposing. In toil unceasing, he forgets the distinction between night and day,[24] eats when he must, sleeps when he can. We see him dictating letters to four secretaries at a time,[25] dining in his carriage as it rattles over the stones,[26] vouchsafing an audience to a La Rochefoucauld at two in the morning.[27] His pleasures when he could snatch them were rich and strong. He had a lusty interest in life and living, and a hearty contempt for the Talon Rouge. D'Argenson's heels were of good cow-hide, and not wholly free from the mould of Touraine. His boon companions were not ministers and great lords, but "unknown men of the lower ranks," with whom, it is important to notice, "he was more at home than with people of more exalted station."[28] "In a gentlemanly way, he was fond of wine and women."[29] In the latter regard, his tastes were too catholic to be altogether creditable; but "he preferred nuns," as his son remarks, with a smile of remembrance at the old days. In fact, he had rigged up a lodging in the precincts of the Convent de la Madeleine de Traisnel; and all the magnificence of Versailles was less to him than an evening in the company of the Lady Superior.[30] But not even the charms of Madame du Veni could wean him from his devotion to duty. Paris never had such a chief of police.[31] Evil-doers trembled at the name of him; mobs, whether in the galleries of Versailles or in the faubourgs of Paris, quailed beneath his glance. They might well. When he liked, "he had a face that was frightful, and recalled those of the three judges of hell!"[32] But there is another side to all this. St. Simon, who liked him less than he admired him, says that "in the midst of his painful functions, he was always to be touched by the voice of humanity;"[33] and there is a little picture, from the hand of Fontenelle, which tells so much that it must be placed upon the line. It is the picture of an audience at the bureau of police. "Surrounded and deafened by a crowd of people of the lower orders, most of them hardly knowing what had brought them there, violently agitated about matters of the most trifling nature and often only half understood, accustomed not to rational speaking but to senseless noise, he had neither the carelessness nor the contempt which the applicants and their affairs might well have induced; he gave himself up whole-heartedly to the meanest details, ennobled in his eyes by their necessary relation to the public good; he suited himself to ways of thinking the lowest and the most gross; he talked to every one in his own tongue."[34] And so for the space of one-and-twenty years Marc RenÉ d'Argenson went his way, more loved and feared than any man in Paris. But that was not all.

In September, 1715, the Grand Monarque died; and Liberalism gathered up the reins and went cantering gaily into a morass. After three years, d'Argenson was called upon to help it out. These were the days of the great "System," and of the encampment in the Rue Quincampoix. The Regent, abandoning his chemical researches, had been studying alchemy under John Law. For some time the great Experiment had been going well, altogether too well, it appeared, as difficulties gathered round it one by one. One obstacle had to be removed, cost what it might. On acceding to power, Orleans, in the innocence of his heart, had restored to the Parlement the right of remonstrance. Messieurs of the Long Robe had so far presumed upon his confidence as to attempt to use it. Strong measures became necessary, and a strong man. The old chancellor, d'Aguesseau, retired, and in January, 1718, d'Argenson received the seals.[35] On the 26th of August the crisis had come, and King and Parlement were face to face in the hall of audience at the Tuileries. "At last all was arranged and the assembly had resumed their seats. For a few moments"[36] there was a dead silence, while the gaze of many besides St. Simon was fixed upon a solitary seat below the King. "Motionless on his bench sat the Warden of the Seals, his look bent upon the ground, while the inward fire that played from his eyes seemed to penetrate every heart." He rose and delivered his memorable speech. The Parlement began their remonstrance, when suddenly the voice of d'Argenson rang clear and crushing: "What the King requires is obedience, and upon the spot!"[37] and the protest was silenced as by a "clap of thunder." It was a day of bitter humiliation for the Parlement and of triumph for their old enemy.

Other events of his ministry were less impressive, but not less important. As President of the Council of Finance (January, 1718), he succeeded during his first year in extinguishing arrears to the amount of sixteen million livres;[38] and he was the first to apply the system of direct collection (RÉgie) in regard to certain of the taxes.[39] As a financial minister he had only one failing. His homely prejudice in favour of honest dealing sometimes got him into trouble with the Regent;[40] but their occasional quarrels were only on the surface; and when d'Argenson was dismissed, as he was in June, 1720, for speeding the Bank upon its downward way,[41] he was allowed to keep his emoluments and his violet robe:[42] and a few years after he had quitted office, the Regent sent him a purse of gold, which was an annual perquisite of the Warden of the Seals.[43]

St. Simon shall finish the picture.[44]

"His retirement was of the strangest. He withdrew into a convent in the Faubourg St. Antoine, called La Madeleine de Tresnel. A long time before, he had fitted up an apartment in the convent buildings which he had furnished handsomely and well. It was as convenient as a house, and for many years he was in the habit of going there as often as he could. He had procured, even given, large sums to this convent for the sake of a Madame du Veni, who was the Superior—a relation, he said—and of whom he was very fond. She was a very charming person, extremely witty, and one of whom none have ever thought of speaking ill. All the Argensons paid court to her; but the strange thing about it was that when he was chief of police and fell ill, she left her convent to come to his house and to remain near him."[45]

A strong man and a strange one, and withal, a lovable, as we learn from many besides Madame du Veni.

In June, 1720, his "brief and troublous ministry"[46] came to an end, and the Palais Royal knew him no longer. He had but a short time to enjoy the rest which had come to him as a happy release. On May 8, 1721, he died. Many was the shrewd encounter he had had with the rabble of the slums; and as the old chief was borne to his last home, he was pursued by the curses of the basket-women of Paris. And hearing of it, proud and beautiful old Mathieu Marais turned in disgust from "this mad populace, which, while he lived, dared never look him in the face;" and alone with his journal, with his mind upon the man who had passed away, he writes:—

"Who will have his soul, I know not. In the other world, as in this, there must be a fine debate over it."[47]

He left behind him one who was to uphold the honour of a worthy name, and to bequeath to criticism an exercise no less perplexing. Upon the features of his son, the Marquis d'Argenson of history, the family lineaments are clearly marked. The moral fibre, the exuberant vitality, the rough irreverence for the world and its ways, which distinguished the men whose portraits have been sketched, descended to the heir of their name. We have but to see how the given material was affected by the influence of an inauspicious training, to be in possession of the radical substance of d'Argenson's character. In default of such knowledge of the man and his mind, it is impossible to criticise his life with justice; for without the secret of his singularities of temper, one is tempted to yield to that haste and impatience which they are too often apt to provoke. The secret once discovered, there is no longer any room for irritation; but we are content to pity him for the weaknesses of his character, while we admire him for its real nobility.