Certain features which his letters disclose must be brought for a moment into relief. In the first place, he shows himself a devoted friend and a dutiful correspondent; in the latter regard he is a shining example to his brilliant young brother.[103]
Moreover, we occasionally come across a story, which, if we forget the manners of the time, it seems as strange that a gentleman should have been able to write as that a lady should been willing to read. Yet it is comforting to find, in reading such passages, that if there is an utter absence of delicacy or reserve, there is an equal freedom from mere smirking prurience; the man's breath is tainted by the fashion of the time, but at least his heart is whole.
Sometimes again d'Argenson's feeling for the ideal, which explains so many of amiable vagaries, is seen taking wing and soaring away to the sound of his own laughter.
"I mean my bust (February 18, 1718[104]) to be in the library of Balleroy, with that of Pico de la Mirandola, and some great personage or other who, after all, could do no more than read. The proposal, perhaps, is not very reasonable as yet;[105] of the two, I am more like the latter."
In one letter we get a glimpse of d'Argenson's most cherished interior, and so of the man who loved it.
"I assure you, Rouillon (Réveillon) is becoming a fine house. In a gallery on the wing will be my library, with a little reading-room at one end, plenty of desks, sofas, cushions, upholstery in morocco—all the novelties of Holland; and from the windows a vista of avenues, kitchen gardens, woods, meadows, sheep. Won't you be charmed with it when you are at Paris this summer?" (August 8, 1722).[106]
His occasional reference to "le cadet" is interesting, in the light of their subsequent relations. With a touch of good-natured envy he remarks, "My brother is surpassing himself as Chief of Police. He is a perfect courtier; in that regard he has nothing to learn" (August 8, 1722).[107]Perhaps indeed the most precious thing about these letters is the light they throw upon the real character of the younger brother, and on d'Argenson's subsequent portrait of him. A comparison of the young "Chevalier" who writes over his own signature, with the eternal "Mon Frère" of d'Argenson's Journal, enables us to estimate the personal equation in d'Argenson's political criticism. It tends to suggest that the impression of high colouring, exaggeration, unfairness, which is left by the perusal of many of his more trenchant pages, is due, not to the intrinsic falsity of his judgments, but to the violence and heat with which they are pronounced. We see that to many of his indictments the question, "Well! what of it? how could he help it?" would have been at least a valid reply; and we suspect that had d'Argenson judged his own contemporaries with that same deep-sounding charity which, after a century and a half, one can claim no credit for applying to himself, we should have been spared much of that bitterness which he expends so lavishly upon the men of his time, and above all upon his brother, Count d'Argenson. So far as one can see, the truth was this. Marc Pierre was his mother's son, the blood of the Caumartins in every vein.[108] In him the rough-hewn strength of the d'Argenson character was fashioned to a form of lightness and grace; and losing in massiveness, it gained in charm. He had his father's strength without his seriousness; his power of work without his love of it. He impressed his contemporaries[109] by his singular union of facile effectiveness with absolute unconcern. Such a passage as this, which appears in a letter of 1715,[110] needed no signature for identification.
"At last, my dear aunt, the taxes are achieving what all the preachers in the world have never dared to undertake. Luxury is no more. The balls of the Opera and Comedy are as deserted as the ante-chamber of M. Desmarets or M. de Pontchartrain.[111] The churches are rather more patronised than they were; there, for example, you see men of business who have not yet been taxed, praying, at the foot of the altar, for a lot more pleasant than has fallen to their companions; you see poor Molinists beside themselves at the triumph of their adversaries, and sighing for the re-establishment of Jesuit influence. There you see many a young girl in tears, sorrowing for the purse of the financier who used to keep her in such gay profusion, and crying out upon the harshness of the powers that be at present, who work to construct their own fortunes before taking thought for that of their mistresses. Even me you see there now and again, vastly puzzled as to where I shall dine or sup, and turned pious for want of something better to do."
After reading such a passage as this, a new light breaks upon one of the first notices of Count d'Argenson that appear in the Journal, and upon a thousand more that follow at intervals for nearly thirty years.
"It is certainly true that my brother has not the secret of attaching to himself the men whom he serves. His lack of interest is the principal cause; it lays him open to the charge of insincerity in friendship."[112]