Journal and memoirs . eign Affairs. [Here the Journal stops abruptly, and is not resumeduntil February, 1747, the period at which the Marquis dAr-gensons ministry ended and he retired to private life. Thisvoid in his Journal he filled by what he called Memoirsof my Ministry, beginning at the End of 1744 and finishingat the Beginning of 1747. These papers, which are pre-served in manuscript in the Library of the Louvre, were tohave been incorporated in a work of four volumes with theabove title.^ Though written by the Marquis dArgensonthey are ostensibly addressed to him by one of his secre-tar
Journal and memoirs . eign Affairs. [Here the Journal stops abruptly, and is not resumeduntil February, 1747, the period at which the Marquis dAr-gensons ministry ended and he retired to private life. Thisvoid in his Journal he filled by what he called Memoirsof my Ministry, beginning at the End of 1744 and finishingat the Beginning of 1747. These papers, which are pre-served in manuscript in the Library of the Louvre, were tohave been incorporated in a work of four volumes with theabove title.^ Though written by the Marquis dArgensonthey are ostensibly addressed to him by one of his secre-taries, M. C , a fictitious personage; this was doubtless done to enable him to speak of himself and his ministrywith greater freedom than he could use if writing in the firstperson. The preliminary sketch of the Court and its princi-pal personages was written under his own name. A selection from these papers is given in the next andconcluding chapter of this volume.] 1 See Appendix. 1744-1747] THE MARQUIS DARGENSON. 335. X. 1744—1747- Memoirs of the Ministry. Characters of the principal personages. The events that I am about to relate will be better under-stood if the personages whose influence bore upon them arebetter known. Let us speak first of the stage on which theyplayed their parts. l^The Court^ The best king is he who has most peopleand least Court. We can judge of this from Louis XIV., towhom flattery gave the name of Great: he was great throughhis pride, but not from any benefits he did the nation; hefounded, so to speak, the Court by building for it a privatecapital [Versailles] ; he wished to make it numerous, mag-nificent, and mistress of the government. The expense andthe disorders thus entailed become unbearable in the longrun; and the misfortune is that under kings who are simpleand kind such abuses will increase as a matter of honour^while under haughty and supercilious kings they will in-crease through the effervescence of their passions. No oneremarked to Lou
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