at the chancellor's already
tottering favor. On the morning of the 23d M. de La Vrilliere went to
him on behalf of the Regent and demanded the return of the seals.
D'Aguesseau was a little affected and surprised. "Monseigneur," he wrote
to the Duke of Orleans, "you gave me the seals without any merit on my
part, you take them away without any demerit." He had received orders to
withdraw to his estate at Fresnes; the Regent found his mere presence
irksome. D'Aguesseau set out at once. "He had taken his elevation like
a sage," says St. Simon, "and it was as a sage too that he fell." "The
important point," wrote the disgraced magistrate to his son, "is to be
well with one's self."

The Duke of Noailles had resigned his presidency of the council of
finance; but, ever adroit, even in disgrace, he had managed to secure
himself a place in the council of regency. The seals were intrusted to
M. d'Argenson, for some years past chief of police at Paris. "With a
forbidding face, which reminded one of the three judges of Hades, he made
fun out of everything with excellence of wit, and he had established such
order amongst that innumerable multitude of Paris, that there was no
single inhabitant of whose conduct and habits he was not cognizant from
day to day, with exquisite discernment in bringing a heavy or light hand
to bear on every matter that presented itself, ever leaning towards the
gentler side, with the art of making the most innocent tremble before
him." [St. Simon, t. xv. p. 387.] Courageous, bold, audacious in
facing riots, and thereby master of the people, he was at the same time
endowed with prodigious activity. "He was seen commencing his audiences
at three in the morning, dictating to four secretaries at once on various
subjects, and making his rounds at night whilst working in his carriage
at a desk lighted with wax candles. For the rest, without any dread of
Parliament, which had often attacked him, he was in his nature royal and
fiscal; he cut knots, he was a foe to lengthiness, to useless forms or
such as might be skipped, to neutral or wavering conditions." [Lemontey,
_Histoire de la Regence,_ t. i. p. 77.] The Regent considered that he
had secured to himself an effective instrument of his views; acceptance
of the system had been the condition _sine qua non_ of M. d'Argenson's
elevation.

He, however, like his predecessors, attempted before long to hamper the
march of the audacious foreigner; bu