act, that they would not need to place any one between them
and him. If this answer is faithfully reported," adds the advocate
Barbier, "it is sufficiently in the high style to let it be understood
that there will be no more any premier minister, or at any rate any body
exercising the functions thereof."

For some time previously, in view of the great age and rapid enfeeblement
of Cardinal Fleury, Marshal Noailles, ever able and far-sighted, had been
pressing Louis XV. to take into his own hands the direction of his
affairs. Having the command on the frontier of the Low Countries, he had
adopted the practice of writing directly to the king. "Until it may
please your Majesty to let me know your intentions and your will," said
the marshal at the outset of his correspondence, "confining myself solely
to what relates to the frontier on which you have given me the command, I
shall speak with frankness and freedom about the object confided to my
care, and shall hold my peace as regards the rest. If you, Sir, desire
the silence to be broken, it is for you to order it." For the first time
Louis XV. seemed to awake from the midst of that life of intellectual
lethargy and physical activity which he allowed to glide along, without a
thought, between the pleasures of the chase and the amusements invented
by his favorite; a remembrance of Louis XIV. came across his mind,
naturally acute and judicious as it was. "The late king, my great-
grandfather," he writes to Marshal Noailles on the 26th of November,
1743, "whom I desire to imitate as much as I can, recommended me, on his
death-bed, to take counsel in all things, and to seek out the best, so as
always to follow it. I shall be charmed, then, if you will give me some;
thus do I open your mouth, as the pope does the cardinals, and I permit
you to say to me what your zeal and your affection for me and my kingdom
prompt you." The first fruit of this correspondence was the entrance of
Marshal Noailles into the Council.

[Illustration: Louis XV. and his Councillors----148]

"One day as he was, in the capacity of simple courtier, escorting the
king, who was on his way to the Council, his Majesty said to him,
"Marshal, come in; we are going to hold a council," and pointed to a
place at his left, Cardinal Tencin being on his right. "This new
minister does not please our secretaries of state. He is a troublesome
inspector set over them, who meddles in everything, though master o