Turgot's fall; the public regretted it but little: the inflexible
severity of his principles which he never veiled by grace of manners,
a certain disquietude occasioned by the chimerical views which were
attributed to him, had alienated many people from him. His real friends
were in consternation. "I was but lately rejoicing," said Abbe Very, "at
the idea that the work was going on of coolly repairing a fine edifice
which time had damaged. Henceforth, the most that will be done will be
to see after repairing a few of its cracks. I no longer indulge in hopes
of its restoration; I cannot but apprehend its downfall sooner or later."
"O, what news I hear!" writes Voltaire to D'Alembert; "France would have
been too fortunate. What will become of us? I am quite upset. I see
nothing but death for me to look forward to, now that M. Turgot is out of
office. It is a thunderbolt fallen upon my brain and upon my heart."

A few months later M. de St. Germain retired in his turn, not to Alsace
again, but to the Arsenal with forty thousand livres for pension. The
first, the great attempt at reform had failed. "M. de Malesherbes lacked
will to remain in power," said Abbe Wry, "M. Turgot conciliatoriness
(_conciliabilite_), and M. de Maurepas soul enough to follow his lights."
"M. de Malesherbes," wrote Condorcet, "has, either from inclination or
from default of mental rectitude, a bias towards eccentric and
paradoxical ideas; he discovers in his mind numberless arguments for and
against, but never discovers a single one to decide him. In his private
capacity he had employed his eloquence in proving to the king and the
ministers that the good of the nation was the one thing needful to be
thought of; when he became minister, he employed it in proving that this
good was impossible." "I understand two things in the matter of war,"
said M. de St. Germain just before he became minister, "to obey and to
command; but, if it comes to advising, I don't know anything about it."
He was, indeed, a bad adviser; and with the best intentions he had no
idea either how to command or how to make himself obeyed. M. Turgot had
correctly estimated the disorder of affairs, when he wrote to the king on
the 30th of April, a fortnight before his disgrace: "Sir, the parliaments
are already in better heart, more audacious, more implicated in the
cabals of the court than they were in 1770, after twenty years of
enterprise and success. Minds are a thous