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"If my own affairs had not been in such a bad state, I should not have undertaken those of France," said Calonne gayly to M. de Machault, at that time advanced in age and still the centre of public esteem.
Things improved, from day to day, and de Machault, the faithless friend, was dismissed. The King returned to Madame de Pompadour, as usual. I learnt, by M. de Marigny, that the Abbe had been, one day, with M. d'Argenson, to endeavour to persuade him to live on friendly terms with Madame, and that he had been very coldly received.
Chauvelin, a man of vigour and capacity, was dismissed with ignominy in 1736. Machault, a reformer, at once courageous and wise, shared the same fate twenty years later; and in his case revolution was as cruel and as heedless as reaction, for, at the age of ninety-one, the old man was dragged, blind and deaf, before the revolutionary tribunal and thence despatched to the guillotine.
Many of the touches in this description and among them some of the very happiest are, it is true, borrowed from the courtly Machault; but nowhere has Chaucer been happier, both in his appropriations and in the way in which he has really converted them into beauties of his own, than in this, perhaps the most lifelike picture of maidenhood in the whole range of our literature.
Few of the officers of state, except, perhaps, D'Argenson, could venture to disregard her. She turned out Orry, the comptroller-general, put her favorite, Machault, into his place, then made him keeper of the seals, and at last minister of marine.
The letter recalling M. de Machault was written, when Madame Adelaide obtained the preference of that important appointment for M. de Maurepas. The page to whose care the first letter had been actually consigned was recalled. The Duc d'Aiguillon had been too openly known as the private friend of the King's mistress; he was dismissed.
France had ceased to tremble for the life of King Louis XV. For one instant the power of Madame de Pompadour had appeared to be shaken; the king, in his terror, would not see her; M. de Machault, but lately her protege, had even brought her orders to quit the palace.
The damsel thought to do somewhat fine by making choice, instead of a German song, of a French lay by the Sieur de Machault "J'aim la flour," which was well known to all of us by reason that she had learnt it from old Veit Spiesz, Ann's grandfather; and she had no need to fear to uplift her voice, inasmuch as it was strong and as clear as a bell.
The Marquise de Pompadour, who began life as Jeanne Poisson, Jane Fish, daughter of the head clerk of a banking house, who then became wife of a rich financier, and then, as mistress of the King, rose to a pinnacle of gilded ignominy, chose this time to turn out of office the two ministers who had shown most ability and force, Argenson, head of the department of war, and Machault, head of the marine and colonies; the one because he was not subservient to her will, and the other because he had unwittingly touched the self-love of her royal paramour.
Among the friends who abandoned her was her protégé Machault, the guard of the seals, who conspired with D'Argenson to deprive her of her power and went so far as to order her departure. After the king's recovery, both D'Argenson and Machault were dismissed and Mme. de Pompadour became more powerful than before.
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