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Updated: May 27, 2025
The high magistracy found in him a public and private protector. The parliaments had themselves a great many clients, and their voices, given to the duc de Choiseul, gave him great power in the different provinces.
I knew myself to be generally disliked by her brother and sister-in-law, the prince and princesse de Beauvau, the latter of whom was secretly the mistress of the duc de Choiseul, over whom she exercised an equal empire with the duchesse de Grammont, and I was every day the object of some fresh attack on their part. I used sometimes to complain of this to the marechale.
Madame treated him with greater distinction than any previous Minister, and his manners towards her were the most agreeable it is possible to conceive, at once respectful and gallant. He never passed a day without seeing her. M. de Marigny could not endure M. de Choiseul, but he never spoke of him, except to his intimate friends. Calling, one day, at Quesnay's, I found him there.
The pot-au-feu hangs in the great chimney over the blazing logs; the village gossips are there the postilion in his clumsy jack-boots, the housewife, and the curé with a friend sipping his glass of red wine and on the walls Louis le bien-aimé, with baton and perruque, is balanced by Sanctus Paulus, with a sword much bigger than himself, or by the "Ordonnances de Monsieur le Duc de Choiseul, Grand Maître des Postes et Relais de France."
"Then why not follow so excellent an example, sire?" replied I; " and since your Choiseul is weary of Chanteloup, why not command him upon some political errand to the court of Madrid." "Heaven preserve me from such a thing," exclaimed Louis XV. "Such a man as he is ought never to quit the kingdom, and I have been guilty of considerable oversight to leave him the liberty of so doing.
Forgetting the maxims of Louis XIV., who well understood the danger of confiding the administration to noblemen, you have chosen M. de Choiseul, and even given him three departments; which is a much heavier burden than that which he would have to support as Prime Minister, because the latter has only to oversee the details executed by the Secretaries of State.
She was determined to uphold the duc de Choiseul; and my decided manner towards that minister plainly evinced how little I should feel inclined to support her view of things. There were therefore several reasons for my presence at court being unpleasant to madame Adelaide. Against her therefore did the duc de la Vauguyon direct his batteries.
Who can assure you, that some one among them may not do that for the duke which he would never venture to attempt himself? "This is the personal danger your majesty runs so long as M. de Choiseul continues in office; were he dismissed, the world would soon abandon the disgraced minister, and the dauphiness be amongst the first to forget him."
He embraced the Catholic faith, entered into the free community of the priests of Saint Roch, at Paris, and was for some time preceptor to the children of the marquis de Choiseul, brother of the famous duke de Choiseul, the last minister of the school of Richelieu and Mazarin. A remarkable talent for speaking gave him a distinguished reputation in the pulpit.
M. de Choiseul appeared much affected; he praised my zeal, and said that he had already perceived some indications of what I told him; that he would not mention my name, but would try to draw from her an explanation. I don't know what he said to her; but, from that time, she was much more calm.
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