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"Always, monseigneur." "And you, D'Argenson, what is your opinion?" "That your enemies are capable of anything, monseigneur; but that we will mar their plots, whatever they may be, I give you my word." At this moment the door opened, and the Duc de Maine was announced, who came to attend the council, and whose privilege it was, as prince of the blood, not to be kept waiting.
Together with the salutary terrors of death, Louis XV.'s repentance soon disappeared; the queen and the dauphin went back again to the modest and pious retirement in which they passed their life; the marchioness returned in triumph to Versailles. MM. de Machault and D'Argenson were exiled; the latter, who had always been hostile to the favorite, was dismissed with extreme harshness.
He was the first up on the day of action; he himself at four o'clock awoke Count d'Argenson, minister of war, who on the instant sent to ask Marshal Saxe for his final orders. The marshal was found in a carriage of osier-work, which served him for a bed, and in which he had himself drawn about when his exhausted powers no longer allowed him to sit his horse."
Our fleet was then unofficially harassing that of France in America. Meanwhile, France negotiated the secret treaty with Austria, while Frederick joined hands with England. Dunkirk began to wear a very warlike aspect, in despite of treaties which bound France to keep it dismantled. 'Je savais que nous avions triche avec les Anglais, says d'Argenson.
De Gevres was sent by the King to entreat Charles to leave France; 'he received de Gevres gallantly, his hand on his sword-hilt. D'Argenson saw him at the opera on December 3, 1748, 'fort gai et fort beau, admire de tout le public. On December 10, 1748, Charles was arrested at the door of the opera house, bound hand and foot, searched, and dragged to Vincennes.
Clancarty gave himself forth as a representative of the English Jacobites, but d'Argenson, in his 'Memoires, says he could produce no names of men of rank in the party except his own. D'Argenson was pestered by women, priests, and ragged Irish adventurers. In September 1745, the Earl Marischal and Clancarty visited d'Argenson, then foreign minister of Louis XV. in the King's camp in Flanders.
"Madame de Prie has engaged a queen, as I might engage a valet to-morrow," writes Marquis d'Argenson; it is a pity." When the first overtures from the duke arrived at Weissenburg, King Stanislaus entered the room where his wife and daughter were at work, and, "Fall we on our knees, and thank God!" he said. "My dear father," exclaimed the princess, "can you be recalled to the throne of Poland?"
Songs and poems were written against Louis XV, D'Argenson, as we know, being out of office, composed a play on Charles's martyrdom. So much contempt for Louis was excited, that a nail was knocked into the coffin of French royalty. Applause and pity from the fickle and forgetful the Prince had won, but his condition was now desperate.
The object of d'Argenson is plain; he wished to keep Charles out of the Pope's domains, as England wanted to drive the Prince into the centre of 'Popery. If he resided in Rome, Protestant England would always suspect Charles; moreover, he would be remote from the scene of action. To the Pope's domains, therefore, Charles would not go.
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