King Louis XV. had taken a fresh step in the shameful irregularity of his life; on the 15th of April, 1764, Madame de Pompadour had died, at the age of forty-two, of heart disease.  As frivolous as she was deeply depraved and baseminded in her calculating easiness of virtue, she had more ambition than comported with her mental calibre or her force of character; she had taken it into her head to govern, by turns promoting and overthrowing the ministers, herself proffering advice to the king, sometimes to good purpose, but more often still with a levity as fatal as her obstinacy.  Less clever, less ambitious, but more potent than Madame de Pompadour over the faded passions of a monarch aged before his time, the new favorite, Madame Dubarry, made the least scrupulous blush at the lowness of her origin and the irregularity of her life.  It was, nevertheless, in her circle that the plot was formed against the Duke of Choiseul.  Bold, ambitious, restless, presumptuous sometimes in his views and his hopes, the minister had his heart too nearly in the right place and too proper a spirit to submit to either the yoke of Madame Dubarry or that of the shameless courtiers who made use of her influence.  Chancellor Maupeou, the Duke of Aiguillou, and the new comptroller-general, Abbe Terray, a man of capacity, invention, and no scruple at all, at last succeeded in triumphing over the force of habit, the only thing that had any real effect upon the king’s listless mind.  After twelve years’ for a long while undisputed power, after having held in his hands the whole government of France and the peace of Europe, M. de Choiseul received from the king on the 24th of December, 1770, a letter in these terms:—­

“Cousin, the dissatisfaction caused me by your services forces me to banish you to Chanteloup, whither you will repair within twenty-four hours.  I should have sent you much further off, but for the particular regard I have for Madame de Choiseul, in whose health I feel great interest.  Take care your conduct does not force me to alter my mind.  Whereupon I pray God, cousin, to have you in His holy and worthy keeping.”

The thunderbolt which came striking the Duke of Choiseul called forth a fresh sign of the times.  The fallen minister was surrounded in his disgrace with marks of esteem and affection on the part of the whole court.  The princes themselves and the greatest lords felt it an honor to pay him a visit at his castle of Chanteloup.  He there displayed a magnificence which ended by swallowing up his wife’s immense fortune, already much encroached upon during his term of power.  Nothing was too much for the proud devotion and passionate affection of the Duchess of Choiseul:  she declined the personal favors which the king offered her, setting all her husband’s friends the example of a fidelity which was equally honorable to them and to him.  Acute observers read a tale of the growing weakness of absolute power in the crowd which still flocked to a minister in disgrace; the Duke of Choiseul remained a power even during a banishment which was to last as long as his life.