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 thousand times more excited upon all sorts of matters, and your ministry is almost as divided and as feeble as that of your predecessor.  Consider, Sir, that, in the course of nature, you have fifty years to reign, and reflect what progress may be made by a disorder which, in twenty years, has reached the pitch at which we see it.”

Turgot and Malesherbes had fallen; they had vainly attempted to make the soundest as well as the most moderate principles of pure philosophy triumphant in the government; at home a new attempt, bolder and at the same time more practical, was soon about to resuscitate for a while the hopes of liberal minds; abroad and in a new world there was already a commencement of events which were about to bring to France a revival of glory and to shed on the reign of Louis XVI. a moment’s legitimate and brilliant lustre.

CHAPTER LVII.——­LOUIS XVI.—­FRANCE ABROAD.—­UNITED STATES’ WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. 1775-1783.

“Two things, great and difficult as they may be, are a man’s duty and may establish his fame.  To support misfortune and be sturdily resigned to it; to believe in the good and trust in it perseveringly. [M.  Guizot, Washington].

“There is a sight as fine and not less salutary than that of a virtuous man at grips with adversity; it is the sight of a virtuous man at the head of a good cause and securing its triumph.