“Never shall I forget the horror of the calamities we were enduring in France, when Queen Mary Leckzinska arrived,” says M. d’Argenson.  “A continuance of rain had caused famine, and it was much aggravated by the bad government under the duke.  That government, whatever may be said of it, was even more hurtful through bad judgment than from interested views, which had not so much to do with it as was said.  There were very costly measures taken to import foreign corn; but that only augmented the alarm, and, consequently, the dearness.

“Fancy the unparalleled misery of the country-places!  It was just the time when everybody was thinking of harvests and ingatherings of all sorts of things, which it had not been possible to get in for the continual rains; the poor farmer was watching for a dry moment to get them in; meanwhile all the district was beaten with many a scourge.  The peasants had been sent off to prepare the roads by which the queen was to pass, and they were only the worse for it, insomuch that Her Majesty was often within a thought of drowning; they pulled her from her carriage by the strong arm, as best they might.  In several stopping-places she and her suite were swimming in water which spread everywhere, and that in spite of the unparalleled pains that had been taken by a tyrannical ministry.”

It was under such sad auspices that Mary Leckzinska arrived at Versailles.  Fleury had made no objection to the marriage.  Louis XV. accepted it, just as he had allowed the breaking-off of his union with the Infanta and that of France with Spain.  For a while the duke had hopes of reaping all the fruit of the unequal marriage he had just concluded for the King of France.  The queen was devoted to him; he enlisted her in an intrigue against Fleury.  The king was engaged with his old preceptor; the queen sent for him; he did not return.  Fleury waited a long while.  The duke and Paris-Duverney had been found with the queen; they had papers before them; the king had set to work with them.  When he went back, at length, to his closet, Louis XV. found the bishop no longer there; search was made for him; he was no longer in the palace.

The king was sorry and put out; the Duke of Mortemart, who was his gentleman of the bed-chamber, handed him a letter from Fleury.  The latter had retired to Issy, to the countryhouse of the Sulpicians; he bade the king farewell, assuring him that he had for a long while been resolved, according to the usage of his youth, to put some space between the world and death.  Louis began to shed tears; Mortemart proposed to go and fetch Fleury, and got the order given him to do so.  The duke had to write the letter of recall.  Next morning the bishop was at Versailles, gentle and modest as ever, and exhibiting neither resentment nor surprise.  Six months later, however, the king set out from Versailles to go and visit the Count and Countess of Toulouse at Rambouillet.  The duke was in attendance at his