But evil times were coming on our abbe.  In the ministry he was assailed by showers of chansons and epigrams.  The Count de Tressan, above all, overwhelmed him with a violent satire.  He could no longer hold his ground.  Every one began to grow tired of him, even the fair president of the council; this was the coup de grace.  The Duc de Choiseul, after replacing him in the good graces of Madame de Pompadour, succeeded also to his portfolio as minister.  As some compensation, however, they gave him the cardinal’s hat; a circumstance which elicited from some wit of the day the following couplet:—­

  On dirait que Son Eminence
  N’eut le chapeau de cardinal
  Que pour tirer sa reverence.

Shortly afterward he was appointed Archbishop of Alby; but, according to custom, he never appeared in his diocese.  In 1769 he departed for Rome, being nominated ambassador at the conclave for the nomination of Clement XIV., that priest so gay, so gentle, and so witty, who has written that sad people are like shrubs which never flower.  Pope and cardinal understood each other admirably well.  Our cardinal never returned to France; he had found in Rome a second fatherland, as sweet to his old ago as France had been to his youth.  He inhabited a magnificent palace, which was for a length of time the hospitable refuge for all French travelers.  All had ready welcome, from the humble priest and poor artist to the Princes and princesses of the blood royal.  To use his own words,—­“He kept an auberge of France in a square of Europe.”  He died in 1794, faithful to his God and to his king, and bitterly denouncing the French Revolution, which had despoiled him of his half million of francs per annum, and had swept disdainfully away all the pretty artificial flowers of his most artificial poetry.  He died solitary and poor,—­a strong contrast to the style in which he had lived.  But to return.

Madame d’Etioles passed in the eyes of the world as a perfect model of a virtuous wife.  She swore eternal fidelity to her husband, unless Louis XV. should fall in love with her,—­a reservation her husband was the first to laugh at.  At first this strange condition was spoken of as an excellent joke in the house; from thence it spread abroad, and finally reached Versailles.  But the king, wishing to joke in return, contented himself by saving,—­“I should like very much to see this husband.”

M. d’Etioles possessed an abandoned chateau in the forest of Senart; Madame d’Etioles having learned that the king frequently hunted in the forest, persuaded her husband to have the chateau newly furnished, and put into a habitable state, alleging that the physicians had recommended a change of air for her vapors.  The husband, suspecting nothing, had the chateau re-furnished an decorated in the most superb style.  Once installed in her new abode, Madame d’Etioles gave orders for the building of three or four carriages of a most fairy-like lightness and