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 passion