des
Choiseuls, and I will now return to the morning of the 24th of December.
When the exiles were fairly out of Paris, the king found himself not a
little embarrassed in the choice of a prime minister. Those who would
have suited our purposes did not meet with the king's approbation,
and he had not yet sufficient courage to venture upon electing one
who should be disagreeable to us; he therefore hit upon a curious
provisional election; the abbe Terray, for instance, was placed at the
head of the war department. This measure was excused by the assertion,
that it would require the head of a financier to look into and settle
the accounts, which the late minister had, no doubt, left in a very
confused state. Upon the same principle, M. Bertin was appointed to the
direction of foreign affairs, and M. de Boynes was invested solely with
the management of naval affairs. This man, who was counsellor of state,
and first president of the parliament of Besancon, knew not a letter of
the office thus bestowed upon him, but then he was bound body and soul
to the chancellor; and it was worth something to have a person who, it
might be relied on, would offer no opposition to the important reforms
which were to be set on foot immediately. We required merely automata,
and M. de Boynes answered our purpose perfectly well; for a provisional
minister nothing could have been better.

The king had at length (in his own opinion), hit upon a very excellent
minister of war; and the person selected was the chevalier, afterwards
comte de Muy, formerly usher to the late dauphin: he was a man of the
old school, possessing many sterling virtues and qualities. We were in
the utmost terror when his majesty communicated to us his election of
a minister of war, and declared his intention of immediately signifying
his pleasure to M. de Muy. Such a blow would have overthrown all our
projects. Happily chance befriended us; the modern Cato declared that
he should esteem himself most honored to serve his sovereign by every
possible endeavour, but that he could never be induced to enter my
service upon any pretext whatever. The strangeness of this refusal
puzzled Louis XV not a little. He said to me. "Can you make out the
real motive of this silly conduct? I had a better opinion of the man;
I thought him possessed of sense, but I see now that he is only fit for
the cowl of a monk; he will never be a minister." The king was mistaken;
M. de Muy became one under