efensive Alliance which I form with
her, I provide myself [but ask Bruhl withal!] a help against Austria. I
would not henceforth attack a cat, except to defend myself.' ["These
are his very words," adds D'Arget;--and well worth noting.] (Ambition
(GLOIRE) and my interests were the occasion of my first Campaigns.
The late Kaiser's situation, and my zeal for France [not to mention
interests again], gave rise to these second: and I have been fighting
always since for my own hearths,--for my very existence, I might say!
Once more, I know the state I had got into:--if I saw Prince Karl at
the gates of Paris, I would not stir.'--'And us at the gates of Vienna,'
answered I promptly, 'with the same indifference?'--'Yes; and I swear
it to you, D'Arget. In a word, I want to have some good of my life (VEUX
JOUIR). What are we, poor human atoms, to get up projects that cost so
much blood? Let us live, and help to live.'

"The rest of the conversation passed in general talk, about Literature,
Theatres and such objects. My reasonings and objectings, on the great
matter, I need not farther detail: by the frank discourse his Prussian
Majesty was kind enough to go into, you may gather perhaps that my
arguments were various, and not ill-chosen;--and it is too evident they
have all been in vain."--Your Excellency's (really in a very faithful
way)-- D'ARGET. [Valori, i. 290-294 (no date, except "Dresden,
1745,"--sleepy Editor feeling no want of any).]

D'Arget, about a month after this, was taken into Friedrich's service;
Valori consenting, whose occupation was now gone;--and we shall hear of
D'Arget again. Take this small Note, as summary of him: "D'Arget (18th
January, 1746) had some title, 'Secretary at Orders (SECRETAIRE DES
COMMANDEMENTS),' bit of pension; and continued in the character of
reader, or miscellaneous literary attendant and agent, very much liked
by his Master, for six years coming. A man much heard of, during those
years of office. March, 1752, having lost his dear little Prussian Wife,
and got into ill health and spirits, he retired on leave to Paris; and
next year had to give up the thought of returning;--though he still, and
to the end, continued loyally attached to his old Master, and more
or less in correspondence with him. Had got, before long, not through
Friedrich's influence at Paris, some small Appointment in the ECOLE
MILITAIRE there. He is, of all the Frenchmen Friedrich had about him,
with the exception of