He had many qualities that go to make a decorative painter. Indeed, it is to the Frenchmen of the seventeen-hundreds to whom we may safely go for pictures that make the walls of a drawing-room a delight. Unlike the Italians, they are pleasing to live with. His painting of "La Fête de St. Cloud," in the dining-room of the Governor of the Bank of France, is one of the decorative landscapes of the world. He was now producing works in considerable numbers--it is his first, his detailed period, somewhat severe in arrangement and style as to composition and handling--the years of "Love the Conqueror," the "Bolt," the "Fountain of Love," of "Le Serment d'Amour," the "Gimblette," "Les Baigneuses," the "Sleeping Bacchante," the "Début du modèle," and the like. His master, Boucher, was grown old; he could not carry out the commissions for the decoration of rooms and for paintings with which he was overwhelmed; and it was in order to help forward his brilliant pupil, his "Frago," that he now introduced him to his old friend and patron the farmer-general Bergeret de Grandcour--a man of great wealth, a lover of art, and an honorary member of the Royal Academy--who became one of Fragonard's most lavish patrons and most intimate friends. Bergeret de Grandcour commissioned several panels in this, Fragonard's thirty-fifth year--the year of his painting the superb "Fête de St. Cloud." This is towards the end of that period of minute and detailed painting which he did with such consummate skill, yet without bringing pettiness into his largeness of conception. Meantime, Choiseul's masterly mind, having secured peace abroad, saw that France, if she were to keep her sovereign State, must be first cleansed from the dangers that threatened from within. He turned to the blotting out of the turbulent order of the Jesuits, whose vindictive acts against, and quarrels with, the Parliaments, and whose galling and oppressive tyranny, had roused the bitter hatred of the magistracy and of the people throughout the land. Choiseul they treated as their bitterest enemy. He decided to blot them out, root and branch, from France. The popular party closed up its ranks. Choiseul had not long to wait. The chance came in odd fashion enough. An attempt by the Order to end the Pompadour's scandalous relations with the king was the quaint thing--the match that started the explosion. With all his skill of state-craft, Choiseul leaped to the weapon. In secret concert with the king's powerful favourite he struck at them through the bankruptcy of their banking concerns in the West Indies, caused by their losses in the wars with England; and Louis abolished the society out of the land, secularising its members, and seizing its property.