Pombal, although he was executing some of the reforms called for by the Encyclopædists, was no way connected with them, and he is perhaps the only man of mark of this epoch whom Voltaire has not favoured with a word of his inexhaustible correspondence. On the contrary, the Patriarch of Ferney often blames the marquis for his affected deference to the Pope and respect for religion, as well as for his cruelty, so displeasing to the naturally humane heart of Voltaire. Choiseul was indeed for a time the friend of Pombal, and acted in concert with him in affairs of general policy. But Pombal was too haughty, he had too exaggerated an opinion of his own capacity, to act under or by the direction of any man whatever. Besides, the well-known character of Choiseul renders it altogether incredible that he could have been long and deeply engaged in a plot to expel the Jesuits from Europe. The duke was the type of the French gentilhommes of the eighteenth century. He possessed the incredulity, the grace, the vanity, the courage, and that levity which would have sacrificed the dearest interests to the pleasure of an epigram, and which was so characteristic of the French noblesse in the former part of Louis XV.’s reign. He was too frivolous to be capable of nourishing in his heart for years a deep scheme of malice; nor did he honour or value the Jesuits enough to make them the object of a mortal enmity. On the contrary, with the Count of Kaunitz, the Austrian minister, he ridiculed the sort of passion with which the Marquis of Pombal persecuted the sons of Loyola. “Ce, Monsieur,” they would say, “a donc toujours un Jesuite a cheval sur le nez.”[343] However, it is evident that Choiseul could not be the man to protect the Jesuits: it is evident that, to please Madame de Pompadour, and to court public opinion, he must have shewn himself unfavourable to the fathers, and must have pursued them with his sarcasms. It is also certain that afterwards he became their enemy, not out of hatred, but rather to comply with Charles III.’s wishes, and in order to get rid of them, and that he used all his influence to have them expelled from France, and ultimately abolished. The duke renders our assertions incontestable, when, in a memorial addressed to the king, after having reminded him that he had not been the man who had commenced the great measure of the expulsion of the Jesuits, he adds, “Your Majesty knows well that, although it has been said that I have laboured at the expulsion of the Jesuits, ... I have in no way, either at a distance or on the spot, either in public or in private, taken any step with this intent.” And he finishes by saying, that only at a later period, after he had known them, he had become their enemy. When, then, the duke made application to Rome to obtain the nomination of a vicar-general who should reside in France, with authority independent of the General, he was personally indifferent in the question.