In France happened a sudden revolution, as soon forgotten as it had been unforeseen. The Cardinal de Bernis was the new Prime Minister. He had an easy talent for trifling poetry; it was his whole merit and his whole fortune. Madame Pompadour was pleased with some of his incense offered to her, and first sent him to Venice, then to the Hague, where he distinguished himself by an intriguing vivacity. These qualifications and his attachment to her seemed solid enough to the mistress to fit the Abbé-Comte de Bernis for the government of France, where even these superficial talents were not outshined, so exhausted in that country was the vein of genius. Bernis was made a Cardinal, and amassed benefices to the amount of 14,000_l._ a year; but was scarce settled in that exalted station before he received a _lettre de cachet_ as he was going to bed, ordering him to retire to his Bishopric by ten the next morning. The cause of this rapid fall was imputed to his own folly. He who had scrupled to receive no benefits from the mistress, nay, whose flatteries had obtained the greatest, and whose conscience had stooped to owe to her interest the first dignity in the church, grew at once conscientiously ungrateful, and arrogantly absurd, refusing to wait on her in her apartment, and to communicate in the dignity of the purple with a woman of so unsanctimonious a character. The world laughed at his impertinent pretences, and she punished them. Lord Granville, hearing the swift progress of this meteor, said, “Soh! his ministry has been almost as short as mine!” At this stage I shall make a pause in my work, uncertain whether ever to be resumed, though I am rather inclined to prolong it to the conclusion of the war. I warn my readers, however, not to expect as much intelligence and information in any subsequent pages of these Memoirs as may have appeared in the preceding. During the former period I lived in the centre of business, was intimately connected with many of the chief actors, was eager in politics, indefatigable in heaping up knowledge and materials for my work. Now, detached from those busy scenes, with many political connexions dropped or dissolved, indifferent to events, and indolent, I shall have fewer opportunities of informing myself of others. And here perhaps it may not be improper, or unwelcome to the reader, if I say some words on the author of these Memoirs: the frankness of the manner will prove it flows from no vain glory; yet to take off all such appearance, and to avoid a nauseous egotism, I shall make use of the third person.