[201] The persecution to which M. de Chalotais was subjected has been detailed in a work extending to three volumes quarto, entitled “Procès Extraordinaire contre MM. Caradeuc de la Chalotais,” &c., with this singular motto: “Ad perpetuam sceleris memoriam.” He appears to have narrowly escaped with his life. The most important witness against him was a young Maître de Requêtes, M. de Calonne, twenty years later unhappily celebrated as the minister of Louis the Sixteenth. The trial gives a frightful picture of the state of criminal justice in France in those days. M. de Chalotais had pure motives, and was an able man; but his indiscretion, the irascibility of his temper, and the bitterness with which he treated all who differed from him in opinion, no doubt greatly aggravated his difficulties. His first work, “Compte rendu des Constitutions des Jesuites,” appeared in 1762, he being then sixty-one years of age: from that time until his death, in 1785, he maintained a hot and incessant warfare against the Court and religious parties, who regarded him as the representative of principles fraught with ruin to them both. This struggle no doubt materially hastened the Revolution. An interesting account of the proceedings against Chalotais is given in Anquetil (Hist. de France, vol. viii. p. 106–116), one of the best parts of a book of slender merit, and also in Sismondi (Hist. des Français, vol. xxix. p. 321), and in the able article on Chalotais in the Biographie Universelle.--E. [202] It would be difficult to find, in the various histories of the period, a more ably drawn character of the Duc de Choiseul than this. The Duc was born in 1719. His administration lasted from 1757 to 1770, and he died in 1785.--E. [203] It should be recollected that D’Alembert’s intimacy with Mademoiselle Espinasse had caused him to quarrel with Walpole’s old friend, Madame du Deffand. He wrote much that has long ceased to be read; but his Introduction to the Encyclopédie is a very able work, and as a mathematician he was one of the most eminent of his day. He died in 1783, aged sixty-six.--E. [204] Nor could they be respected as judges are in England, as solicitation is practised in France in all causes. Where there is solicitation, there must be partiality. Where partiality is, there must be injustice; and injustice will never be popular. [205] In his youth he had served with some distinction in Italy, where, in conjunction with the Infant Don Philip, he commanded the allied army of France and Spain. He possessed the personal courage, the cleverness, the turn for political intrigue, and the wrong-headedness which seemed hereditary in his family. The part he took in the affairs of the Parliament gained him the sobriquet, from the King, of “Mon Cousin l’Avocat.” He died in 1776, aged fifty-nine.--E.