Madame de Pompadour, who to the end of her life governed Louis XV. by habit, by which he was always governed, had established the Duc de Choiseul in the Ministry, and left him in possession of the chief share of power. Cardinal de Fleury and she had been successively absolute: but the King had never resigned himself entirely to anybody else. The Duc de Choiseul had quick parts, and dispatched business with the same rapidity that he conceived it. His ambition was boundless, his insolence ungoverned,[4] his discretion unrestrained, his love of pleasure and dissipation predominant even over his ambition. He was both an open enemy and a generous one, and had more joy in attacking his foes than in punishing them. Whether from gaiety or presumption, he never was dismayed. His vanity made him always depend on the success of his plans; and his spirits made him soon forget the miscarriage of them. He had no idea of national or domestic economy, which being a quality of prudence and providence, could not enter into so audacious a mind. He would project and determine the ruin of a country, but could not meditate a little mischief, or a narrow benefit. In private his sallies and good humour were pleasing, and would have been more pleasing if his manner had not been overbearing and self-sufficient. The latter created him enemies; the former, friends.[5] Among the first were the Maréchal de Richelieu and the Duc d’Aiguillon. To the impertinence of a fashionable old beau,[6] Richelieu added all the little intrigues and treacheries of a Court, having tried every method but merit to raise himself to the first post. At past seventy he still flattered himself with the vision of pleasing women[7] and governing the King, because the King at near sixty had not done being pleased with women. The Duc d’Aiguillon[8] was universally abhorred. His abominable tyranny and villany in his Government of Bretagne had made him dreaded; and his ambition being much superior to his abilities, he had betrayed the badness of his heart before he had reached the object to which he aspired.[9] The Duc de Choiseul despised Richelieu, and had kept down d’Aiguillon. They were connected before; their resentments and views united them more intimately, but it was the contemptible one that shook their antagonist’s power.