Unfortunately, Madame de Pompadour was headstrong, which is one of the attributes of mediocrity of mind. Confounding heroism with obstinacy, she thought that to struggle indefinitely against ill fortune, was to display greatness of soul. The more faults a general of her choice committed, the more inveterately did she uphold him. She was like those gamesters who are checked by no ill luck, and who never give up playing until they are ruined. Public opinion condemned such obstinacy. The French do not know how to support reverses. They overwhelmed Soubise, defeated at Rossbach, with sarcasms, and appeared to be infatuated with the victor. People took the fashion of exalting Frederick the Great and of cursing his enemy, Madame de Pompadour, Cotillion IV., as she was called. Soubise was the scape-goat on whom rained all the jests, chansons, and satires:-- “Soubise dit, la lanterne à la main, J’ai beau chercher, où diable est mon armée? Elle était là pourtant hier matin, Me l’a-t-on prise où l’aurais-je égarée? Ah! je perds tout, je suis un étourdi; Mais attendons au grand jour, à midi. Que vois-je? O ciel! Que mon âme est ravie! Prodige heureux, la voilà, la voilà!-- Ah! ventre bleu! Qu’est-ce donc que cela? Je me trompais, c’est l’armée ennemie.”[51] It is not by means of chansons that France can retrieve herself. She plays into the enemy’s hand by showing herself more Prussian than Prussia. Bernis finds himself submerged by this deluge of criticisms and assaults. “I am threatened by anonymous letters,” he wrote again to Choiseul in 1758, “with being presently torn to pieces by the people, and though I do not greatly fear such menaces, it is certain that approaching misfortunes which cannot be foreseen, could easily realize them. Our friend runs at least as much risk.” Ill in body and mind, Bernis could hold out no longer; he handed in his resignation. Louis XV accepted it in a letter dated October 9, 1758, which opened thus: “I am sorry, Monsieur the Abbé-Count, that the affairs you are charged with affect your health to such a point that you can no longer support the burden of the work.... I consent with regret to your turning over the foreign affairs to the hands of the Duke de Choiseul, whom I think to be at present the only suitable person, as I am disinclined to make an absolute change in the system I have adopted, or even to be spoken to about it.”