_Monsieur le Duc_, on his side, neglected nothing to make himself popular. Though his manners were usually somewhat brusque, he could be charming when he chose to take the trouble, and, during the first few weeks of his Ministry, he was so affable and so courteous, so considerate and so obliging, that he pleased everyone who approached him. The good impression thus created was strengthened by the diminution of several taxes which had weighed very hardly on the Parisians, and by the magnanimity he displayed towards those whose hostility to him was notorious; and soon the gazettes were chanting in unison the praises of the new Prime Minister, and declaring that France was indeed fortunate to have so admirable a prince at the head of affairs. But this popularity was only momentary, for the difficulties of the situation were immense, the task before him one of the most ungrateful that could well be imagined; and it would have needed a far more experienced and subtle politician than _Monsieur le Duc_ to have steered a safe course amid the shoals and quicksands that surrounded him. The Treasury was empty and the follies of the “System” still unpaid for; commerce was almost annihilated; the Church rent by the Jansenist schism; the Court a battle-ground for contending factions, one of which regarded the new Prime Minister with the bitterest hostility. And, in place of the Regent and Dubois, three new powers had arisen; two close at hand, the young King and his preceptor, Fleury, Bishop of Fréjus; the other distant, Spain, represented by Philip V. The young Louis XV., whose majority had been proclaimed six months before, on completing his thirteenth year, was a most perplexing factor in the situation. D’Argenson calls him “an impenetrable personage”; Luynes “an indefinable being”; in a word, he was a mystery to the whole Court. Ostensibly, he cared for nothing but the chase, gambling[265] and the pleasures of the table; but many were of opinion that this frivolity and indifference were but assumed; that very little that took place escaped him; and that the time was not far distant when he would begin to assert his authority in no uncertain manner. Morose, uncommunicative, egotistical, he repulsed all the efforts of the courtiers of both sexes to ingratiate themselves with him, and reserved his confidence, and the little affection of which he seemed capable, for one person--his preceptor, the Bishop of Fréjus.