"At last, my dear aunt, the taxes are achieving what all the preachers in the world have never dared to undertake. Luxury is no more. The balls of the Opera and Comedy are as deserted as the ante-chamber of M. Desmarets or M. de Pontchartrain.[111] The churches are rather more patronised than they were; there, for example, you see men of business who have not yet been taxed, praying, at the foot of the altar, for a lot more pleasant than has fallen to their companions; you see poor Molinists beside themselves at the triumph of their adversaries, and sighing for the re-establishment of Jesuit influence. There you see many a young girl in tears, sorrowing for the purse of the financier who used to keep her in such gay profusion, and crying out upon the harshness of the powers that be at present, who work to construct their own fortunes before taking thought for that of their mistresses. Even me you see there now and again, vastly puzzled as to where I shall dine or sup, and turned pious for want of something better to do." After reading such a passage as this, a new light breaks upon one of the first notices of Count d'Argenson that appear in the Journal, and upon a thousand more that follow at intervals for nearly thirty years. "It is certainly true that my brother has not the secret of attaching to himself the men whom he serves. His lack of interest is the principal cause; it lays him open to the charge of insincerity in friendship."[112] It is here, in this "distraction," implicit in every line of that youthful letter, that we touch the real foundation for those continual charges of cold cleverness, absence of principle, paltriness of aim, pettiness of means, with which Count d'Argenson is pursued. It was this that divided the brothers with a severance of interest that nothing could bridge. At the outset of life their roads diverged. The one led to greatness through labyrinths of littleness; the other was the way of honest, impotent, disdainful obscurity. The simple truth was that the younger brother, keen, accomplished, utterly careless, was free to choose the pleasanter of the two; for the elder, it was barred from the beginning. His estrangement from the world had wholly unfitted him for the arts of complaisance and intrigue; and there was something within him which protested that they were as far beneath him as they were beyond his reach. D'Argenson went his own way; he found that it led nowhither. He was to learn that without those arts which he coveted and despised, devotion, disinterestedness, were no passport to power; yet, it is good to reflect, he would never consent to lose his devotion in the ignobler interests of a private life. When the last word is said, it may be found that of the two brothers it was he who had chosen the better part; and that if, in spite of him, knowledge and justice require us to count small blame to the one, we may ascribe with equal heartiness all honour to the other.