We shall meet again with this amiable weakness for explaining his failures by reasons which are less correct than they are complimentary to himself. Even yet he did not give up hope. His marriage with Mademoiselle Méliand had given him a right to expect the reversion of the Intendancy of Lille.[138] He now tried to arrange for its transference to him; but M. Méliand drove a hard bargain and the negotiation fell through. We now reach one of the turning-points in d'Argenson's life. Never was a man more commendably eager to distinguish himself, to play his part in the world, and to preserve an honourable name in honour by contributing his share towards the "Bien Public." He now saw himself, chiefly through his own lack of patient adroitness, banished to the obscurity of private life. He found misfortune a stern mistress, but her lessons were as worth learning as they were hard to learn. It was indeed at this time of disappointment that his mind became imbued with what is rarest and greatest in his political thought. While his brother, in the Orléans household, strove, by all the arts of which he was a master, to win his way back to power, d'Argenson withdrew entirely from the scene. He called to mind the words of his father, that "a lofty and ambitious man will have all or nothing;" and, in M. Aubertin's phrase, he became content with nothing that he might have all. For some years we hear nothing of him; it is only in 1731 that he again appears upon the scene under the protection of the minister Chauvelin. His life in the interval must be reserved for another chapter. In the present, but one word remains to be said; it is perhaps the most important of all.