In dealing with d'Argenson's action as Minister, it has been usual to attribute its strange inconsequence to his own weakness and oscillation of mind. The indictment is a hazardous one to prefer against the son of Marc René d'Argenson; and here it is only necessary to say that in nothing that he ever wrote or did has there appeared to be sufficient ground for it. There seem to have been few men who have formed their ideas with a more quick decision, or have clung to them with a more sane tenacity. His mind cut into the interests which engaged it sharp and clear as a diamond; the very fault of it was that it was incapable of those politic shifts, those timely irresolutions, which have often been the making of smaller men. Indeed, there is even ground for suggesting that if, in judging the events of d'Argenson's ministry, his own real share in them be scrupulously weighed, there may remain no reason to reject the opinion formed of him, in the beginning of their relations, by one of the ablest men of his own day, the Warden of the Seals himself. It is worth remarking that at this very time Chauvelin was so impressed with his intrepidity of mind that he thought of him as a possible premier president of the Vacation Chamber, designed to supersede the Parlement;[184] in other words, as the foremost instrument of the stringent measures contemplated by the Crown and the most conspicuous target of a virulent Opposition. Nor is this the only reply to an imputation which the mere turning of d'Argenson's pages might almost suffice to dissipate. Why, it may be asked, was this offer not accepted? D'Argenson himself shall furnish the answer, surely as pathetic as it is fatally true. He shrank at Chauvelin's suggestion, protesting that "at bottom he must be aware of my defects, and that, besides several others, I had that of being what is called shy and timid; I had been badly brought up; my father, when I was young, had given all the preference to my brother;[185] he had only known me during the last two years of his life when I was in the public service." Upon a word of deprecation, he repeated "it had not been the case in the latter time, and when he once knew me, the matter changed completely."[186] Indeed his new patron could not help regarding him with interest, and at the same time with embarrassment. He never tired of urging him to conquer the weakness which dogged his life. He invited him to his house, "where all France crowded," and asked him to regard it as his own;[187] he exhorted him to lose no opportunity of making himself at home with the world and the Court. He said "that before all things it was necessary to rescue me from the position in which I was, from a sort of obscurity."[188] His counsels were as assiduous as they were disinterested;[189] and they were at last heard with impatience by the man who felt that the power to follow them had passed for ever beyond his reach.