In the days when Mazarin was king, France had no more able or trusted servant than René de Voyer, Count d'Argenson. He was a nobleman of old Touraine--one of his ancestors had sailed with St. Louis[2]--and now in these latter days, he worthily fulfilled the promise of his name by a rich devotion to his country and her master. Mazarin knew his worth. He commends him to Cardinal Grimaldi as "_huomo versato e prudente_,"[3] a phrase which is translated in an earlier letter to d'Argenson himself, where he compliments him on "_la prudence et l'adresse_" with which he had governed the Catalans.[4] His life was passed amid the stress and movement of affairs, the scene changing as circumstances of delicacy and danger called for the intervention of an accomplished hand. Only once, in 1640, is the sequence of activity broken, to reveal to us a sidelight of character which is brightly suggestive. Released for a time from the cares of administration--he had fallen into the hands of the Spaniards[5]--he employed the leisure so rudely thrust upon him in translating Thomas à Kempis, and in composing a treatise on "The Wisdom of a Christian." Years after, now grown old in the King's service, he laid aside the sword and robe, to don the cassock and die a servant of the Church.[6] The portrait is broadly drawn, but already the features are clearly marked. We pass on to his son, René II.[7] We are at once arrested. Were it not for the doublet and hose of the seventeenth century, we should mistake him for his own grandson. Young René de Voyer was destined, like his father, for the diplomatic service. His political pilgrimage had scarce begun when a cloud fell across his path. A rumour got abroad to the effect that the youthful diplomatist would be also a poet, and moreover, that he gave more time to religious exercises than was good for a young man who had the world before him. And so it was that when d'Argenson left for Venice with the King's commission, there was some misgiving in exalted circles; prayer and praise might be all very well, but they were not among the recognised resources of earthly diplomacy. Be that as it may, d'Argenson succeeded in commending himself to the citizens of the Republic.[8] At home he was not so fortunate. As his grandson observes, the embassy was a mistake.[9] In the first place, the thousand little complaisances, respectable and other, which were among the first conditions of comfort at court, were quite beyond him. Practically they filled him with despair, morally with disgust. Moreover he was cursed with that species of reserve which often comes of extreme humility, and is almost always attributed to extreme pride. When things went wrong at headquarters, he took to railing against the vices of the great; he fell out with Mazarin as he afterwards did with Colbert; and finally, after a few years of thankless labour, he was dismissed, and the door of advancement was closed against him. D'Argenson accepted his fate.