There are two sides to the questions suggested by the government of Fleury. There is no denying that his negative policy conferred great benefits on France; there is equally little question that it sowed the seed of many a disaster. If he did nothing to dissipate the resources of the country, he did equally little to increase them. He neglected commerce, and through the accident of the time it flourished. He neglected finance and the interior, and the ruin of the provinces proceeded unchecked. During these six years he did nothing for the policy of France abroad, and it drifted into the state in which we are soon to see it. In a word, he raised political nihilism to the dignity of a faith, and the deluge of circumstance had to be faced by his successors. His policy brought its peculiar consequences. The most striking was the decadence of the French marine. But it produced an effect which was far less obvious, and far more insidiously fatal. With M. Chauvelin, he had banished from his ministry its only element of constructive strength. D'Argenson had been glad that the man whose "ideas were too great and lofty," was in power no longer, and only too ready to take shelter beneath the bourgeois policy of Fleury.[241] He was not long in discovering his error. The world is not a bourgeois creation, nor can it be governed upon bourgeois principles; and if genius in power is often destructive, it is none the less often necessary. It was by the consistent ostracism of genius that Fleury, in a profoundly critical period, maintained himself in power; and when his will at last succumbed to circumstance, he left his country to drift before the winds bereft of policy or guiding hand. We have soon to examine one department of the government, and that in connection with d'Argenson himself. There may be reason to suggest that if his criticism of Fleury has been violent and harsh, the conduct of French foreign policy during the years 1745 and 1746 is one long commentary upon its substantial justice. D'Argenson was a man of strange political sympathy and insight. Barbier and the element he represented, might look on with applause, and commend the Cardinal's moderation and prudence. To a patriot who had the sagacity to foresee what his so-called moderation might mean, the spectacle must have been full of provocation; and it is sufficient to conclude that if d'Argenson's narrative is deformed by the violence of exasperation, its motives were as pure as the feeling was keen. It is with the pleasure of relief that we turn to another interest of d'Argenson's life, as sweet and engaging as the former is sometimes repellent. It presents him, not as the violent, eager partisan, but in the light of a loyal and warm-hearted friendship. It is in the spring of 1739 that we mark the beginning of his intimacy with Voltaire.