At the climax of the Grand Age, ere the slope of Avernus had yet begun, the King's justice was administered in the district of Angoulême by as strange a magistrate as ever shocked the susceptibilities of a court. He was in the prime of life, tall, dark, with striking features, and a glance that was charming and might be terrible. A strange figure did he make in that district court of Angoulême, as he sat dispensing justice quick and plentiful, patching up suits, cutting down fees, driving a vigorous pen through venerable formalities, and fondling the muzzle of his great hound, who sat blinking placidly upon the fuming functionaries, without the faintest sense of his unwarrantable intrusion.[14] So things went on until, in 1694, a special commission for the reform of abuses in the administration of justice appeared in Angoulême. My lords discovered, probably with equal surprise, the absence of abuses, and the presence of an extraordinary man. Of his capacity as a magistrate they had ample evidence before them; and the lighter experiences of a commission on circuit were sufficient to convince them that M. d'Argenson was excellent company, a man brimful of life and energy, whose wit sparkled with his wine.[15] To leave him to rust in a provincial court was of course out of the question. He was plied with hearty invitations to Paris and generous promises of service. "As a matter of fact, my father was not an ambitious man";[16] and it was only after much solicitation that he was decoyed to the capital, and introduced by M. de Caumartin, his friend of the commission, to the reigning Controller-General. Three years afterwards, at the age of thirty-nine, he was appointed chief of the Parisian police; and for twenty years and more, from the time of Ryswick to well on in the Regency, he became "the soul, always in action, scarcely ever in evidence,"[17] the soul of the great metropolis.