the midst of his painful functions, he was always to be touched by the voice of humanity;"[33] and there is a little picture, from the hand of Fontenelle, which tells so much that it must be placed upon the line. It is the picture of an audience at the bureau of police. "Surrounded and deafened by a crowd of people of the lower orders, most of them hardly knowing what had brought them there, violently agitated about matters of the most trifling nature and often only half understood, accustomed not to rational speaking but to senseless noise, he had neither the carelessness nor the contempt which the applicants and their affairs might well have induced; he gave himself up whole-heartedly to the meanest details, ennobled in his eyes by their necessary relation to the public good; he suited himself to ways of thinking the lowest and the most gross; he talked to every one in his own tongue."[34] And so for the space of one-and-twenty years Marc René d'Argenson went his way, more loved and feared than any man in Paris. But that was not all. In September, 1715, the Grand Monarque died; and Liberalism gathered up the reins and went cantering gaily into a morass. After three years, d'Argenson was called upon to help it out. These were the days of the great "System," and of the encampment in the Rue Quincampoix. The Regent, abandoning his chemical researches, had been studying alchemy under John Law. For some time the great Experiment had been going well, altogether too well, it appeared, as difficulties gathered round it one by one. One obstacle had to be removed, cost what it might. On acceding to power, Orleans, in the innocence of his heart, had restored to the Parlement the right of remonstrance. Messieurs of the Long Robe had so far presumed upon his confidence as to attempt to use it. Strong measures became necessary, and a strong man. The old chancellor, d'Aguesseau, retired, and in January, 1718, d'Argenson received the seals.[35] On the 26th of August the crisis had come, and King and Parlement were face to face in the hall of audience at the Tuileries. "At last all was arranged and the assembly had resumed their seats. For a few moments"[36] there was a dead silence, while the gaze of many besides St. Simon was fixed upon a solitary seat below the King. "Motionless on his bench sat the Warden of the Seals, his look bent upon the ground, while the inward fire that played from his eyes seemed to penetrate every heart." He rose and delivered his memorable speech. The Parlement began their remonstrance, when suddenly the voice of d'Argenson rang clear and crushing: "What the King requires is obedience, and upon the spot!"[37] and the protest was silenced as by a "clap of thunder." It was a day of bitter humiliation for the Parlement and of triumph for their old enemy.