"Yesterday evening there was a beautiful aurora borealis, and immediately afterwards the weather cleared up and the wind veered round to the south. There is good promise for the harvest. The rain came when it was wanted, and the crops, kept back by the cold weather we have been having lately, are now coming forward in fine style."[411] At this time d'Argenson presents a pleasant picture, the picture of a man who has striven, and not in vain. He had not obtained all he had hoped for, but what he had achieved was no little thing. It is easy to have the defects of one's qualities; it is harder to acquire, as d'Argenson had done, the very qualities of his defects. The vices of his nature he had employed more usefully than many virtues. Cut off from the many, he had won his way into the ranks of the elect; if he could not be witty, he could at least be wise. Fortune had decreed his failure as a politician: she could not deny him the secondary distinction of being, as a political thinker, the foremost man of his time. And this was the end of a lifelong struggle, not unworthy of his stubborn blood. True that he had faults, and retained them to the last; and to the last he strove to quell them. They were in spite of him; his greatness was his own. Faults though they be, they are not unamiable; their generous admission extorts generosity: and they have forgiven them most readily who have known them best. If, under the pen of M. Edmond Scherer[412] and others less distinguished than he, they have been raised to a hateful prominence of contumely, they have been reduced to their due place of utter subordination by the humanity and the insight of an Aubertin[413] and a Ste. Beuve. The Marquis d'Argenson died on the 26th of January, 1757. Rousseau five years afterwards inscribed his epitaph-- "UN VRAI CITOYEN."[414] VI. 1737-1755. The "Considérations"--The Plan of 1737--The Plan of 1755. "_Il faut être autant en garde contre la réforme que contre les abus._"--"Considérations" (1784). It was not to be imagined that the man who watched so anxiously the progress of the malady, and marked with such sensitive precision the quickening of the pulse, could do so from a mere cold interest in social pathology. D'Argenson felt the distemper as if it had been his own. He was devotedly, even extravagantly patriotic; and his political criticism might have been less pungent had the subjects of invective been less personal to himself. He could have neither patience nor charity for men who could fiddle while Rome was burning. Powerless as he was, he was at least above that reproach. Seven years after d'Argenson's death there appeared a very remarkable book. It was called "CONSIDÉRATIONS SUR LE GOUVERNEMENT DE LA FRANCE," OR "JUSQU' OÙ LA DÉMOCRATIE PEUT ÊTRE ADMISE DANS LE GOUVERNEMENT MONARCHIQUE."