"I am painfully distressed that the letter which I had the honour of writing to you, as well as that which I took the liberty of asking you to forward to the King, have not been able to arrest your attention. It is not, perhaps, surprising that a minister so fully occupied as you are should not find time to examine such letters; but, Monseigneur, will you permit me to point out to you that it is precisely this moral impossibility for a gentleman, who has no claim but zeal, to reach his master, which leads to that discouragement that is noticeable in all the country nobility, and which extinguishes all emulation? "I have passed, Monseigneur, my youth far from all worldly distractions, in order to prepare myself for the species of employment for which it was my belief that my temperament designed me; and I was bold enough to think that so concentrated an effort would place me at least on a level with those who depend for all their fortune upon their intrigues and upon their pleasures. It overwhelms me, Monseigneur, to discover that the confidence which I had based mainly on the love of my duty, should be so disappointed. My health no longer permitting me to continue my services in the war, I have written to M. the Duke de Biron to beg him to appoint my successor. I could not, in a situation so piteous, refrain from informing you of my despair. Pardon me, Monseigneur, if it has led me into any extravagance of expression. "I am, etc." To this last appeal the Minister for Foreign Affairs did respond in a brief and perfunctory note, promising to find an occasion of bringing the talents of Vauvenargues to the notice of the King, but nothing resulted. Vauvenargues had been living in a dream of military glory, and had been thirsting to serve his country in the loftiest and most responsible capacities. His very physical appearance now completed the bankruptcy of his wishes, for he was attacked with the smallpox, which disfigured him so badly that, to use his own expression, "it prevented his soul from appearing in his features." Thus without fortune, or profession, without hope for the future, half-blind, with gangrened limbs that tottered under his feeble body, Vauvenargues started on the steadily downward path which was to lead in less than four years to his grave. History presents to us no more dolorous figure of physical and social failure, nor a more radiant example of moral success.