But until there was a better man to occupy his place, Turgot would take no hints. For the sake of France he would push those Edicts through, and gain his principles before he lost his power. Then another friend failed him. Malesherbes, the brave old hero, who was hereafter to defend and to die for his King, but who, as Condorcet said, found on every subject ‘many fors and againsts but never one to make him decide,’ resigned his post in Turgot’s government. ‘You are fortunate,’ says hapless Louis gloomily, ‘to be able to resign. I wish I could.’ The storm was coming up fast. But the first man on whom it was to fall remained calm and staunch. On April 30, 1776, Turgot wrote to his King a note begging him not to appoint Amelot as Malesherbes’ successor, and containing these ominous words: ‘Do not forget, Sire, that it was weakness that brought the head of Charles the First to the block.’ Louis made no answer. Finally, the match was put to the tinder of the Queen’s wrath by Turgot’s dismissal from office of her worthless protégé, de Guines; and the Minister, it was whispered, had also declined to pay a debt she had incurred for jewellery, as against the new rules he had himself made. Rules for a Queen! This must certainly be the end of Queens or of Ministers! In this case, it was the end of both; only Turgot’s fall came first. As he was sitting writing, on May 12, 1776, Bertin arrived to announce to him that he was no longer Controller-General. He had been drawing up an edict; laying down his pen he observed quietly, ‘My successor will finish it.’ His successor, it has been well said, was the National Assembly. Two days later, Marie Antoinette wrote exultantly to her mother of his dismissal. What did she care for the just reproaches of the King and of the whole nation, which that old kill-joy, Mercy Argenteau, declared that this deed would bring on her head? She would have liked her enemy turned out of office and sent to the Bastille the very day that de Guines was made a Duke. Poor Queen! Her little triumph was so short, and her bitter punishment so long! On May 18, Turgot took farewell of his master in language nobly dignified and touching. ‘My one desire,’ he said, ‘is that you may find I have judged wrongly, that I have warned you of imaginary dangers.’ Clugny was appointed Controller-General; _corvée_ and _jurandes_ were re-established; the edict establishing free trade in grain was revoked. The Court rejoiced aloud; the Paris Parliament was delighted. Old Voltaire at Ferney, indeed, wept and said that this was death before death, that a thunderbolt had fallen on his head and his heart; and the wise knew that nothing could save France now.