to Nature’s ways, then how, in the name of wonder, has Nature, with her infinite bounty, come to leave it famishing there?  To all men, to all women and all children, it is now indutiable that your Arrangement was false.  Honour to Bankruptcy; ever righteous on the great scale, though in detail it is so cruel!  Under all Falsehoods it works, unweariedly mining.  No Falsehood, did it rise heaven-high and cover the world, but Bankruptcy, one day, will sweep it down, and make us free of it.

Chapter 1.3.II.

Controller Calonne.

Under such circumstances of tristesse, obstruction and sick langour, when to an exasperated Court it seems as if fiscal genius had departed from among men, what apparition could be welcomer than that of M. de Calonne?  Calonne, a man of indisputable genius; even fiscal genius, more or less; of experience both in managing Finance and Parlements, for he has been Intendant at Metz, at Lille; King’s Procureur at Douai.  A man of weight, connected with the moneyed classes; of unstained name,—­if it were not some peccadillo (of showing a Client’s Letter) in that old D’Aiguillon-Lachalotais business, as good as forgotten now.  He has kinsmen of heavy purse, felt on the Stock Exchange.  Our Foulons, Berthiers intrigue for him:—­old Foulon, who has now nothing to do but intrigue; who is known and even seen to be what they call a scoundrel; but of unmeasured wealth; who, from Commissariat-clerk which he once was, may hope, some think, if the game go right, to be Minister himself one day.

Such propping and backing has M. de Calonne; and then intrinsically such qualities!  Hope radiates from his face; persuasion hangs on his tongue.  For all straits he has present remedy, and will make the world roll on wheels before him.  On the 3d of November 1783, the Oeil-de-Boeuf rejoices in its new Controller-General.  Calonne also shall have trial; Calonne also, in his way, as Turgot and Necker had done in theirs, shall forward the consummation; suffuse, with one other flush of brilliancy, our now too leaden-coloured Era of Hope, and wind it up—­into fulfilment.

Great, in any case, is the felicity of the Oeil-de-Boeuf.  Stinginess has fled from these royal abodes:  suppression ceases; your Besenval may go peaceably to sleep, sure that he shall awake unplundered.  Smiling Plenty, as if conjured by some enchanter, has returned; scatters contentment from her new-flowing horn.  And mark what suavity of manners!  A bland smile distinguishes our Controller:  to all men he listens with an air of interest, nay of anticipation; makes their own wish clear to themselves, and grants it; or at least, grants conditional promise of it.  “I fear this is a matter of difficulty,” said her Majesty.—­“Madame,” answered the Controller, “if it is but difficult, it is done, if it is impossible, it shall be done (se fera).”  A man of such ‘facility’ withal.  To observe him in the pleasure-vortex