Minor Courts, for the trying of innumerable minor causes, might be instituted:  these we could call Grand Bailliages.  Whereon the Parlement, shortened of its prey, would look with yellow despair; but the Public, fond of cheap justice, with favour and hope.  Then for Finance, for registering of Edicts, why not, from our own Oeil-de-Boeuf Dignitaries, our Princes, Dukes, Marshals, make a thing we could call Plenary Court; and there, so to speak, do our registering ourselves?  St. Louis had his Plenary Court, of Great Barons; (Montgaillard, i. 405.) most useful to him:  our Great Barons are still here (at least the Name of them is still here); our necessity is greater than his.

Such is the Lomenie-Lamoignon device; welcome to the King’s Council, as a light-beam in great darkness.  The device seems feasible, it is eminently needful:  be it once well executed, great deliverance is wrought.  Silent, then, and steady; now or never!—­the World shall see one other Historical Scene; and so singular a man as Lomenie de Brienne still the Stage-manager there.

Behold, accordingly, a Home-Secretary Breteuil ‘beautifying Paris,’ in the peaceablest manner, in this hopeful spring weather of 1788; the old hovels and hutches disappearing from our Bridges:  as if for the State too there were halcyon weather, and nothing to do but beautify.  Parlement seems to sit acknowledged victor.  Brienne says nothing of Finance; or even says, and prints, that it is all well.  How is this; such halcyon quiet; though the Successive Loan did not fill?  In a victorious Parlement, Counsellor Goeslard de Monsabert even denounces that ‘levying of the Second Twentieth on strict valuation;’ and gets decree that the valuation shall not be strict,—­not on the privileged classes.  Nevertheless Brienne endures it, launches no Lettre-de-Cachet against it.  How is this?

Smiling is such vernal weather; but treacherous, sudden!  For one thing, we hear it whispered, ’the Intendants of Provinces ’have all got order to be at their posts on a certain day.’  Still more singular, what incessant Printing is this that goes on at the King’s Chateau, under lock and key?  Sentries occupy all gates and windows; the Printers come not out; they sleep in their workrooms; their very food is handed in to them! (Weber, i. 276.) A victorious Parlement smells new danger.  D’Espremenil has ordered horses to Versailles; prowls round that guarded Printing-Office; prying, snuffing, if so be the sagacity and ingenuity of man may penetrate it.

To a shower of gold most things are penetrable.  D’Espremenil descends on the lap of a Printer’s Danae, in the shape of ‘five hundred louis d’or:’  the Danae’s Husband smuggles a ball of clay to her; which she delivers to the golden Counsellor of Parlement.  Kneaded within it, their stick printed proof-sheets;—­by Heaven! the royal Edict of that same self-registering Plenary Court; of those Grand Bailliages that shall cut short our Lawsuits!  It is to be promulgated over all France on one and the same day.