The king drew a great sigh of relief and asked for his project.  Rosny, saying that he would instantly go and fetch his papers, left the apartment for an interval, in order to give vent to the horrible agitation which he had been enduring and so bravely concealing ever since the fatal words had been spoken.  That a city so important, the key to Paris, without a moment’s warning, without the semblance of a siege, should thus fall into the hands of the enemy, was a blow as directly to the heart of De Bethune as it could have been to any other of Henry’s adherents.  But while they had been distracting the king by unavailing curses or wailings, Henry, who had received the intelligence just as he was getting into bed, had sent for support and consolation to the tried friend of years, and he now reproachfully contrasted their pusillanimity with De Rosny’s fortitude.

A great plan for reorganising the finances of the kingdom was that very night submitted by Rosny to the king, and it was wrought upon day by day thereafter until it was carried into effect.

It must be confessed that the crudities and immoralities which the project revealed do not inspire the political student of modern days with so high a conception of the financial genius of the great minister as his calm and heroic deportment on trying occasions, whether on the battle-field or in the council-chamber, does of his natural authority over his fellow-men.  The scheme was devised to put money in the king’s coffers, which at that moment were completely empty.  Its chief features were to create a great many new offices in the various courts of justice and tribunals of administration, all to be disposed of by sale to the highest bidder; to extort a considerable loan from the chief courtiers and from the richest burghers in the principal towns; to compel all the leading peculators—­whose name in the public service was legion—­to disgorge a portion of their ill-gotten gains, on being released from prosecution; and to increase the tax upon salt.

Such a project hardly seems a masterpiece of ethics or political economy, but it was hailed with rapture by the needy monarch.  At once there was a wild excitement amongst the jobbers and speculators in places.  The creation of an indefinite number of new judgeships and magistracies, to be disposed of at auction, was a tempting opportunity even in that age of corruption.  One of the most notorious traders in the judicial ermine, limping Robin de Tours by name, at once made a private visit to Madame de Rosny and offered seventy-two thousand crowns for the exclusive right to distribute these new offices.  If this could be managed to his satisfaction, he promised to give her a diamond worth two thousand crowns, and another, worth six thousand, to her husband.  The wife of the great minister, who did not comprehend the whole amount of the insult, presented Robin to her husband.  She was enlightened, however, as to the barefaced