onsistait a parler a chacun des choses qu'il croyait
qu'on ignorait."--De Levis, p. 100.

[12] The loan he proposed in June was eighty millions (of francs); in
October, that which he demanded was four hundred and forty millions.

[13] It is worth noticing that the French people in general did not regard
the power of arbitrary imprisonment exercised by their kings as a
grievance. In their eyes it was one of his most natural prerogatives. A
year or two before the time of which we are speaking, Dr. Moore, the
author of "Zeluco," and father of Sir John Moore, who fell at Corunna, was
traveling in France, and was present at a party of French merchants and
others of the same rank, who asked him many questions about the English
Constitution, When he said that the King of England could not impose a tax
by his own authority, "they said, with some degree of satisfaction,
'Cependant c'est assez beau cela.'"... But when he informed them "that the
king himself had not the power to encroach upon the liberty of the meanest
of his subjects, and that if he or the minister did so, damages were
recoverable in a court of law, a loud and prolonged 'Diable!' issued from
every mouth. They forgot their own situation, and turned to their natural
bias of sympathy with the king, who, they all seemed to think, must be the
most oppressed and injured of manhood. One of them at last, addressing
himself to the English politician, said, 'Tout ce que je puis vous dire,
monsieur, c'est que votre pauvre roi est bien a plaindre.'"--_A View of
the Society and Manners in France_, etc., by Dr. John Moore, vol. i., p.
47, ed. 1788.

CHAPTER XXII.

[1] Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 205.

[2] M. Foulon was about this time made paymaster of the army and navy, and
was generally credited with ability as a financier; but he was unpopular,
as a man of ardent and cruel temper, and was brutally murdered by the mob
in one of the first riots of the Revolution.

[3] The king.

[4] Necker.

[5] Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 214.

[6] _Ibid_., p. 217.

[7] On one occasion when the Marquis de Bouille pointed out to him the
danger of some of his plans as placing the higher class at the mercy of
the mob, "dirige par les deux passions les plus actives du coeur humain,
l'interet et l'amour propre, ... il me repondit froidement, en levant les
yeux au ciel, qu'il fallait bien compter sur les vertus morales des
hommes."--_Memoires de M. de Bouille_, p. 70; and Madame de S