few hours
later, M. Turgot received his dismissal.

[Illustration: Turgot's Dismissal----367]

He was at his desk, drawing up an important decree; he laid down his pen,
saying quietly, "My successor will finish;" and when M. de Maurepas
hypocritically expressed his regret, "I retire," said M. Turgot, "without
having to reproach myself with feebleness, or falseness, or
dissimulation." He wrote to the king: "I have done, Sir, what I believed
to be my duty in setting before you, with unreserved and unexampled
frankness, the difficulty of the position in which I stood and what I
thought of your own. If I had not done so, I should have considered
myself to have behaved culpably towards you. You, no doubt, have come to
a different conclusion, since you have withdrawn your confidence from me;
but, even if I were mistaken, you cannot, Sir, but do justice to the
feeling by which I was guided. All I desire, Sir, is that you may always
be able to believe that I was short-sighted, and that I pointed out to
you merely fanciful dangers. I hope that time may not justify me, and
that your reign may be as happy and as tranquil, for yourself and your
people, as they flattered themselves it would be, in accordance with your
principles of justice and beneficence."

Useless wishes, belied in advance by the previsions of M. Turgot himself.
He had espied the danger and sounded some of the chasms just yawning
beneath the feet of the nation as well as of the king; he committed the
noble error of believing in the instant and supreme influence of justice
and reason. "Sir," said he to Louis XVI., "you ought to govern, like
God, by general laws." Had he been longer in power, M. Turgot would
still have failed in his designs. The life of one man was too short, and
the hand of one man too weak to modify the course of events, fruit slowly
ripened during so many centuries. It was to the honor of M. Turgot that
he discerned the mischief and would fain have applied the proper remedy.
He was often mistaken about the means, oftener still about the strength
he had at disposal. He had the good fortune to die early, still sad and
anxious about the fate of his country, without having been a witness of
the catastrophes he had foreseen and of the sufferings as well as
wreckage through which France must pass before touching at the haven he
would fain have opened to her.

The joy of the courtiers was great, at Versailles, when the news arrived
of M.