ary to all received
usages during the session of the states, the royal troops marched into
Rennes; the noblesse refused to deliberate, so long as the assembly had
not recovered its independence. The governor applied to the petty nobles
who preponderated in their order; ignorant and poor as they were, they
allowed themselves to be bought, their votes carried the day, and the
subsidies were at last voted, notwithstanding the opposition on the part
of the most weighty of the noblesse; a hundred of them persistently staid
away.

Internal quarrels in the cabinet rendered the comptroller-general's
situation daily more precarious; he gave in his resignation. The king
sent for M. d'Ormesson, councillor of state, of a virtue and integrity
which were traditional in his family, but without experience of affairs
and without any great natural capacity. He was, besides, very young, and
he excused himself from accepting such a post on the score of his age and
his feeble lights. "I am only thirty-one, Sir," he said. "I am younger
than you," replied the king, "and my post is more difficult than yours."
A few months later, the honest magistrate, overwhelmed by a task beyond
his strength, had made up his mind to resign; he did not want to have any
hand in the growing disorder of the finances; the king's brothers kept
pressing him to pay their debts; Louis XVI. himself, without any warning
to the comptroller-general, had just purchased Rambouillet from the Duke
of Penthievre, giving a bond of fourteen millions; but Madame d'Ormesson
had taken a liking to grandeur; she begged her husband hard to remain,
and he did. It was not long before the embarrassments of the treasury
upset his judgment: the tax-farming contract, so ably concluded by M.
Necker, was all at once quashed; a _regie_ was established; the Discount-
fund (_Caisse d'Escompte+) had lent the treasury six millions: the secret
of this loan was betrayed, and the holders of bills presented themselves
in a mass demanding liquidation; a decree of the council forbade payment
in coin over a hundred livres, and gave the bills a forced currency. The
panic became general; the king found himself obliged to dismiss M.
d'Ormesson, who was persecuted for a long while by the witticisms of the
court. His incapacity had brought his virtue into ridicule.

Marshal de Castries addressed to the king a private note. "I esteem M.
d'Ormesson's probity," said the minister of marine frankly, "but