es, because it sets their hands going. Continue these
splendid undertakings, which are an ornament to Paris, Bordeaux, Lyons,
Nantes, Marseilles, and Nimes, and which are almost entirely paid for by
those flourishing cities. Look to your ports, fortify Havre, and create
a Cherbourg, braving the jealousy of the English. None of those measures
which reveal and do not relieve the straits of the treasury! The people,
whom declaiming jurisconsults so vehemently but vainly incite to speak
evil of lavishness, would be grieved if they saw any interruption in the
expenditure which a silly parsimony calls superfluous."

The comptroller-general's practice tallied with his theories; the
courtiers had recovered the golden age; it was scarcely necessary to
solicit the royal favor. "When I saw everybody holding out hands, I held
out my hat," said a prince. The offices abolished by M. Turgot and M.
Necker were re-established, the abuses which they had removed came back,
the acceptances (_acquits de comptant_) rose in 1785 to more than a
hundred and thirty-six millions of livres. The debts of the king's
brothers were paid; advantageous exchanges of royal lands were effected
to their profit; the queen bought St. Cloud, which belonged to the Duke
of Orleans; all the great lords who were ruined, all the courtiers who
were embarrassed, resumed the pleasant habit of counting upon the royal
treasury to relieve their wants. The polite alacrity of the
comptroller-general had subdued the most rebellious; he obtained for
Brittany the right of freely electing its deputies; the states-hall at
Rennes, which had but lately resounded with curses upon him, was now
repeating a new cry of "Hurrah for Calonne!" A vote of the assembly
doubled the gratuitous gift which the province ordinarily offered the
king. "If it is possible, it is done," the comptroller would say to
applicants; "if it is impossible, it will get done."

The captivation was general, the blindness seemed to be so likewise;
a feverish impulse carried people away into all newfangled ways, serious
or frivolous. Mesmer brought from Germany his mysterious revelations in
respect of problems as yet unsolved by science, and pretended to cure all
diseases around the magnetic battery; the adventurer Cagliostro,
embellished with the title of count, and lavishing gold by handfuls,
bewitched court and city, and induced Councillor d'Epremesnil to say,
"The friendship of M. de Cagliostro does