ecessity of using bank-notes in payment of over three hundred francs
gave them a certain forced employment, but did not procure them
confidence. Notes were used for large payments, but coin was amassed
secretly as a value more real and more assured. The creditors of the
state ceased to carry their receipts to the Rue Quincampoix, because
they already distrusted the shares; they could not decide to buy real
estate, because the price had been quadrupled; they suffered the most
painful anxiety, and in their turn embarrassed the holders of shares
who needed the receipts to pay their instalments of one-tenth. The
catastrophe approached, and nothing could avert it, unless some magic
wand could give the company an income of four or five hundred millions a
year, which was now only seventy or eighty millions.

Law, adding measures to measures, at last prohibited the circulation of
gold, because this metal was, by its convenience, a rival of bank-notes
infinitely more dangerous than silver. He then announced an approaching
reduction in the value of coin, which he had raised by a decree in
February, only to reduce it again in a short time. The mark, in silver,
raised from sixty to eighty francs, was reduced to seventy on April 1st,
and sixty-five on May 1st. But this measure was utterly insufficient to
bring it to the bank.

The situation grew worse every day; the issue of notes to pay for the
shares presented at the bank had risen to two billions six hundred
ninety-six millions; their depreciation increased; and creditors of
every description, being paid in paper which was at a discount of 60 per
cent., complained bitterly of the theft authorized by law.

In this juncture there remained but one step to be taken. As the
necessary sacrifice had not been made in the first place, and the shares
abandoned to their fate in order to protect the notes, both must now be
sacrificed, shares and notes together, in order to finish this wicked
fiction. The falsehood of this nominal value, which obliged men to
receive at par what was depreciated 30 or 40 per cent., could not be
prolonged. The immediate reduction of the nominal value of the shares
and bank-notes was the only resource. Sacrifices cannot be too hastily
made when they are inevitable.

M. d'Argenson, although dismissed from the treasury, still remained
keeper of the seals; he had risen in the esteem of the Regent as Law had
declined, and he advised the reduction of the nominal va