n
booksellers, being on the eve of stopping payment, succeeded in laying
before the King a statement of their distressed situation. The monarch was
affected by it; he took from the civil list the sum of which the society
stood in immediate need, and became security for the repayment of the
remainder of the 1,200,000 livres, which they wanted to borrow, and for
the repayment of which he fixed no particular time.]

To Marie Antoinette we are indebted for a splendid quarto edition of the
works of Metastasio; to Monsieur, the King's brother, for a quarto Tasso,
embellished with engravings after Cochin; and to the Comte d'Artois for a
small collection of select works, which is considered one of the chef
d'oeuvres of the press of the celebrated Didot.

In 1775, on the death of the Marechal du Muy, the ascendency obtained by
the sect of innovators occasioned M. de Saint-Germain to be recalled to
Court and made Minister of War. His first care was the destruction of the
King's military household establishment, an imposing and effectual rampart
round the sovereign power.

When Chancellor Maupeou obtained from Louis XV. the destruction of the
Parliament and the exile of all the ancient magistrates, the Mousquetaires
were charged with the execution of the commission for this purpose; and at
the stroke of midnight, the presidents and members were all arrested, each
by two Mousquetaires. In the spring of 1775 a popular insurrection had
taken place in consequence of the high price of bread. M. Turgot's new
regulation, which permitted unlimited trade in corn, was either its cause
or the pretext for it; and the King's household troops again rendered the
greatest services to public tranquillity.

I have never be enable to discover the true cause of the support given to
M. de Saint-Germain's policy by the Queen, unless in the marked favour
shown to the captains and officers of the Body Guards, who by this
reduction became the only soldiers of their rank entrusted with the safety
of the sovereign; or else in the Queen's strong prejudice against the Duc
d'Aiguillon, then commander of the light-horse. M. de Saint-Germain,
however, retained fifty gens d'armes and fifty light-horse to form a royal
escort on state occasions; but in 1787 the King reduced both these
military bodies. The Queen then said with satisfaction that at last she
should see no more red coats in the gallery of Versailles.

From 1775 to 1781 were the gayest years of