rtheless its hearth is warm, its larder well
replenished: the innumerable Swiss of Heaven, with a kind of Natural
loyalty, gather round it; will prove, by pamphleteering, musketeering,
that it is a truth; or if not an unmixed (unearthly, impossible) Truth,
then better, a wholesomely attempered one, (as wind is to the shorn
lamb), and works well. Changed outlook, however, when purse and larder
grow empty! Was your Arrangement so true, so accordant to Nature's ways,
then how, in the name of wonder, has Nature, with her infinite bounty,
come to leave it famishing there? To all men, to all women and all
children, it is now indutiable that your Arrangement was false. Honour
to Bankruptcy; ever righteous on the great scale, though in detail it
is so cruel! Under all Falsehoods it works, unweariedly mining. No
Falsehood, did it rise heaven-high and cover the world, but Bankruptcy,
one day, will sweep it down, and make us free of it.

Chapter 1.3.II.

Controller Calonne.

Under such circumstances of tristesse, obstruction and sick langour,
when to an exasperated Court it seems as if fiscal genius had departed
from among men, what apparition could be welcomer than that of M. de
Calonne? Calonne, a man of indisputable genius; even fiscal genius, more
or less; of experience both in managing Finance and Parlements, for he
has been Intendant at Metz, at Lille; King's Procureur at Douai. A man
of weight, connected with the moneyed classes; of unstained name,--if
it were not some peccadillo (of showing a Client's Letter) in that
old D'Aiguillon-Lachalotais business, as good as forgotten now. He
has kinsmen of heavy purse, felt on the Stock Exchange. Our Foulons,
Berthiers intrigue for him:--old Foulon, who has now nothing to do but
intrigue; who is known and even seen to be what they call a scoundrel;
but of unmeasured wealth; who, from Commissariat-clerk which he once
was, may hope, some think, if the game go right, to be Minister himself
one day.

Such propping and backing has M. de Calonne; and then intrinsically such
qualities! Hope radiates from his face; persuasion hangs on his tongue.
For all straits he has present remedy, and will make the world roll
on wheels before him. On the 3d of November 1783, the Oeil-de-Boeuf
rejoices in its new Controller-General. Calonne also shall have trial;
Calonne also, in his way, as Turgot and Necker had done in theirs, shall
forward the consummation; suffuse, with one other flush of br