"All the world held out its hand, and I held out my
hat,"--for a time? Himself is poor; penniless, had not a 'Financier's
widow in Lorraine' offered him, though he was turned of fifty, her hand
and the rich purse it held. Dim henceforth shall be his activity, though
unwearied: Letters to the King, Appeals, Prognostications; Pamphlets
(from London), written with the old suasive facility; which however do
not persuade. Luckily his widow's purse fails not. Once, in a year or
two, some shadow of him shall be seen hovering on the Northern Border,
seeking election as National Deputy; but be sternly beckoned away.
Dimmer then, far-borne over utmost European lands, in uncertain twilight
of diplomacy, he shall hover, intriguing for 'Exiled Princes,' and
have adventures; be overset into the Rhine stream and half-drowned,
nevertheless save his papers dry. Unwearied, but in vain! In France he
works miracles no more; shall hardly return thither to find a grave.
Farewell, thou facile sanguine Controller-General, with thy light rash
hand, thy suasive mouth of gold: worse men there have been, and better;
but to thee also was allotted a task,--of raising the wind, and the
winds; and thou hast done it.

But now, while Ex-Controller Calonne flies storm-driven over the
horizon, in this singular way, what has become of the Controllership?
It hangs vacant, one may say; extinct, like the Moon in her vacant
interlunar cave. Two preliminary shadows, poor M. Fourqueux, poor
M. Villedeuil, do hold in quick succession some simulacrum of it,
(Besenval, iii. 225.)--as the new Moon will sometimes shine out with a
dim preliminary old one in her arms. Be patient, ye Notables! An actual
new Controller is certain, and even ready; were the indispensable
manoeuvres but gone through. Long-headed Lamoignon, with Home Secretary
Breteuil, and Foreign Secretary Montmorin have exchanged looks; let
these three once meet and speak. Who is it that is strong in the Queen's
favour, and the Abbe de Vermond's? That is a man of great capacity?
Or at least that has struggled, these fifty years, to have it thought
great; now, in the Clergy's name, demanding to have Protestant
death-penalties 'put in execution;' no flaunting it in the
Oeil-de-Boeuf, as the gayest man-pleaser and woman-pleaser; gleaning
even a good word from Philosophedom and your Voltaires and D'Alemberts?
With a party ready-made for him in the Notables?--Lomenie de Brienne,
Archbishop of Toulouse! answer