policy and niggardliness. Indeed, France's finances were
in a hopelessly deplorable state, and Mr. Morris looked on in dismay at
the various futile plans suggested as remedies--at the proposal to make
the bankrupt Caisse d'Escompte a national bank, at the foolish Caisse
Patriotique, and at the issue of assignats.

"If they only had a financier of the calibre of Hamilton," said Mr.
Morris to Calvert; "but they haven't a man to compare with that young
genius. Necker is only a sublimated bank-clerk. Indeed, I think you or I
could conduct the finances of this unhappy country better than they are
at present conducted," he added, laughing. "I have great hopes of you as
a financier, Ned, since that affair of the Holland loans, and as for
myself, Luxembourg has urged me seriously to enter the ministry. 'Tis a
curious proposition, but these visionary philosophers, who are trying to
pilot the ship of state into a safe harbor, know nothing of their
business, and will fetch up on some hidden reef pretty soon, if I
mistake not. The Assembly is already held in utter contempt--their
sittings are tumultuous farces--the thing they call a constitution is
utterly good for nothing. And there is Lafayette, with an ambition far
beyond his talents, aspiring not only to the command of all the forces,
but to a leadership in the Assembly--a kind of Generalissimo-Dictatorship.
'Tis almost inconceivable folly, and, to cap all, that scoundrel Mirabeau
has the deputies under his thumb. Can a country be more utterly prostrated
than France is at this moment?"

"To get Lafayette and Mirabeau together is her only chance of safety, I
think," said Calvert, in reply. "The leader of the people and the leader
of the Assembly, working together, might do much."

"Impossible," objected Mr. Morris, decidedly, "and I do not blame
Lafayette for refusing to ally himself with so profligate a creature as
Mirabeau, great and undeniable as are his talents. Why, boy, all Paris
knows that while he leads the Assembly, he is in the pay of the King and
Queen."

"And yet I heard you yourself declare," returned Calvert, with a smile,
"that men do not go into the administration as the direct road to
Heaven. I think it were well for this country to avail itself of the
great abilities of Mirabeau and make it to his interest to be true to
it." And in the long argument which ensued over the advisability of
taking Monsieur de Mirabeau into the administration, Calvert had all th