thirteen provinces, four islands, a hundred thousand men, and more than
ten millions sterling!  Oh! wonderful rights, which have cost Great
Britain her empire upon the ocean and that boasted superiority which made
all nations bend before her!  Oh! inestimable rights, which have taken
from us our rank amongst the nations, our importance abroad and our
happiness at home, which have destroyed our commerce and our
manufactures, which have reduced us from the most flourishing empire in
the world to a kingdom circumscribed and grandeur-less!  Precious rights,
which will, no doubt, cost us all that we have left!"  The debate was
growing more and more bitter.  Lord North entered the House with his
usual serenity.  "This discussion is a loss of valuable time to the
House," said he: "His Majesty has just accepted the resignation of his
ministers."  The Whigs came into power; Lord Rockingham, the Duke of
Richmond, Mr. Fox; the era of concessions was at hand.  An unsuccessful
battle delivered against Hood and Rodney by Admiral de Grasse restored
for a while the pride of the English.  A good sailor, brave and for a
long time successful in war, Count de Grasse had many a time been
out-manoeuvred by the English.  He had suffered himself to be enticed
away from St. Christopher, which he was besieging, and which the Marquis
of Bouille took a few days later; embarrassed by two damaged vessels,
he would not abandon them to the English, and retarded his movements to
protect them.  The English fleet was superior to the French in vessels
and weight of metal; the fight lasted ten hours; the French squadron was
broken, disorder ensued in the manoeuvres; the captains got killed one
after another, nailing their colors to the mast or letting their vessels
sink rather than strike; the flag-ship, the Ville de Paris, was attacked
by seven of the enemy's ships at once, her consorts could not get at her;
Count de Grasse, maddened with grief and rage, saw all his crew falling
around him.  "The admiral is six foot every day," said the sailors, "on a
fighting day he is six foot one."  So much courage and desperation could
not save the fleet, the count was forced to strike; his ship had received
such damage that it sank before its arrival in England; the admiral was
received in London with great honors against which his vanity was not
proof, to the loss of his personal dignity and his reputation in Europe.
A national subscription in France reinforced the fleet with new vessels:
a squadron, commanded by M. de Suffren, had just carried into the East
Indies the French flag, which had so long been humiliated, and which his
victorious hands were destined to hoist aloft again for a moment.

As early as 1778, even before the maritime war had burst out in Europe,
France had lost all that remained of her possessions on the Coromandel
coast.  Pondicherry, scarcely risen from its ruins, was besieged by the
English, and had capitulated on the 17th of October, after an heroic
resistance of forty days' open trenches.  Since that day a Mussulman,
Hyder Ali, conqueror of the Carnatic, had struggled alone in India
against the power of England: it was around him that a group had been
formed by the old soldiers of Bussy and by the French who had escaped
from the disaster of Pondicherry.  It was with their aid that the able
robber-chief, the crafty politician, had defended and consolidated the
empire he had founded against that foreign dominion which threatened the
independence of his country.  He had just suffered a series of reverses,
and he was on the point of being forced to evacuate the Carnatic and take
refuge in his kingdom of Mysore, when he heard, in the month of July,
1782, of the arrival of a French fleet commanded by M. de Suffren.  Hyder
Ali had already been many times disappointed.  The preceding year Admiral
d'Orves had appeared on the Coromandel coast with a squadron; the Sultan
had sent to meet him, urging him to land and attack Madras, left
defenceless; the admiral refused to risk a single vessel or land a single
man, and he returned without striking a blow to Ile-de-France.  Ever
indomitable and enterprising, Hyder Ali hoped better things of the
new-comers; he was not deceived.

Born at St. Cannat in Provence, on the 13th of July, 1726, of an old and
a notable family amongst the noblesse of his province, Peter Andrew de
Suffren, admitted before he was seventeen into the marine guards, had
procured his reception into the order of Malta; he had already
distinguished himself in many engagements, when M. de Castries gave him
the command of the squadron commissioned to convey to the Cape of Good
Hope a French garrison promised to the Dutch, whose colony was
threatened.  The English had seized Negapatam and Trincomalee; they hoped
to follow up this conquest by the capture of Batavia and Ceylon.  Suffren
had accomplished his mission, not without a brush with the English
squadron commanded by Commodore Johnston.  Leaving the Cape free from
attack, he had joined, off Ile-de-France, Admiral d'Orves, who was ill
and at death's door.  The vessels of the commander (of the Maltese order)
were in a bad state, the crews were weak, the provisions were deficient;
the inexhaustible zeal and the energetic ardor of the chief sufficed to
animate both non-combatants and combatants.  When he put to sea on the
7th of December, Count d'Orves still commanded the squadron; on the 9th
of February he expired out at sea, having handed over his command to M.
de Suffren.  All feebleness and all hesitation disappeared from that
moment in the management of the expedition.  When the nabob sent a French
officer in his service to compliment M. de Suffren and proffer alliance,
the commander interrupted the envoy: "We will begin," said he, "by
settling the conditions of this alliance;" and not a soldier set foot on
land before the independent position of the French force, the number of
its auxiliaries, and the payment for its services had been settled by a
treaty.

Hyder Ali consented to everything.  M. de Suffren set sail to go in
search of the English.

[Illustration: Suffren----413]

He sought them for three months without any decisive result; it was only
on the 4th of July in the morning, at the moment when Hyder Ali was to
attack Negapatam, that a serious engagement began between the hostile
fleets.  The two squadrons had already suffered severely; a change of
wind had caused disorder in the lines: the English had several vessels
dismantled; one single French vessel, the _Severe,_ had received serious
damage; her captain, with cowardly want of spirit, ordered the flag to be
hauled down.  His lieutenants protested; the volunteers to whom he had
appealed refused to execute his orders.  By this time the report was
spreading among the batteries that the captain, was giving the order to
cease firing; the sailors were as indignant as the officers: a cry arose,
"The flag is down!"  A complaisant subaltern had at last obeyed the
captain's repeated orders.  The officers jumped upon the quarter-deck.
"You are master of your flag," fiercely cried an officer of the blue,
Lieutenant Dien, "but we are masters as to fighting, and the ship shall
not surrender!"  By this time a boat from the English ship, the _Sultan,_
had put off to board the Severe, which was supposed to have struck, when
a fearful broadside from all the ship's port-holes struck the _Sultan,_
which found herself obliged to sheer off.  Night came; without waiting
for the admiral's orders, the English went and cast anchor under
Negapatam.

M. de Suffren supposed that hostilities would be resumed; but, when the
English did not appear, he at last prepared to set sail for Gondelour to
refit his vessels, when a small boat of the enemy's hove in sight: it
bore a flag of truce.  Admiral Hughes claimed the _Severe,_ which had for
an instant hauled down her flag.  M. de Suffren had not heard anything
about her captain's poltroonery; the flag had been immediately replaced;
he answered that none of the French vessels had surrendered.  "However,"
he added with a smile, "as this vessel belongs to Sir Edward Hughes, beg
him from me to come for it himself."  Suffren arrived without hinderance
at Gondelour (_Kaddalore_).

Scarcely was he there, when Hyder Ali expressed a desire to see him, and
set out for that purpose without waiting for his answer.  On the 26th of
July, M. de Suffren landed with certain officers of his squadron; an
escort of cavalry was in waiting to conduct him to the camp of the nabob,
who came out to meet him.  "Heretofore I thought myself a great man and a
great general," said Hyder Ali to the admiral; "but now I know that you
alone are a great man."  Suffren informed the nabob that M. de Bussy-
Castelnau, but lately the faithful lieutenant of Dupleix and the
continuer of his victories, had just been sent to India with the title of
commander-in-chief; he was already at Ile de France, and was bringing
some troops.  "Provided that you remain with us, all will go well," said
the nabob, detaching from his turban an aigrette of diamonds which he
placed on M. de Suffren's hat.  The nabob's tent was reached; Suffren was
fat, he had great difficulty in sitting upon the carpets; Hyder Ali
perceived this and ordered cushions to be brought.  "Sit as you please,"
said he to the commander, "etiquette was not made for such as you."  Next
day, under the nabob's tent, all the courses of the banquet offered to M.
de Suffren were prepared in European style.  The admiral proposed that
Hyder Ali should go to the coast and see all the fleet dressed, but, "I
put myself out to see you only," said the nabob, "I will not go any
farther."  The two great warriors were never to meet again.

The French vessels were ready; the commander had more than once put his
own hand to the work in order to encourage the workmen's zeal.
Carpentry-wood was wanted; he had ransacked Gondelour (_Kaddalore_) for
it, sometimes pulling down a house to get hold of a beam that suited him.
His officers urged him to go to Bourbon or Ile-de-France for the
necessary supplies and for a good port to shelter his damaged ships.
"Until I have conquered one in India, I will have no port but the sea,"
answered Suffren.  He had re-taken Trincomalee before the English could
come to its defence.  The battle began.  As had already happened more
than once, a part of the French force showed weakness in the thick of the
action either from cowardice or treason; a cabal had formed against the
commander; he was fighting single-handed against five or six assailants:
the main-mast and the flag of the _Heros,_ which he was on, fell beneath
the enemy's cannon-balls.  Suffren, standing on the quarter-deck, shouted
beside himself "Flags!  Set white flags all round the Heros!"  The
vessel, all bristling with flags, replied so valiantly to the English
attacks, that the rest of the squadron had time to re-form around it; the
English went and anchored before Madras.

Bussy had arrived, but aged, a victim to gout, quite a stranger amid
those Indian intrigues with which he had but lately been so well
acquainted.  Hyder Ali had just died on the 7th of December, 1782,
leaving to his son Tippoo Sahib affairs embroiled and allies enfeebled.
At this news the Mahrattas, in revolt against England, hastened to make
peace; and Tippoo Sahib, who had just seized Tanjore, was obliged to
abandon his conquest and go to the protection of Malabar.  Ten thousand
men only remained in the Carnatic to back the little corps of French.
Bussy allowed himself to be driven to bay by General Stuart beneath the
walls of Gondelour; he had even been forced to shut himself up in the
town.  M. de Suffren went to his release.  The action was hotly
contested; when the victor landed, M. de Bussy was awaiting him on the
shore.  "Here is our savior," said the general to his troops, and the
soldiers taking up in their arms M. de Suffren, who had been lately
promoted by the grand master of the order of Malta to the rank of grand-
cross (_bailli_), carried him in triumph into the town.  "He pressed
M. de Bussy every day to attack us," says Sir Thomas Munro, "offering to
land the greater part of his crews and to lead them himself to deliver
the assault upon our camp."  Bussy had, in fact, resumed the offensive,
and was preparing to make fresh sallies, when it was known at Calcutta
that the preliminaries of peace had been signed at Paris on the 9th of
February.  The English immediately proposed an armistice.  The
_Surveillante_ shortly afterwards brought the same news, with orders for
Suffren to return to France.  India was definitively given up to the
English, who restored to the French Pondicherry, Chandernuggur, Mahe, and
Karikal, the last strips remaining of that French dominion which had for
a while been triumphant throughout the peninsula.  The feebleness and the
vices of Louis XV.'s government weighed heavily upon the government of
Louis XVI. in India as well as in France, and at Paris itself.

It is to the honor of mankind and their consolation under great reverses
that political checks and the inutility of their efforts do not obscure
the glory of great men.  M. de Suffren had just arrived at Paris, he was
in low spirits; M. de Castries took him to Versailles.  There was a
numerous and brilliant court.  On entering the guards' hall, "Gentlemen,"
said the minister to the officers on duty, "this is M. de Suffren."
Everybody rose, and the body-guards, forming an escort for the admiral,
accompanied him to the king's chamber.  His career was over; the last of
the great sailors of the old regimen died on the 8th of December, 1788.

Whilst Hyder Ali and M. de Suffren were still disputing India with
England, that power had just gained in Europe an important advantage in
the eyes of public opinion as well as in respect of her supremacy at sea.

For close upon three years past a Spanish army had been investing by land
the town and fortress of Gibraltar; a strong squadron was cruising out of
cannon-shot of the place, incessantly engaged in barring the passage
against the English vessels.  Twice already, in 1780 by Admiral Rodney,
and in 1781 by Admiral Darby, the vigilance of the cruisers had been
eluded and reinforcements of troops, provisions, and ammunition had been
thrown into Gibraltar.  In 1782 the town had been half destroyed by an
incessantly renewed bombardment, the fortifications had not been touched.
Every morning, when he awoke, Charles III. would ask anxiously, "Have we
got Gibraltar?" and when "No" was answered, "We soon shall," the monarch
would rejoin imperturbably.  The capture of Fort Philip had confirmed him
in his hopes; he considered his object gained, when the Duke of Crillon
with a corps of French troops came and joined the besiegers; the Count of
Artois, brother to the king, as well as the Duke of Bourbon, had come
with him.  The camp of St. Roch was the scene of continual festivities,
sometimes interrupted by the sallies of the besieged.  The fights did not
interfere with mutual good offices: in his proud distress, General Eliot
still kept up an interchange of refreshments with the French princes and
the Duke of Crillon; the Count of Artois had handed over to the English
garrison the letters and correspondence which had been captured on the
enemy's ships, and which he had found addressed to them on his way
through Madrid.

Preparations were being made for a grand assault.  A French engineer,
Chevalier d'Arcon, had invented some enormous floating batteries,
fire-proof, as he believed; a hundred and fifty pieces of cannon were to
batter the place all at once, near enough to facilitate the assault.  On
the 13th of September, at 9 A. M., the Spaniards opened fire: all the
artillery in the fort replied at once; the surrounding mountains repeated
the cannonade; the whole army covered the shore awaiting with anxiety the
result of the enterprise.  Already the fortifications seemed to be
beginning to totter; the batteries had been firing for five hours; all at
once the Prince of Nassau, who commanded a detachment, thought he
perceived flames mastering his heavy vessel; the fire spread rapidly; one
after another, the floating batteries found themselves disarmed.  "At
seven o'clock we had lost all hope," said an Italian officer who had
taken part in the assault; "we fired no more, and our signals of distress
remained unnoticed.  The red-hot shot of the besieged rained down upon
us; the crews were threatened from every point."  Timidly and by weak
detachments, the boats of the two fleets crept up under cover of the
batteries in hopes of saving some of the poor creatures that were like to
perish; the flames which burst out on board the doomed ships served to
guide the fire of the English as surely as in broad daylight.  At the
head of a small squadron of gunboats Captain Curtis barred the passage of
the salvors; the conflagration became general, only the discharges from
the fort replied to the hissing of the flames and to the Spaniard's cries
of despair.  The fire at last slackened; the English gunboats changed
their part; at the peril of their lives the brave seamen on board of them
approached the burning ships, trying to save the unfortunate crews; four
hundred men owed their preservation to those efforts.  A month after this
disastrous affair, Lord Howe, favored by the accidents of wind and
weather, revictualled for the third time, and almost without any
fighting, the fortress and the town under the very eyes of the allied
fleets.  Gibraltar remained impregnable.

Peace was at hand, however: all the belligerents were tired of the
strife; the Marquis of Rockingham was dead; his ministry, after being
broken up, had re-formed with less lustre under the leadership of Lord
Shelburne.  William Pitt, Lord Chatham's second son, at that time
twenty-two years of age, had a seat in the cabinet.  Already negotiations
for a general peace had begun at Paris; but Washington, who eagerly
desired the end of the war, did not yet feel any confidence.  "The old
infatuation, the political duplicity and perfidy of England, render me, I
confess, very suspicious, very doubtful," he wrote; "and her position
seems to me to be perfectly summed up in the laconic saying of Dr.
Franklin 'They are incapable of continuing the war and too proud to make
peace.'  The pacific overtures made to the different belligerent nations
have probably no other design than to detach some one of them from the
coalition.  At any rate, whatever be the enemy's intentions, our
watchfulness and our efforts, so far from languishing, should become more
vigorous than ever.  Too much trust and confidence would ruin
everything."

America was the first to make peace, without however detaching herself
officially from the coalition which had been formed to maintain her
quarrel and from which she had derived so many advantages.  On the 30th
of November, 1782, in disregard of the treaties but lately concluded
between France and the revolted colonies, the American negotiators signed
with stealthy precipitation the preliminary articles of a special peace,
"thus abandoning France to the dangers of being isolated in negotiations
or in arms."  The votes of Congress, as well as the attitude of
Washington, did not justify this disloyal and ungrateful eagerness.
"The articles of the treaty between Great Britain and America," wrote the
general to Chevalier de La Luzerne, French minister at Philadelphia, "are
so far from conclusive as regards a general pacification, that we must
preserve a hostile attitude and remain ready for any contingency, for war
as well as peace."

On the 5th of December, at the opening of Parliament, George III.
announced in the speech from the throne that he had offered to recognize
the independence of the American colonies.  "In thus admitting their
separation from the crown of this kingdom, I have sacrificed all my
desires to the wishes and opinion of my people," said the king.
"I humbly pray Almighty God, that Great Britain may not feel the evils
which may flow from so important a dismemberment of its empire, and that
America may be a stranger to the calamities which have before now proved
to the mother-country that monarchy is inseparable from the benefits of
constitutional liberty.  Religion, language, interests, affections may
still form a bond of union between the two countries, and I will spare no
pains or attention to promote it."  "I was the last man in England to
consent to the Independence of America," said the king to John Adams, who
was the first to represent the new republic at the Court of St. James; "I
will be the last in the world to sanction any violation of it."  Honest
and sincere in his concessions as he had been in his persistent
obstinacy, the king supported his ministers against the violent attacks
made upon them in Parliament.  The preliminaries of general peace had
been signed at Paris on the 20th of January, 1783.

To the exchange of conquests between France and England was added the
cession to France of the island of Tobago and of the Senegal River with
its dependencies.  The territory of Pondicherry and Karikal received some
augmentation.  For the first time for more than a hundred years the
English renounced the humiliating conditions so often demanded on the
subject of the harbor of Dunkerque.  Spain saw herself confirmed in her
conquest of the Floridas and of the island of Minorca.  Holland recovered
all her possessions, except Negapatam.

Peace was made, a glorious and a sweet one for the United States, which,
according to Washington's expression, "saw opening before them a career
that might lead them to become a great people, equally happy and
respected."  Despite all the mistakes of the people and the defects every
day more apparent in the form of its government, this noble and healthy
ambition has always been present to the minds of the American nation as
the ultimate aim of their hopes and their endeavors.  More than eighty
years after the war of independence, the indomitable energy of the
fathers reappeared in the children, worthy of being called a great people
even when the agonies of a civil war without example denied to them the
happiness which had a while ago been hoped for by the glorious founder of
their liberties as well as of their Constitution.

France came out exhausted from the struggle, but relieved in her own eyes
as well as those of Europe from the humiliation inflicted upon her by the
disastrous Seven Years' War and by the treaty of 1763.  She saw
triumphant the cause she had upheld and her enemies sorrow-stricken at
the dismemberment they had suffered.  It was a triumph for her arms and
for the generous impulse which had prompted her to support a legitimate
but for a long while doubtful enterprise.  A fresh element, however, had
come to add itself to the germs of disturbance, already so fruitful,
which were hatching within her.  She had promoted the foundation of a
Republic based upon principles of absolute right; the government had
given way to the ardent sympathy of the nation for a people emancipated
from a long yoke by its deliberate will and its indomitable energy.
France felt her heart still palpitating from the efforts she had
witnessed and shared on behalf of American freedom; the unreflecting
hopes of a blind emulation were already agitating many a mind.  "In all
states," said Washington, "there are inflammable materials which a single
spark may kindle."  In 1783, on the morrow of the American war, the
inflammable materials everywhere accumulated in France were already
providing means for that immense conflagration in the midst of which the
country well-nigh perished.




CHAPTER LVIII.----LOUIS XVI.--FRANCE AT HOME.--MINISTRY OF M. NECKER.
1776-1781.

We have followed the course of good and bad fortune; we have exhibited
France engaged abroad in a policy at the same time bold and generous,
proceeding from rancor as well as from the sympathetic enthusiasm of the
nation; we have seen the war, at first feebly waged, soon extending over
every sea and into the most distant colonies of the belligerents, though
the European continent was not attacked at any point save the barren rock
of Gibraltar; we have seen the just cause of the United States triumphant
and freedom established in the New World: it is time to inquire what new
shocks had been undergone by France whilst she was supporting far away
the quarrel of the revolted colonies, and what new burdens had come to be
added to the load of difficulties and deceptions which she had seemed to
forget whilst she was fighting England at so many different points.  It
was not without great efforts that France had acquired the generous fame
of securing to her allies blessings which she did not herself yet possess
to their full extent; great hopes, and powers fresh and young had been
exhausted in the struggle: at the close of the American war M. Necker was
played out politically as well as M. Turgot.

It was not to supersede the great minister who had fallen that the
Genevese banker had been called to office.  M. de Maurepas was still
powerful, still up and doing; he loved power, in spite of his real levity
and his apparent neglectfulness.  M. Turgot had often galled him, had
sometimes forced his hand; M. de Clugny, who took the place of the
comptroller-general, had no passion for reform, and cared for nothing but
leading, at the treasury's expense, a magnificently scandalous life;
M. de Malesherbes had been succeeded in the king's household by Marquis
Amelot.  "At any rate," said M. de Maurepas, "nobody will accuse me of
having picked him out for his wits."

Profoundly shocked at the irreligious tendencies of the philosophers, the
court was, nevertheless, aweary of the theoricians and of their essays in
reform; it welcomed the new ministers with delight; without fuss, and as
if by a natural recurrence to ancient usage, the edict relative to forced
labor was suspended, the anxieties of the noblesse and of the clergy
subsided; the peasantry knew nothing yet of M. Turgot's fall, but they
soon found out that the evils from which they had imagined they were
delivered continued to press upon them with all their weight.  For their
only consolation Clugny opened to them the fatal and disgraceful chances
of the lottery, which became a royal institution.  To avoid the
remonstrances of Parliament, the comptroller-general established the new
enterprise by a simple decree of the council.  "The entries being
voluntary, the lottery is no tax and can dispense with enregistration,"
it was said.  It was only seventy-five years later, in 1841, under the
government of King Louis Philippe and the ministry of M. Humann, that the
lottery was abolished, and this scandalous source of revenue forbidden to
the treasury.

So much moral weakness and political changeableness, so much poltroonery
or indulgence towards evil and blind passions disquieted serious minds,
and profoundly shook the public credit.  The Dutch refused to carry out
the loan for sixty millions which they had negotiated with M. Turgot; the
discount-fund (_caisse d'escompte_) founded by him brought in very slowly
but a moderate portion of the assets required to feed it; the king alone
was ignorant of the prodigalities and irregularities of his minister.
M. de Maurepas began to be uneasy at the public discontent, he thought of
superseding the comptroller-general: the latter had been ill for some
time, on the 22d of October he died.  By the advice of M. de Maurepas,
the king sent for M. Necker.

James Necker was born at Geneva in 1732.  Engaging in business without
any personal taste for it and by his father's wish, he had been
successful in his enterprises; at forty he was a rich man, and his
banking-house enjoyed great credit when he retired from business, in
1772, in order to devote himself to occupations more in accordance with
his natural inclinations.  He was ambitious and disinterested.  The great
operations in which he had been concerned had made his name known.  He
had propped up the _Compagnie des Indes_ nearly falling to pieces, and
his financial resources had often ministered to the necessities of the
State.  "We entreat your assistance in the day of need," wrote Abbe
Terray when he was comptroller-general; "deign to come to our assistance
with a sum which is absolutely necessary."  On ceasing to be a banker,
Necker soon gave indications of the direction in which his thoughts
turned; he wrote an indifferent Bloge de Colbert, crowned by the French
Academy, in 1773.  He believed that he was destined to wear the mantle of
Louis XIV.'s great minister.

Society and public opinion exercised an ever increasing influence in the
eighteenth century; M. Necker managed to turn it to account.  He had
married, in 1764, Mdlle. Suzanne Curchod, a Swiss pastor's daughter,
pretty, well informed, and passionately devoted to her husband, his
successes and his fame.  The respectable talents, the liberality, the
large scale of living of M. and Madame Necker attracted round them the
literary and philosophical circle; the religious principles, the
somewhat stiff propriety of Madame Necker maintained in her drawing-room
an intelligent and becoming gravity which was in strong contrast with
the licentious and irreligious frivolity of the conversations customary
among the philosophers as well as the courtiers.  Madame Necker paid
continuous and laborious attention to the duties of society.  She was
not a Frenchwoman, and she was uncomfortably conscious of it.  "When I
came to this country," she wrote to one of her fair friends, "I thought
that literature was the key to everything, that a man cultivated his
mind with books only, and was great by knowledge only."  Undeceived by
the very fact of her admiration for her husband, who had not found
leisure to give himself up to his natural taste for literature, and who
remained rather unfamiliar with it, she made it her whole desire to be
of good service to him in the society in which she had been called upon
to live with him.  "I hadn't a word to say in society," she writes; "I
didn't even know its language.  Obliged, as a woman, to captivate
people's minds, I was ignorant how many shades there are of self-love,
and I offended it when I thought I was flattering it. Always striking
wrong notes and never hitting it off, I saw that my old ideas would
never accord with those I was obliged to acquire; so I have hid my
little capital away, never to see it again, and set about working for my
living and getting together a little stock, if I can."  Wit and
knowledge thus painfully achieved are usually devoid of grace and charm.
Madame du Deffand made this a reproach against M. Necker as well as his
wife "He wants one quality, that which is most conducive to
agreeability, a certain readiness which, as it were, provides wits for
those with whom one talks; he doesn't help to bring out what one thinks,
and one is more stupid with him than one is all alone or with other
folks."  People of talent, nevertheless, thronged about M. and Madame
Necker.  Diderot often went to see them; Galiani, Raynal, Abbe Morellet,
M. Suard, quite young yet, were frequenters of the house; Condorcet did
not set foot in it, passionately enlisted as he was amongst the
disciples of M. Turgot, who were hostile to his successor; Bernardin de
St. Pierre never went thither again from the day when the reading of
_Paul and Virginia_ had sent the company to sleep. "At first everybody
listens in silence," says M. Aime Martin; "by degrees attention flags,
people whisper, people yawn, nobody listens any more; M. de Buffon looks
at his watch and asks for his carriage; the nearest to the door slips
out, Thomas falls asleep, M. Necker smiles to see the ladies crying, and
the ladies ashamed of their tears dare not acknowledge that they have
been interested."

[Illustration: The Reading of "Paul and Virginia."----427]

The persistent admiration of the general public, and fifty imitations
of _Paul and Virginia_ published in a single year, were soon to avenge
Bernardin de St. Pierre for the disdainful yawns of the philosophers.
It is pretty certain that Madame Necker's daughter, little Germaine,
if she were present at the reading, did not fall asleep as M. Thomas did,
and that she was not ashamed of her tears.

Next to M. Buffon, to whom Madame had vowed a sort of cult, and who was
still writing to this faithful friend when he was near his last gasp,
M. Thomas had more right than anybody to fall asleep at her house if he
thought fit.  Marmontel alone shared with him the really intimate
friendship of M. and Madame Necker; the former had given up tragedies and
moral tales; a pupil of Voltaire, without the splendor and inexhaustible
vigor of his master, he was less prone to license, and his feelings were
more serious; he was at that time correcting his _Elements de
Litterature,_ but lately published in the _Encyclopaedie,_ and commencing
the _Memoires d'un pere, pour servir d l'instruction de ses enfants_.
Thomas was editing his _Eloges,_ sometimes full of eloquence, often
subtle and delicate, always long, unexceptionable, and wearisome.  His
noble character had won him the sincere esteem and affection of Madame
Necker.  She, laboriously anxious about the duties politeness requires
from the mistress of a house, went so far as to write down in her tablets
"To recompliment M. Thomas more strongly on the song of France in his
poem of Pierre le Grand."  She paid him more precious homage when she
wrote to him: "We were united in our youth in every honorable way; let us
be more than ever united now when ripe age, which diminishes the vivacity
of impressions, augments the force of habit, and let us be more than ever
necessary to one another when we live no longer save in the past and in
the future, for, as regards myself, I, in anticipation, lay no store by
the approbation of the circles which will surround us in our old age, and
I desire nothing among posterity but a tomb to which I may precede M.
Necker, and on which you will write the epitaph.  Such resting-place will
be dearer to me than that among the poplars which cover the ashes of
Rousseau."

It was desirable to show what sort of society, cultivated and virtuous,
lively and serious, all in one, the new minister whom Louis XVI. had just
called to his side had managed to get about him.  Though friendly with
the philosophers, he did not belong to them, and his wife's piety
frequently irked them.  "The conversation was a little constrained
through the strictness of Madame Necker," says Abbe Morellet; "many
subjects could not be touched upon in her presence, and she was
particularly hurt by freedom in religious opinions."  Practical
acquaintance with business had put M. Necker on his guard against the
chimerical theories of the economists.  Rousseau had exercised more
influence over his mind; the philosopher's wrath against civilization
seemed to have spread to the banker, when the latter wrote in his _Traite
sur le commerce des grains,_ "One would say that a small number of men,
after dividing the land between them, had made laws of union and security
against the multitude, just as they would have made for themselves
shelters in the woods against the wild beasts.  What concern of ours are
your laws of property? the most numerous class of citizens might say: we
possess nothing.  Your laws of right and wrong?  We have nothing to
defend. Your laws of liberty?  If we do not work to-morrow, we shall
die."

Public opinion was favorable to M. Necker, his promotion was well
received; it presented, however, great difficulties: he had been a
banker, and hitherto the comptrollers-general had all belonged to the
class of magistrates or superintendents; he was a Protestant, and, as
such, could not hold any office.  The clergy were in commotion; they
tried certain remonstrances.  "We will give him up to you," said M. de
Maurepas, "if you undertake to pay the debts of the state."  The
opposition of the church, however, closed to the new minister an
important opening; at first director of the treasury, then
director-general of finance, M. Necker never received the title of
comptroller-general, and was not admitted to the council.  From the
outset, with a disinterestedness not devoid of ostentation, he had
declined the salary attached to his functions.  The courtiers looked at
one another in astonishment.  It is easy to see that he is a foreigner,
a republican, and a Protestant," people said.  M. de Maurepas laughed.
"M. Necker," he declared, "is a maker of gold; he has introduced the
philosopher's stone into the kingdom."

This was for a long while the feeling throughout France.  "No
bankruptcies, no new imposts, no loans," M. Turgot had said, and had
looked to economy alone for the resources necessary to restore the
finances.  Bolder and less scrupulous, M. Necker, who had no idea of
having recourse to either bankruptcy or imposts, made unreserved use of
the system of loans.  During the five years that his ministry lasted, the
successive loans he contracted amounted to nearly five hundred million
livres.  There was no security given to insure its repayment to the
lenders.  The mere confidence felt in the minister's ability and honesty
had caused the money to flow into the treasury.

M. Necker did not stop there: a foreigner by birth, he felt no respect
for the great tradition of French administration; practised in the
handling of funds, he had conceived as to the internal government of the
finances theories opposed to the old system; the superintendents
established a while ago by Richelieu had become powerful in the central
administration as well as in the provinces, and the comptroller-general
was in the habit of accounting with them; they nearly all belonged to old
and notable families; some of them had attracted the public regard and
esteem.  The new minister suppressed several offices and diminished the
importance of some others; he had taken away from M. Trudaine,
administrator of gabels and heavy revenues (_grosses fermes_), the right
of doing business with the king; M. Trudaine sent in his resignation; he
was much respected, and this reform was not approved of.  "M. Necker,"
people said, "wants to be assisted by none but removable slaves."  At the
same time the treasurers-general, numbering forty-eight, were reduced to
a dozen, and the twenty-seven treasurers of marine and war to two; the
farmings-general (of taxes) were renewed with an advantage to the
treasury of fifteen millions.  The posts at court likewise underwent
reform; the courtiers saw at one blow the improper sources of their
revenues in the financial administration cut off, and obsolete and
ridiculous appointments, to which numerous pensions, were attached,
reduced.  "Acquisitions of posts, projects of marriage or education,
unforeseen losses, abortive hopes, all such matters had become an
occasion for having recourse to the sovereign's munificence," writes M.
Necker.  "One would have said that the royal treasury was bound to do all
the wheedling, all the smoothing-down, all the reparation; and as the
method of pensions, though pushed to the uttermost (the king was at that
time disbursing in that way some twenty-eight millions of livres), could
not satisfy all claims or sufficiently gratify shameful cupidity, other
devices had been hit upon, and would have gone on being hit upon, every
day; interests in the collection of taxes, in the customs, in army
supplies, in the stores, in many pay-offices, in markets of every kind,
and even in the furnishing of hospitals, all was fair game, all was
worthy of the attention of persons often, from their position, the most
above any business of the kind."

The discontent of the great financiers and that of the courtiers was
becoming every day more noisy, without as yet shaking the credit of
M. Necker.  "M. Necker wants to govern the kingdom of France like his
little republic of Geneva," people said: "he is making a desert round the
king; each loan is the recompense for something destroyed."  "Just so,"
answered M. de Maurepas: "he gives us millions, provided that we allow
him to suppress certain offices."  "And if he were to ask permission to
have the superintendents' heads cut off?"  "Perhaps we should give it
him," said the veteran minister, laughing.  "Find us the philosopher's
stone, as he has done, and I promise you that his Majesty will have you
into the ministry that very day."

M. Necker did not indulge in illusions, he owed to the embarrassments of
the government and to the new burdens created by the American war a
complaisance which his bold attempts would not have met with under other
circumstances.  "Nobody will ever know," he himself said, "the
steadfastness I found necessary; I still recall that long and dark
staircase of M. de Maurepas' which I mounted in fear and sadness,
uncertain of succeeding with him as to some new idea which I had in my
mind, and which aimed most frequently at obtaining an increase of revenue
by some just but severe operation.  I still recall that upstairs closet,
beneath the roof of Versailles, but over the rooms, and, from its
smallness and its situation, seeming to be really a superfine extract and
abstract of all vanities and ambitions; it was there that reform and
economy had to be discussed with a minister grown old in the pomps and
usages of the court.  I remember all the delicate management I had to
employ to succeed, after many a rebuff.  At last I would obttin some
indulgences for the commonwealth.  I obtained them, I could easily see,
as recompense for the resources I had found during the war.  I met with
more courage in dealing with the king.  Young and virtuous, he could and
would hear all.  The queen, too, lent me a favorable ear, but, all around
their Majesties, in court and city, to how much enmity and hatred did I
not expose myself?  There were all kinds of influence and power which I
had to oppose with firmness; there were all sorts of interested factions
with which I had to fight in this perpetual struggle."

"Alas!" Madame Necker would say, "my heart and my regrets are ever
yearning for a world in which beneficence should be the first of virtues.
What reflections do I not make on our own particular case!  I thought to
see a golden age under so pure an administration; I see only an age of
iron.  All resolves itself into doing as little harm as possible."  0 the
grievous bitterness of past illusions!  Madame Necker consoled herself
for the enmity of the court and for the impotence of that beneficence
which had been her dream by undertaking on her own account a difficult
reform, that of the hospitals of Paris, scenes, as yet, of an almost
savage disorderliness.  The sight of sick, dead, and dying huddled
together in the same bed had excited the horror and the pity of Madame
Necker.  She opened a little hospital, supported at her expense and under
her own direction, which still bears the name of Necker Hospital, and
which served as a model for the reforms attempted in the great public
establishments.  M. Necker could not deny himself the pleasure of
rendering homage to his wife's efforts in a report to the king; the
ridicule thrown upon this honest but injudicious gush of conjugal pride
proved the truth of what Madame Necker herself said.  "I did not know the
language of this country.  What was called frankness in Switzerland
became egotism at Paris."

[Illustration: Necker Hospital----432]

The active charity of Madame Necker had won her the esteem of the
Archbishop of Paris, Christopher de Beaumont, a virtuous, fanatical
priest; he had gained a great lawsuit against the city of Paris, which
had to pay him a sum of three hundred thousand livres.  "It is our wish,"
said the archbishop, "that M. Necker should dispose of these funds to the
greatest advantage for the state, trusting to his zeal, his love of good,
and his wisdom, for the most useful employment of the said funds, and
desiring further that no account be required of him, as to such
employment, by any person whatsoever."  The prelate's three hundred
thousand livres were devoted to the internal repairs of the Hotel-Dieu.
"How is it," people asked, "that the archbishop thinks so highly of M.
Necker, and even dines with him?"  "0!" answered the wicked wags, "it is
because M. Necker is not a Jansenist, he is only a Protestant."

Notwithstanding this unusual tolerance on the part of Christopher de
Beaumont, his Protestantism often placed M. Necker in an awkward
position.  "The title of liberator of your Protestant brethren would be a
flattering one for you," said one of the pamphlets of the day, "and it
would be yours forever, if you could manage to obtain for them a civil
existence, to procure for them the privileges of a citizen, liberty and
tolerance.  You are sure of a diminution in the power of the clergy.
Your vigorous edict regarding hospitals will pave the way for the ruin of
their credit and their wealth; you have opened the trenches against them,
the great blow has been struck.  All else will not fail to succumb; you
will put all the credit of the state and all the money of France in the
hands of Protestant bankers, Genevese, English, and Dutch.  Contempt will
be the lot of the clergy, your brethren will be held in consideration.
These points of view are full of genius, you will bring great address to
bear upon them."  M. Necker was at the same time accused of being
favorable to England.  "M. Necker is our best and our last friend on the
Continent," Burke had said in the House of Commons.  Knowing better than
anybody the burdens which the war imposed upon the state, and which he
alone had managed to find the means of supporting, M. Necker desired
peace.  It was for Catholics and philosophers that the honor was reserved
of restoring to Protestants the first right of citizens, recognition of
their marriages and a civil status for their children.  The court, the
parliaments, and the financiers were leagued against M. Necker.  "Who,
pray, is this adventurer," cried the fiery Epremesnil, "who is this
charlatan who dares to mete out the patriotism of the French magistracy,
who dares to suppose them lukewarm in their attachments and to denounce
them to a young king?"  The assessment of the twentieths (tax) had raised
great storms; the mass of citizens were taxed rigorously, but the
privileged had preserved the right of themselves making a declaration of
their possessions; a decree of the council ordered verification of the
income from properties.  The Parliaments burst out into remonstrances.
"Every owner of property has the right to grant subsidies by himself or
by his representatives," said the Parliament of Paris; "if he do not
exercise this right as a member of a national body, it must be reverted
to indirectly, otherwise he is no longer master of his own, he is no
longer undisturbed owner."  Confidence in personal declarations, then, is
the only indemnity for the right, which the nation has not exercised but
has not lost, of itself granting and assessing the twentieths.  A bold
principle, even in a free state, and one on which the income-tax rests in
England, but an untenable principle, without absolute equality on the
part of all citizens and a common right to have their consent asked to
the imposts laid upon them.

M. Necker did not belong to the court; he had never lived there, he did
not set foot therein when he became minister.  A while ago Colbert and
Louvois had founded families and taken rank among the great lords who
were jealous of their power and their wealth.  Under Louis XVI., the
court itself was divided, and one of the queen's particular friends,
Baron do Besenval, said, without mincing the matter, in his Memoires: "I
grant that the depredations of the great lords who are at the head of the
king's household are enormous, revolting.  .  .  .  Necker has on his
side the depreciation into which the great lords have fallen; it is such
that they are certainly not to be dreaded, and that their opinion does
not deserve to be taken into consideration in any political speculation."

M. Necker had a regard for public opinion, indeed he attached great
importance to it, but he took its influence to be more extensive and its
authority to rest on a broader bottom than the court or the parliaments
would allow.  "The social spirit, the love of regard and of praise," said
he, "have raised up in France a tribunal at which all men who draw its
eyes upon them are obliged to appear: there public opinion, as from the
height of a throne, decrees prizes and crowns, makes and unmakes
reputations.  A support is wanted against the vacillations of ministers,
and this important support is only to be expected from progress in the
enlightenment and resisting power of public opinion.  Virtues are more
than ever in want of a stage, and it becomes essential that public
opinion should rouse the actors; it must be supported, then, this