I will close my letter after I know the result of this evening’s conference.  I greatly fear the archbishop will be forced to retire altogether, and then what man are we to take to place at the head of the whole?  For we must have one, especially with M. Necker.  He must have a bridle; and the person who is above me[3] is not able to be such; and I, whatever people may say, and whatever happens, am never any thing but second; and, in spite of the confidence which the first has in me, he often makes me feel it....  The archbishop has just gone.  The king is very unwilling; and could only be brought to make up his mind by a promise that the person[4] should only be sounded; and that no positive engagement should be made.”

Necker refused.  The next day Mercy reported to the queen that, though the excitement was great, it confined itself to denunciations of the archbishop and of the keeper of the seals; and that “the name of the queen had never once been mentioned;” and on the 22d, Marie Antoinette,[5] from a conviction of the greatness of the emergency, determined to see Necker herself; and employed the embassador and De Vermond to let him know that her own wish for his restoration to the direction of the finances was sincere and earnest, and to promise him that the archbishop should not interfere in that department in any way whatever.  Two days later,[6] she wrote again to mention that the king had vanquished his repugnance to Necker, and had come wholly over to her opinion.  “Time pressed, and it was more essential than ever that Necker should accept;” and on the 25th she writes a final letter to report to Mercy that the archbishop has resigned, and that she has just summoned Necker to come to her the next morning.  Though she felt that she had done what was both right and indispensable, she was not without misgivings.  “If,” she writes, in a strain of anxious despondency very foreign to her usual tone, and which shows how deeply she felt the importance of the crisis, and of every step that might be taken—­ “if he will but undertake the task, it is the best thing that can be done; but I tremble (excuse my weakness) at the fact that it is I who have brought him back.  It is my fate to bring misfortune, and, if infernal machinations should cause him once more to fail, or if he should lower the authority of the king, they will hate me still more.”

In one point of view she need not have trembled at being known to have caused Necker’s re-appointment, since it is plain that no other nomination was possible.  Vergennes had died a few months before, and the whole kingdom did not supply a single statesman of reputation except Necker.  Nor could any choice have for the moment been more universally popular.  The citizens illuminated Paris; the mob burned the archbishop in effigy; and the leading merchants and bankers showed their approval in a far more practical way.  The funds rose; loans to any amount were freely offered to the Treasury; the national credit revived; as if the solvency or insolvency of the nation depended on a single man, and him a foreigner.