He got up and stumped about the room, irritation and pity expressed in every feature of his countenance, not wholly unmixed, it must be confessed (or so it seemed to Calvert, who could not help being a little amused thereat), with a certain satisfaction at his perspicacity.  Suddenly he burst out laughing.

“After all, there is a humorous side to the Marquis’s tardy march to Versailles with his rabble of soldiers.  As the old Duchesse d’Azay said the other evening to the Bishop of Autun and myself, ’Lafayette et sa Garde Nationale ressemblent a l’arc-en-ciel et n’arrivent qu’apres l’orage!’—­I will be willing to bet you a dinner at the Cafe de l’Ecole that the Bishop repeats it within a week as his own bon mot!”

But Mr. Morris had graver charges against the Bishop than the confiscation of a witty saying.  Over Talleyrand’s motion for the public sale of church property he lost all patience, and did not hesitate to point out to him one evening, when they supped together at Madame de Flahaut’s, the serious objections to be urged against such a step.  ’Twas but one, however, of the many signs of the times which both irritated and pained him, for he was genuinely and ardently interested in the fate of France, and looked on with alarm and sadness at the events taking place.  His own plan for a supply of flour from America and the negotiations for the purchase to France of the American debt, which he was endeavoring to conclude with Necker, were alternately renewed and broken off in a most exasperating fashion, owing to that minister’s short-sighted 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?”