approach is announced; public rumors indicate the day, the hour, the places at which they are to commit their outrages.  It would seem as if there were a plan formed to lay waste the country-places, intercept navigation, prevent the carriage of wheat on the high-roads, in order to starve out the large towns, and especially the city of Paris.”  The king at the same time forbade any “remonstrance.”  I rely,” said he on dismissing the court, “upon your placing no obstacle or hinderance in the way of the measures I have taken, in order that no similar event may occur during the period of my reign.”

The troubles were everywhere subsiding, the merchants were recovering their spirits.  M. Turgot had at once sent fifty thousand francs to a trader whom the rioters had robbed of a boat full of wheat which they had flung into the river; two of the insurgents were at the same time hanged at Paris on a gallows forty feet high; and a notice was sent to the parish priests, which they were to read from the pulpit in order to enlighten the people as to the folly of such outbreaks and as to the conditions of the trade in grain.  “My people, when they know the authors of the trouble, will regard them with horror,” said the royal circular.  The authors of the trouble have remained unknown; to his last day M. Turgot believed in the existence of a plot concocted by the Prince of Conti, with the design of overthrowing him.

Severities were hateful to the king; he had misjudged his own character, when, at the outset of his reign, he had desired the appellation of Louis le Severe.  “Have we nothing to reproach ourselves with in these measures?” he was incessantly asking M. Turgot, who was as conscientious but more resolute than his master.  An amnesty preceded the coronation, which was to take place at Rheims on the 11th of June, 1775.

A grave question presented itself as regarded the king’s oath:  should he swear, as the majority of his predecessors had sworn, to exterminate heretics?  M. Turgot had aroused Louis XVI.’s scruples upon this subject.  “Tolerance ought to appear expedient in point of policy for even an infidel prince,” he said; “but it ought to be regarded as a sacred duty for a religious prince.”  His opinion had been warmly supported by M. de Malesherbes, premier president of the Court of Aids.  The king in his perplexity consulted M. de Maurepas.  “M.  Turgot is right,” said the minister, “but he is too bold.  What he proposes could hardly be attempted by a prince who came to the throne at a ripe age and in tranquil times.  That is not your position.  The fanatics are more to be dreaded than the heretics.  The latter are accustomed to their present condition.  It will always be easy for you not to employ persecution.  Those old formulas, of which nobody takes any notice, are no longer considered to be binding.”  The king yielded; he made no change in the form of the oath, and confined himself to stammering out a few