during the session of the states, the royal troops marched into Rennes; the noblesse refused to deliberate, so long as the assembly had not recovered its independence.  The governor applied to the petty nobles who preponderated in their order; ignorant and poor as they were, they allowed themselves to be bought, their votes carried the day, and the subsidies were at last voted, notwithstanding the opposition on the part of the most weighty of the noblesse; a hundred of them persistently staid away.

Internal quarrels in the cabinet rendered the comptroller-general’s situation daily more precarious; he gave in his resignation.  The king sent for M. d’Ormesson, councillor of state, of a virtue and integrity which were traditional in his family, but without experience of affairs and without any great natural capacity.  He was, besides, very young, and he excused himself from accepting such a post on the score of his age and his feeble lights.  “I am only thirty-one, Sir,” he said.  “I am younger than you,” replied the king, “and my post is more difficult than yours.”  A few months later, the honest magistrate, overwhelmed by a task beyond his strength, had made up his mind to resign; he did not want to have any hand in the growing disorder of the finances; the king’s brothers kept pressing him to pay their debts; Louis XVI. himself, without any warning to the comptroller-general, had just purchased Rambouillet from the Duke of Penthievre, giving a bond of fourteen millions; but Madame d’Ormesson had taken a liking to grandeur; she begged her husband hard to remain, and he did.  It was not long before the embarrassments of the treasury upset his judgment:  the tax-farming contract, so ably concluded by M. Necker, was all at once quashed; a regie was established; the Discount-fund (Caisse d’Escompte+) had lent the treasury six millions:  the secret of this loan was betrayed, and the holders of bills presented themselves in a mass demanding liquidation; a decree of the council forbade payment in coin over a hundred livres, and gave the bills a forced currency.  The panic became general; the king found himself obliged to dismiss M. d’Ormesson, who was persecuted for a long while by the witticisms of the court.  His incapacity had brought his virtue into ridicule.

Marshal de Castries addressed to the king a private note.  “I esteem M. d’Ormesson’s probity,” said the minister of marine frankly, “but if the financial affairs should fall into such discredit that your Majesty finds yourself forced at last to make a change, I dare entreat you to think of the valuable man who is now left unemployed; I do beg you to reflect that, without Colbert, Louis XIV. would never perhaps have been called Louis le Grand; that the wish of the nation, to be taken into account by a good king, is secretly demanding, Sir, that the enlightened, economical, and incorruptible man whom Providence has given to your Majesty, should be recalled to his late functions.  The errors