If the first steps of M. de Calonne dismayed men of foresight and of experience in affairs, the public was charmed with them, no less than the courtiers.  The bail des fermes was re-established, the Caisse d’escompte had resumed payment, the stockholders (rentiers) received their quarters’ arrears, the loan whereby the comptroller-general met all expenses had reached eleven per cent.  “A man who wants to borrow,” M. de Calonne would say, “must appear rich, and to appear rich he must dazzle by his expenditure.  Act we thus in the public administration.  Economy is good for nothing, it warns those who have money, not to lend it to an indebted treasury, and it causes decay among the arts which prodigality vivifies.”  New works, on a gigantic scale, were undertaken everywhere.  “Money abounds in the kingdom,” the comptroller-general would remark to the king; “the people never had more openings for work; lavishness rejoices their eyes, because it sets their hands going.  Continue these splendid undertakings, which are an ornament to Paris, Bordeaux, Lyons, Nantes, Marseilles, and Nimes, and which are almost entirely paid for by those flourishing cities.  Look to your ports, fortify Havre, and create a Cherbourg, braving the jealousy of the English.  None of those measures which reveal and do not relieve the straits of the treasury!  The people, whom declaiming jurisconsults so vehemently but vainly incite to speak evil of lavishness, would be grieved if they saw any interruption in the expenditure which a silly parsimony calls superfluous.”

The comptroller-general’s practice tallied with his theories; the courtiers had recovered the golden age; it was scarcely necessary to solicit the royal favor.  “When I saw everybody holding out hands, I held out my hat,” said a prince.  The offices abolished by M. Turgot and M. Necker were re-established, the abuses which they had removed came back, the acceptances (acquits de comptant) rose in 1785 to more than a hundred and thirty-six millions of livres.  The debts of the king’s brothers were paid; advantageous exchanges of royal lands were effected to their profit; the queen bought St. Cloud, which belonged to the Duke of Orleans; all the great lords who were ruined, all the courtiers who were embarrassed, resumed the pleasant habit of counting upon the royal treasury to relieve their wants.  The polite alacrity of the comptroller-general had subdued the most rebellious; he obtained for Brittany the right of freely electing its deputies; the states-hall at Rennes, which had but lately resounded with curses upon him, was now repeating a new cry of “Hurrah for Calonne!” A vote of the assembly doubled the gratuitous gift which the province ordinarily offered the king.  “If it is possible, it is done,” the comptroller would say to applicants; “if it is impossible, it will get done.”