Philosophism, as we saw, has got her Turgot made Controller-General; and there shall be endless reformation.  Unhappily this Turgot could continue only twenty months.  With a miraculous Fortunatus’ Purse in his Treasury, it might have lasted longer; with such Purse indeed, every French Controller-General, that would prosper in these days, ought first to provide himself.  But here again may we not remark the bounty of Nature in regard to Hope?  Man after man advances confident to the Augean Stable, as if he could clean it; expends his little fraction of an ability on it, with such cheerfulness; does, in so far as he was honest, accomplish something.  Turgot has faculties; honesty, insight, heroic volition; but the Fortunatus’ Purse he has not.  Sanguine Controller-General! a whole pacific French Revolution may stand schemed in the head of the thinker; but who shall pay the unspeakable ‘indemnities’ that will be needed?  Alas, far from that:  on the very threshold of the business, he proposes that the Clergy, the Noblesse, the very Parlements be subjected to taxes!  One shriek of indignation and astonishment reverberates through all the Chateau galleries; M. de Maurepas has to gyrate:  the poor King, who had written few weeks ago, ’Il n’y a que vous et moi qui aimions le peuple (There is none but you and I that has the people’s interest at heart),’ must write now a dismissal; (In May, 1776.) and let the French Revolution accomplish itself, pacifically or not, as it can.

Hope, then, is deferred?  Deferred; not destroyed, or abated.  Is not this, for example, our Patriarch Voltaire, after long years of absence, revisiting Paris?  With face shrivelled to nothing; with ’huge peruke a la Louis Quatorze, which leaves only two eyes “visible” glittering like carbuncles,’ the old man is here. (February, 1778.) What an outburst!  Sneering Paris has suddenly grown reverent; devotional with Hero-worship.  Nobles have disguised themselves as tavern-waiters to obtain sight of him:  the loveliest of France would lay their hair beneath his feet.  ’His chariot is the nucleus of a comet; whose train fills whole streets:’  they crown him in the theatre, with immortal vivats; ’finally stifle him under roses,’—­for old Richelieu recommended opium in such state of the nerves, and the excessive Patriarch took too much.  Her Majesty herself had some thought of sending for him; but was dissuaded.  Let Majesty consider it, nevertheless.  The purport of this man’s existence has been to wither up and annihilate all whereon Majesty and Worship for the present rests:  and is it so that the world recognises him?  With Apotheosis; as its Prophet and Speaker, who has spoken wisely the thing it longed to say?  Add only, that the body of this same rose-stifled, beatified-Patriarch cannot get buried except by stealth.  It is wholly a notable business; and France, without doubt, is big (what the Germans call ’Of good Hope’):  we shall wish her a happy birth-hour, and blessed fruit.