Meanwhile, alas, his Fotunatus’ Purse turns out to be little other than the old ‘vectigal of Parsimony.’  Nay, he too has to produce his scheme of taxing:  Clergy, Noblesse to be taxed; Provincial Assemblies, and the rest,—­like a mere Turgot!  The expiring M. de Maurepas must gyrate one other time.  Let Necker also depart; not unlamented.

Great in a private station, Necker looks on from the distance; abiding his time.  ‘Eighty thousand copies’ of his new Book, which he calls Administration des Finances, will be sold in few days.  He is gone; but shall return, and that more than once, borne by a whole shouting Nation.  Singular Controller-General of the Finances; once Clerk in Thelusson’s Bank!

Chapter 1.2.VI.

Windbags.

So marches the world, in this its Paper Age, or Era of Hope.  Not without obstructions, war-explosions; which, however, heard from such distance, are little other than a cheerful marching-music.  If indeed that dark living chaos of Ignorance and Hunger, five-and-twenty million strong, under your feet,—­were to begin playing!

For the present, however, consider Longchamp; now when Lent is ending, and the glory of Paris and France has gone forth, as in annual wont.  Not to assist at Tenebris Masses, but to sun itself and show itself, and salute the Young Spring. (Mercier, Tableau de Paris, ii. 51.  Louvet, Roman de Faublas, &c.) Manifold, bright-tinted, glittering with gold; all through the Bois de Boulogne, in longdrawn variegated rows;—­like longdrawn living flower-borders, tulips, dahlias, lilies of the valley; all in their moving flower-pots (of new-gilt carriages):  pleasure of the eye, and pride of life!  So rolls and dances the Procession:  steady, of firm assurance, as if it rolled on adamant and the foundations of the world; not on mere heraldic parchment,—­under which smoulders a lake of fire.  Dance on, ye foolish ones; ye sought not wisdom, neither have ye found it.  Ye and your fathers have sown the wind, ye shall reap the whirlwind.  Was it not, from of old, written:  The wages of sin is death?

But at Longchamp, as elsewhere, we remark for one thing, that dame and cavalier are waited on each by a kind of human familiar, named jokei.  Little elf, or imp; though young, already withered; with its withered air of premature vice, of knowingness, of completed elf-hood:  useful in various emergencies.  The name jokei (jockey) comes from the English; as the thing also fancies that it does.  Our Anglomania, in fact , is grown considerable; prophetic of much.  If France is to be free, why shall she not, now when mad war is hushed, love neighbouring Freedom?  Cultivated men, your Dukes de Liancourt, de la Rochefoucault admire the English Constitution, the English National Character; would import what of it they can.