finance-pedant as he was.
Again, a military pedant, Saint-Germain, with his Prussian manoeuvres;
with his Prussian notions, as if merit and not coat-of-arms should be
the rule of promotion, has disaffected military men; the Mousquetaires,
with much else are suppressed: for he too was one of your suppressors;
and unsettling and oversetting, did mere mischief--to the Oeil-de-Boeuf.
Complaints abound; scarcity, anxiety: it is a changed Oeil-de-Boeuf.
Besenval says, already in these years (1781) there was such a melancholy
(such a tristesse) about Court, compared with former days, as made it
quite dispiriting to look upon.

No wonder that the Oeil-de-Boeuf feels melancholy, when you are
suppressing its places! Not a place can be suppressed, but some purse is
the lighter for it; and more than one heart the heavier; for did it
not employ the working-classes too,--manufacturers, male and female,
of laces, essences; of Pleasure generally, whosoever could manufacture
Pleasure? Miserable economies; never felt over Twenty-five Millions!
So, however, it goes on: and is not yet ended. Few years more and the
Wolf-hounds shall fall suppressed, the Bear-hounds, the Falconry; places
shall fall, thick as autumnal leaves. Duke de Polignac demonstrates, to
the complete silencing of ministerial logic, that his place cannot be
abolished; then gallantly, turning to the Queen, surrenders it, since
her Majesty so wishes. Less chivalrous was Duke de Coigny, and yet not
luckier: "We got into a real quarrel, Coigny and I," said King Louis;
"but if he had even struck me, I could not have blamed him." (Besenval,
iii. 255-58.) In regard to such matters there can be but one opinion.
Baron Besenval, with that frankness of speech which stamps the
independent man, plainly assures her Majesty that it is frightful
(affreux); "you go to bed, and are not sure but you shall rise
impoverished on the morrow: one might as well be in Turkey." It is
indeed a dog's life.

How singular this perpetual distress of the royal treasury! And yet it
is a thing not more incredible than undeniable. A thing mournfully true:
the stumbling-block on which all Ministers successively stumble, and
fall. Be it 'want of fiscal genius,' or some far other want, there is
the palpablest discrepancy between Revenue and Expenditure; a Deficit
of the Revenue: you must 'choke (combler) the Deficit,' or else it will
swallow you! This is the stern problem; hopeless seemingly as squaring
of t