eroic 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.

Beaumarchais too has now winded-up his Law-Pleadings (Memoires);
(1773-6. See Oeuvres de Beaumarchais; where they, and the history of
them, are given.) not without result, to himself