t month);--in regard
to which bad adventure M. le Marquis de Conflans has come to Versailles,
to justify himself, and throw the blame on M. le Marquis de Beauffremont
[his Rear-Admiral, now safe in the Charente, with eight of our poor
ships]. Such things are the more out of place, as we are in a bad enough
position,--no Flat-bottoms stirring from the ports, no Troops of the
MAISON DU ROI setting out; and have reason to believe that we are now to
make no such attempt." [Barbier, iv. 336.]

Silhouette, the Controller-General, was thought to have a creative
genius in finance: but in the eighth month of his gestation, what
phenomena are these? October 26th, there came out Four Decrees of
Council, setting forth, That, "as the expenses of the War exceed not
only the King's ordinary revenues, but the extraordinaries he has had to
lay on his people, there is nothing for it but," in fact, Suspension of
Payment; actual Temporary Bankruptcy:--"Cannot pay you; part of you not
for a year, others of you not till the War end; will give you 5 per cent
interest instead." Coupled with which, by the same creative genius, is a
Declaration in the King's name, "That the King compels nobody, but does
invite all and sundry of loyal mind to send their Plate (on loan, of
course, and with due receipt for it) to the Mint to be coined, lest
Majesty come to have otherwise no money,"--his very valets, as is
privately known, having had no wages from him for ten months past.

Whereupon the rich Princes of the Blood, Due d'Orleans foremost, and
Official persons, Pompadour, Belleisle, Choiseul, do make an effort; and
everybody that has Plate feels uneasily that he cannot use it, and that
he ought to send it. And, November 5th, the King's own Plate, packed
ostentatiously in carts, went to the Mint;--the Dauphiness, noble
Saxon Lady, had already volunteered with a silver toilet-table of hers,
brand-new and of exquisite costly pattern; but the King forbade her. On
such examples, everybody had to make an effort, or uneasily try to make
one. King Friedrich, eight days after Maxen, is somewhat amused at these
proceedings in the distance:--

"The kettles and spoons of the French seem to me a pleasant resource,
for carrying on War!" writes he to D'Argens. ["Wilsdruf, 28th November,
1759," _OEuvres de Frederic,_ xix. 108.] "A bit of mummery to act on the
public feeling, I suppose. The result of it will be small: but as
the Belleisle LETTERS [taken in Contades's