"Every time your Majesty creates a new post, a fool is found to buy it," he had said to the king.
Desmarets had recourse to the bankers; and the king seconded him by the gracious favor with which he received at Versailles the greatest of the collectors (_traitants_), Samuel Bernard.

"By this means everything was provided for up to the time of the general peace," says M.d'Argenson.
France kept up the contest to the end.

When the treaty of Utrecht was signed, the fleet was ruined and destroyed, the trade diminished by two thirds, the colonies lost or devastated by the war, the destitution in the country so frightful that orders had to be given to sow seed in the fields; the exportation of grain was forbidden on pain of death; meanwhile the peasantry were reduced to browse upon the grass in the roads and to tear the bark off the trees and eat it.

Thirty years had rolled by since the death of Colbert, twenty-two since that of Louvois; everything was going to perdition simultaneously; reverses in war and distress at home were uniting to overwhelm the aged king, alone upstanding amidst so many dead and so much ruin.
[Illustration: Misery of the Peasantry----543] "Fifty years' sway and glory had inspired Louis XIV.

with the presumptuous belief that he could not only choose his ministers well, but also instruct them and teach them their craft," says M.d'Argenson.