"Sir," said he, "the comptrollers-general have many means of paying their debts: I have at this moment two hundred and twenty thousand livres' worth payable on demand; I thought it right to tell your Majesty, and leave everything to your goodness." Louis XVI., astounded at such language, stared a moment at his minister, and then, without any answer, walked up to a desk.
"There are your two hundred and twenty thousand livres," he said at last, handing M.de Calonne a packet of shares in the Water Company.

The comptroller-general pocketed the shares, and found elsewhere the resources necessary for paying his debts.

"If my own affairs had not been in such a bad state, I should not have undertaken those of France," said Calonne gayly to M.de Machault, at that time advanced in age and still the centre of public esteem.

The king, it was said, had but lately thought of sending for him as minister in the room of M.de Maurepas, he had been dissuaded by the advice of his aunts; the late comptroller-general listened gravely to his frivolous successor; the latter told the story of his conversation with the king.

"I had certainly done nothing to deserve a confidence so extraordinary," said M.de Machault to his friends.