We saw Turgot cast forth from the Controllership, with shrieks,--for want of a Fortunatus' Purse.

As little could M.de Clugny manage the duty; or indeed do anything, but consume his wages; attain 'a place in History,' where as an ineffectual shadow thou beholdest him still lingering;--and let the duty manage itself.

Did Genevese Necker possess such a Purse, then?
He possessed banker's skill, banker's honesty; credit of all kinds, for he had written Academic Prize Essays, struggled for India Companies, given dinners to Philosophes, and 'realised a fortune in twenty years.' He possessed, further, a taciturnity and solemnity; of depth, or else of dulness.

How singular for Celadon Gibbon, false swain as he had proved; whose father, keeping most probably his own gig, 'would not hear of such a union,'-- to find now his forsaken Demoiselle Curchod sitting in the high places of the world, as Minister's Madame, and 'Necker not jealous!' (Gibbon's Letters: date, 16th June, 1777, &c.) A new young Demoiselle, one day to be famed as a Madame and De Stael, was romping about the knees of the Decline and Fall: the lady Necker founds Hospitals; gives solemn Philosophe dinner-parties, to cheer her exhausted Controller-General.

Strange things have happened: by clamour of Philosophism, management of Marquis de Pezay, and Poverty constraining even Kings.