If the Bourbons want to reign in peace, let them seek creditors in the towns and villages, and place their loans there; above all, they ought not to let foreigners draw interest away from France; some day an alien nation might ask us for the capital.

Whereas if capital and interest are held only in France, neither France nor credit can perish.

That's what saved England.

Your plan is the tradesman's plan.

An ambitious public man should produce some bold scheme,--he should make himself another Law, without Law's fatal ill-luck; he ought to exhibit the power of credit, and show that we should reduce, not principal, but interest, as they do in England." "Come, come, Celestine," said Rabourdin; "mix up ideas as much as you please, and make fun of them,--I'm accustomed to that; but don't criticise a work of which you know nothing as yet." "Do I need," she asked, "to know a scheme the essence of which is to govern France with a civil service of six thousand men instead of twenty thousand?
My dear friend, even allowing it were the plan of a man of genius, a king of France who attempted to carry it out would get himself dethroned.