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.