The Launching of Roger Brook

parchments, and while Chenou was the best of companions with whom to hunt or fence, Roger began to feel an oppressive sense of loneliness during the long dark evenings; so he decided to take a holiday and spend Christmas with the Legers.

He could have ridden in to Rennes but he wanted to take a good supply of Christmas fare to his friends, so Chenou made no difficulty about placing a coach at his disposal; and when he left on the morning of Christmas Eve the coach carried more than his own weight in venison, hares and partridges.

The Legers, Brochard, Manon and Julien Quatrevaux were all delighted to see him and, to his great pleasure, he learned that the latter two had decided to regularise their liaison by getting married in the spring; so Julien, as Manon's fiance, now made one of the family party.

They gave him news of the other friends he had made in Rennes, related to him the latest gossip, and brought him up to date on the affairs of the wider world from which, in recent months, he had been almost completely isolated.

The principal topic of interest was still a flood of rumours in con­nection with the affaire du Collier, as the scandal centring round the stolen diamond necklace had come to be called. It appeared that the necklace had been offered to the Queen, but she had publicly refused to buy it; saying that for a million and a half livres the King could get him a battleship, and that his need of another ship-of-the- line was greater than her need for more diamonds. But, so rumour ran, she had determined to buy this unique collection of gems privately and, as her agent, had used an ambitious and designing woman called the Countess de Valois de la Motte; then, having entered into the bargain, she had found herself short of funds and resorted to borrowing from the fabulously wealthy Cardinal, who was anxious to gain her favour. There seemed no doubt that the Cardinal had received the necklace from the jewellers and sent it to the Queen, imagining that he was acting on her wishes, by the hand of Madame de la Motte; but the Queen flatly denied having received the necklace and ever having entered into any correspondence with the Cardinal.

Madame de la Motte, an adventurer styling himself Count Cagliostro and a courtesan named Mademoiselle Gay d'Oliva, had been sent to join the Cardinal de Rohan in the Bastille; and he, although as a Prince of the Church not normally subject to the jurisdiction of a secular court, was so determined to prove his innocence that he had agreed to submit to a public trial by the Parliament of Paris. All France was agog for the disclosures which it was expected would be made at the trial, as the honour of not only the Cardinal but also the Queen was now at stake.

One evening towards the end of Roger's stay, Brochard took him down to their old haunt for a chat, and asked him how he spent his evenings at the chateau.

'Sometimes I work,' replied Roger, 'but as the Marquis has given me the run of his fine library, I more often make myself comfortable in there with a book.'

For a time they talked literature and on Brochard learning that Roger had been entertaining himself with the plays of Comeille, Racine and Moliere, the serious-minded Bordelais reprimanded him; saying that if he wished to become a lawyer he should use this opportunity to ground himself in sociology, and read such authors as Montesquieu, Dupont of Nemours, de Quesnay, Rousseau, Voltaire, Mirabeau and Mably.

To become a good lawyer was by no means Roger's final ambition in life, but he said that he would be glad to have a list to take back with him as he had no doubt that many of those authors were on the Marquis's shelves. Brochard then asked him if he still took an interest in international affairs.

'As far as I am able to do so,' Roger told him, 'but since the departure of the family the news sheets no longer reach us. I heard, though, a few weeks ago, from Monseigneur's bailiff that the Dutch affair had at last been settled.'

Brochard nodded. 'Yes, by the Treaty of Fontainebleau, signed on November the eighth. By it the Dutch have agreed to demolish their forts on either bank of the Scheldt and open the river to the Austrian traffic. The Emperor, in return, has given up his claim to the sovereignty of Maastricht for a payment of ten million florins. The Dutch would go only to five and a half million, so to clinch matters the balance is to be paid out of the French exchequer. 'Tis a great triumph for our Foreign Minister, the Comte de Vergennes, and the peace party.'

'I don't quite see why we should have to pay up for the Dutch,' said Roger thoughtfully.

'Nor do many other people. There has been a prodigious outcry on that account. Yet had we landed ourselves with a war instead 'twould have cost us a hundred times that sum. 'Twas cheap at the price to my mind. The only trouble is that the Dutch may yet drag us into a conflict if we give full support to their Republican party, who are endeavouring to unseat the Stadtholder, and England comes to his assistance.'

'You still feel that another war would spell ruin to France?'

'More so than ever. Since Monsieur de Calonne became Comptroller-General he has launched loan after loan, each offering a higher rate of interest than the last and each less successful than its predecessor. But the country no longer has any faith in the stability of the Government. On the first of this month, as a last desperate measure, he resorted to an attempt to debase our currency. He is offering twenty-five livres for every gold louis having a face value of twenty-four, which is sent in to the mint; and the gold is to be reminted in new louis having a tenth less weight than the old ones. 'Tis the expedient of a bankrupt and it needs but a national calamity of some kind to produce financial chaos.'

'Why are the French finances in such a parlous state?' asked Roger. 'Cannot the King possibly do something about it?'

Brochard shrugged his broad shoulders. 'He could, and has the wish but not the will. He is hopelessly weak and lacks the courage to support those who counsel wise reforms, against the intrigues of the Queen and the nobles.'

'Perhaps he fears that if he sponsored measures of too liberal a nature the nobles would rebel against him?'

'They no longer have the power to do so, and the game is in his hands if only he had the strength of mind to play it. When he came to the throne in '74 at the age of twenty, he was full of good intentions. He is of simple tastes and had kept himself unbesmirched by the mire of his grandfather's court. He threw out Louis XV's ministers with the Du Barry and the rest of that licentious rabble. He then had a golden opportunity, but, instead of taking some able economist for his principal minister, he appointed old de Maurepas, a man of over eighty; who had been a minister under Louis XIV, if you please, and had been ousted two generations before by Madame de Pompadour.'

Roger nodded as Brochard went on, angrily:

'Then, with the appointment of Turgot as Comptroller-General, he had another chance. Turgot had been Intendant of the Limousin. He was by far the most enlightened of these provincial viceroys, and later was Minister for the Navy. Turgot was, perhaps, the greatest man that France has produced in the present century. He comprehended all the fundamental ills from which the country was suffering and propounded suitable remedies. He was brilliant, broadminded, honest, and the King believed in him; yet he allowed him to be hounded from office. After a period of retrogression, Necker arrived on the scene. He was an incomparably lesser man than Turgot; a slave to his own vanity, and a devotee of compromise who believed in doing things little by little. Yet he was a competent financier and saw the necessity of reform. Again the King had his chance to follow sound advice but, after a few years, he abandoned the Swiss as he had done Turgot. Since then he has allowed himself to be led by a succession of incompetents and, for the past two years, rather than face unpleasant facts he has followed a policy of drift on the advice of Calonne, who is nothing but an unscrupulous speculator.'

'What would Turgot have done, had the King maintained him in office?' Roger inquired.

'His policy was no new taxes and no loans. The deficit was to be made good by rigorous economy in the expenditure of the Court and government departments, and the abolition of the hundreds of sinecure offices that carried unjustifiable pensions. He advocated a single tax upon the land and the abolition of all indirect taxation. He wished to remove all restrictions on trade, including corn, and to make all landowners contribute to the public revenue on a scale according to their means.'

'That would have meant revoking the privilege by which all persons of noble birth are automatically exempt from taxation.'

'Indeed it would. And why not? France now has a population of some twenty-six million. Among them there are a hundred and forty thousand noblesse and a hundred and ninety thousand clergy. The first pays no taxes whatever, the second compromises en bloc for a purely nominal