We have seen that the queen, before receiving Andrée, was smiling over a note from Madame de la Motte. She was, however, rendered serious by the interview with Mademoiselle de Taverney. Scarcely had she gone, when Madame de Misery came to announce M. de Calonne. He was a man of much intellect, but, foreseeing that disaster was hanging over France, determined to think only of the present, and enjoy it to the utmost. He was a courtier, and a popular man. M. de Necker had shown the impossibility of finding finances, and called for reforms which would have struck at the estates of the nobility and the revenues of the clergy; he exposed his designs too openly, and was overwhelmed by a torrent of opposition; to show the enemy your plan of attack is half to give them the victory. Calonne, equally alive to the danger, but seeing no way of escape, gave way to it. He completely carried with him the king and queen, who implicitly believed in his system, and this is, perhaps, the only political fault which Louis XVI was guilty of towards posterity. M. de Calonne was handsome, and had an ingratiating manner; he knew how to please a queen, and always arrived with a smile on his face, when others might have worn a frown.
The queen received him graciously, and said, “Have we any money, M. de Calonne?”
“Certainly, madame; we have always money.”
“You are perfectly marvelous,” replied she, “an incomparable financier, for you seem always ready when we want money.”
“How much does your majesty require?”
“Explain to me first how you manage to find money, when M. Necker declared that there was none.”
“M. Necker was right, madame; for when I became minister on the 3d of November, 1783, there were but one thousand and two hundred francs in the public treasury. Had M. Necker, madame, instead of crying out, ‘There is no money,’ done as I have done, and borrowed 100,000,000 the first year, and 125,000,000 the second, and had he been as sure as I am of a new loan of 80,000,000 for the third, he would have been a true financier. Every one can say there is no money, but not that there is plenty.”
“That is what I compliment you on, sir; but how to pay all this?”
“Oh, madame, be sure we shall pay it,” replied he, with a strange smile.
“Well, I trust to you,” said the queen.