True, the request for eighteen millions of Civil List were stated to be for royal necessities,—people's necessities differ. Thus, whilst five or six thousand wretched people of the 12th Arrondissement were asking for a few trusses of straw on which to sleep, the king was in need of forty-eight thousand francs for the medicaments necessary to his health; the king was in need of three million seven hundred and seventy-three thousand five hundred francs for his personal service; the king was in need of a million two hundred thousand francs to provide fuel for the kitchen fires of the royal household.
It must be admitted that these were a fair number of remedies for a king whose health had become proverbial, and who knew enough about medicine to pass a doctor's degree, in his ordinary indispositions; it was a great luxury for a king who had suppressed the offices of chief equerry, master of the hounds, master of ceremonies and all the great state expenses, and who had set forth the programme, new to France, of a small court half-bourgeois and half-military; also it was a good deal of wood and coal to allow a king who possessed the finest forests in the state, either by right of inheritance or as appanage. True, it was calculated that the sale of wood annually made by the king, which would be sufficient to warm a tenth part of France, was not sufficient to warm the underground kitchen fires of the Palais-Royal. People calculated differently. It was the time of calculations. There was, at that period, a great calculator, since dead, called Timon the misanthrope. Ah! if only he were still alive!... He reckoned that eighteen millions of Civil List amounted to the fiftieth part of the Budget of France; the contribution of three of our most densely populated departments,—Seine, Seine-Inférieure and Nord; the land tax paid to the state by eighteen other departments; four times more than flowed into the state coffers from Calais, Boulonnais, Artois and their six hundred and forty thousand inhabitants, by way of contributions of every kind in a year; three times more than the salt tax brought in; twice more than the government winnings from its lottery; half what the monopoly of the sale of tobacco produced; half what is annually granted for the upkeep of our bridges, roads, harbours and canals—an expenditure which gives work to over fifteen thousand persons; nine times more than the whole budget for public education, including its support, subsidies, national scholarships; double the cost of the foreign office, which pays thirty ambassadors and ministers-plenipotentiary, fifty secretaries to the embassies and legations, one hundred and fifty consuls-general, consuls, vice-consuls, dragomans and consular agents; ninety head clerks and office clerks, under-clerks, employees, copyists, translators and servants; the pay of an army of fifty-five thousand men, officers of all ranks, non-commissioned officers, corporals and soldiers, a third more than the cost of the whole staff of the administration of justice;—note that in saying that justice is paid for, we do not mean to say that it ought to be given up. In short, a sum sufficient to provide work for a whole year to sixty-one thousand six hundred and forty-three workmen belonging to the country!... Although the bourgeoisie were so enthusiastic over their king, this calculation none the less made them reflect.
Then, as if it seemed that every misfortune were to be piled up because of that fatal Civil List of 1832, M. de Montalivet must needs take upon himself to find good reasons for making the contributors support the Budget by saying in the open Chamber—
"If luxury is banished from the king's palace, it will soon be banished from the homes of his subjects!"
At these words there was a prompt and loud explosion, as though the powder magazine at Grenelle had been set on fire.
"Men who make kings are not the subjects of the kings they create!" exclaims M. Marchal.
"There are no more subjects in France."
"There is a king, nevertheless," insinuates M. Dupin, who held a salary direct from that king.
"There are no more subjects," repeats M. Leclerc-Lasalle. "Order! order! order!"