The persistent admiration of the general public, and fifty imitations of Paul and Virginia published in a single year, were soon to avenge Bernardin de St. Pierre for the disdainful yawns of the philosophers. It is pretty certain that Madame Necker’s daughter, little Germaine, if she were present at the reading, did not fall asleep as M. Thomas did, and that she was not ashamed of her tears.
Next to M. Buffon, to whom Madame had vowed a sort of cult, and who was still writing to this faithful friend when he was near his last gasp, M. Thomas had more right than anybody to fall asleep at her house if he thought fit. Marmontel alone shared with him the really intimate friendship of M. and Madame Necker; the former had given up tragedies and moral tales; a pupil of Voltaire, without the splendor and inexhaustible vigor of his master, he was less prone to license, and his feelings were more serious; he was at that time correcting his Elements de Litterature, but lately published in the Encyclopaedie, and commencing the Memoires d’un pere, pour servir d l’instruction de ses enfants. Thomas was editing his Eloges, sometimes full of eloquence, often subtle and delicate, always long, unexceptionable, and wearisome. His noble character had won him the sincere esteem and affection of Madame Necker. She, laboriously anxious about the duties politeness requires from the mistress of a house, went so far as to write down in her tablets “To recompliment M. Thomas more strongly on the song of France in his poem of Pierre le Grand.” She paid him more precious homage when she wrote to him: “We were united in our youth in every honorable way; let us be more than ever united now when ripe age, which diminishes the vivacity of impressions, augments the force of habit, and let us be more than ever necessary to one another when we live no longer save in the past and in the future, for, as regards myself, I, in anticipation, lay no store by the approbation of the circles which will surround us in our old age, and I desire nothing among posterity but a tomb to which I may precede M. Necker, and on which you will write the epitaph. Such resting-place will be dearer to me than that among the poplars which cover the ashes of Rousseau.”
It was desirable to show what sort of society, cultivated and virtuous, lively and serious, all in one, the new minister whom Louis XVI. had just called to his side had managed to get about him. Though friendly with the philosophers, he did not belong to them, and his wife’s piety frequently irked them. “The conversation was a little constrained through the strictness of Madame Necker,” says Abbe Morellet; “many subjects could not be touched upon in her presence, and she was particularly hurt by freedom in religious opinions.” Practical acquaintance with business had put M. Necker on his guard against the chimerical theories of the economists. Rousseau had exercised more influence over his mind; the philosopher’s wrath against civilization seemed to have spread to the banker, when the latter wrote in his Traite sur le commerce des grains, “One would say that a small number of men, after dividing the land between them, had made laws of union and security against the multitude, just as they would have made for themselves shelters in the woods against the wild beasts. What concern of ours are your laws of property? the most numerous class of citizens might say: we possess nothing. Your laws of right and wrong? We have nothing to defend. Your laws of liberty? If we do not work to-morrow, we shall die.”
Public opinion was favorable to M. Necker, his promotion was well received; it presented, however, great difficulties: he had been a banker, and hitherto the comptrollers-general had all belonged to the class of magistrates or superintendents; he was a Protestant, and, as such, could not hold any office. The clergy were in commotion; they tried certain remonstrances. “We will give him up to you,” said M. de Maurepas, “if you undertake to pay the debts of the state.” The opposition of the church, however, closed to the new minister an important opening; at first director of the treasury, then director-general of finance, M. Necker never received the title of comptroller-general, and was not admitted to the council. From the outset, with a disinterestedness not devoid of ostentation, he had declined the salary attached to his functions. The courtiers looked at one another in astonishment. “It is easy to see that he is a foreigner, a republican, and a Protestant,” people said. M. de Maurepas laughed. “M. Necker,” he declared, “is a maker of gold; he has introduced the philosopher’s stone into the kingdom.”
This was for a long while the feeling throughout France. “No bankruptcies, no new imposts, no loans,” M. Turgot had said, and had looked to economy alone for the resources necessary to restore the finances. Bolder and less scrupulous, M. Necker, who had no idea of having recourse to either bankruptcy or imposts, made unreserved use of the system of loans. During the five years that his ministry lasted, the successive loans he contracted amounted to nearly five hundred million livres. There was no security given to insure its repayment to the lenders. The mere confidence felt in the minister’s ability and honesty had caused the money to flow into the treasury.
M. Necker did not stop there: a foreigner by birth, he felt no respect for the great tradition of French administration; practised in the handling of funds, he had conceived as to the internal government of the finances theories opposed to the old system; the superintendents established a while ago by Richelieu had become powerful in the central administration as well as in the provinces, and the comptroller-general was in the habit of accounting with them; they nearly all belonged to old and notable families; some of them had attracted the public regard and esteem. The new minister suppressed several offices and diminished the importance of some others; he had taken away from M. Trudaine, administrator of gabels and heavy revenues (grosses fermes), the right of doing business with the king; M. Trudaine sent in his resignation; he was much respected, and this reform was not approved of. “M. Necker,” people said, “wants to be assisted by none but removable slaves.” At the same time the treasurers-general, numbering forty-eight, were reduced to a dozen, and the twenty-seven treasurers of marine and war to two; the farmings-general (of taxes) were renewed with an advantage to the treasury of fifteen millions. The posts at court likewise underwent reform; the courtiers saw at one blow the improper sources of their revenues in the financial administration cut off, and obsolete and ridiculous appointments, to which numerous pensions, were attached, reduced. “Acquisitions of posts, projects of marriage or education, unforeseen losses, abortive hopes, all such matters had become an occasion for having recourse to the sovereign’s munificence,” writes M. Necker. “One would have said that the royal treasury was bound to do all the wheedling, all the smoothing-down, all the reparation; and as the method of pensions, though pushed to the uttermost (the king was at that time disbursing in that way some twenty-eight millions of livres), could not satisfy all claims or sufficiently gratify shameful cupidity, other devices had been hit upon, and would have gone on being hit upon, every day; interests in the collection of taxes, in the customs, in army supplies, in the stores, in many pay-offices, in markets of every kind, and even in the furnishing of hospitals, all was fair game, all was worthy of the attention of persons often, from their position, the most above any business of the kind.”
The discontent of the great financiers and that of the courtiers was becoming every day more noisy, without as yet shaking the credit of M. Necker. “M. Necker wants to govern the kingdom of France like his little republic of Geneva,” people said: “he is making a desert round the king; each loan is the recompense for something destroyed.” “Just so,” answered M. de Maurepas: “he gives us millions, provided that we allow him to suppress certain offices.” “And if he were to ask permission to have the superintendents’ heads cut off?” “Perhaps we should give it him,” said the veteran minister, laughing. “Find us the philosopher’s stone, as he has done, and I promise you that his Majesty will have you into the ministry that very day.”
M. Necker did not indulge in illusions, he owed to the embarrassments of the government and to the new burdens created by the American war a complaisance which his bold attempts would not have met with under other circumstances. “Nobody will ever know,” he himself said, “the steadfastness I found necessary; I still recall that long and dark staircase of M. de Maurepas’ which I mounted in fear and sadness, uncertain of succeeding with him as to some new idea which I had in my mind, and which aimed most frequently at obtaining an increase of revenue by some just but severe operation. I still recall that upstairs closet, beneath the roof of Versailles, but over the rooms, and, from its smallness and its situation, seeming to be really a superfine extract and abstract of all vanities and ambitions; it was there that reform and economy had to be discussed with a minister grown old in the pomps and usages of the court. I remember all the delicate management I had to employ to succeed, after many a rebuff. At last I would obtain some indulgences for the commonwealth. I obtained them, I could easily see, as recompense for the resources I had found during the war. I met with more courage in dealing with the king. Young and virtuous, he could and would hear all. The queen, too, lent me a favorable ear, but, all around their Majesties, in court and city, to how much enmity and hatred did I not expose myself? There were all kinds of influence and power which I had to oppose with firmness; there were all sorts of interested factions with which I had to fight in this perpetual struggle.”
“Alas!” Madame Necker would say, “my heart and my regrets are ever yearning for a world in which beneficence should be the first of virtues. What reflections do I not make on our own particular case! I thought to see a golden age under so pure an administration; I see only an age of iron. All resolves itself into doing as little harm as possible.” O the grievous bitterness of past illusions! Madame Necker consoled herself for the enmity of the court and for the impotence of that beneficence which had been her dream by undertaking on her own account a difficult reform, that of the hospitals of Paris, scenes, as yet, of an almost savage disorderliness. The sight of sick, dead, and dying huddled together in the same bed had excited the horror and the pity of Madame Necker. She opened a little hospital, supported at her expense and under her own direction, which still bears the name of Necker Hospital, and which served as a model for the reforms attempted in the great public establishments. M. Necker could not deny himself the pleasure of rendering homage to his wife’s efforts in a report to the king; the ridicule thrown upon this honest but injudicious gush of conjugal pride proved the truth of what Madame Necker herself said. “I did not know the language of this country. What was called frankness in Switzerland became egotism at Paris.”