[59] "Calonne has published a work on the French Revolution. At the end of it he gives an outline of his plan. Nothing can be more reasonable; and it remains an eternal indictment on the people of consequence then in France, more particularly on that part of them that composed the Assembly of Notables."—Lectures on the French Revolution, by Wm. Smyth, vol. i., p. 122.
[60] Montgaillard, vol. i., p. 300.
[61] There was at this time a nominal tax of two twentieths upon all incomes, which the clergy and the nobility were to pay as the rest. They contrived, however, in a great measure to evade this tax. "The princes of the blood, for example," says Bouillé, in his Memoirs, "who enjoyed among them from twenty-four to twenty-five millions yearly ($5,000,000), paid for their two twentieths only 188,000 livres ($37,600) instead of 2,400,000 ($480,000). The Duke of Orleans, who presided over the committee to which I belonged in the Assembly of the Notables, said to me, one day, after a deliberation in which we had considered and approved the establishment of provincial administrations, 'Are you aware, sir, that this pleasantry will cost me at least 300,000 livres ($60,000) a year?' 'How is that, my lord?' I asked. 'At present,' he replied, 'I arrange with the intendants, and pay pretty nearly what I like. The provincial administrations, on the contrary, will make me pay what is strictly due.'"—Bouillé's Memoirs, p. 41.
[62] "This body at first courageously sustained the blow which had fallen upon them. But soon men accustomed to the pleasures of Paris threw aside the mask of stoicism which they had assumed, and redeemed themselves from exile by promising to adopt the views of the court, provided that no new taxation was proposed."—Desodoards, vol. i., p. 68.
[63] The Marquis of Ferrières, a noble of high rank, was a deputy of the nobles. He was a warm patron of the old opinions and customs, and voted perseveringly with the majority of his order. In his very interesting Memoirs he writes thus of the Duke of Orleans, upon whom, of course, he could not look with a partial eye. "The duke was himself without talents, and debased by a life of drunkenness; greedy of money to a degree that would have been perfectly reprehensible in a private man, but which was disgraceful and degrading in a prince. He had every vice which can make crime odious, and none of the brilliant qualities by which it can be in some degree illustrated in the eyes of posterity. The dead feelings of the duke it was necessary to animate in some way or other, that he might appear to have a wish for something, and so they held out to him the supreme power, under the title of lieutenant-general of the kingdom; all the public money at his disposal, and in the event, which it was for him to hasten, the crown for his children, and himself thus made the commencement of a new dynasty."
[64] Carlyle, French Revolution, vol. i., p. 48.
[65] Biographie Moderne.
"Off Ushant some naval thunder is heard. In the course of which did our young prince hide in the hold! Our poor young prince gets his opera plaudits changed into mocking tehees, and can not become Grand Admiral—the source to him of woes which one may call endless."—Carlyle, French Revolution, vol. i., p. 43.
[66] This was the princess who subsequently experienced such terrible suffering in the prison of the Temple, with her brother, the dauphin. She was released by Napoleon, and afterward married the Duke d'Angoulême.
[67] Desodoards, vol. i., p. 28. Thiers, vol. i., p. 23.