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Updated: June 29, 2025
As for the Duchesse de Polignac, so far from having caused the disgrace, she was not even aware of the circumstance from which it arose; nor did the Minister himself ever know how, or by what agency, his falsehood was so thoroughly unmasked." M. de Calonne soon after left France for Italy.
Here again, although Calonne and Louis did not realize it, was an appeal to public opinion; the monarchy was unconsciously following the lead of the philosophers, of the dramatists, and of Necker. In January, 1788, the Notables assembled, "to learn the King's intentions," one hundred and fifty of them, mostly nobles and official persons.
During the long and severe winter of 1783-84 the King gave three millions of livres for the relief of the indigent. M. de Calonne, who felt the necessity of making advances to the Queen, caught at this opportunity of showing her respect and devotion. He offered to place in her hands one million of the three, to be distributed in her name and under her direction.
When the strange little man had ceased speaking the ladies too were silent; Monsieur Bodard was sound asleep; the surgeon, half drunk; Monsieur de Calonne was smiling at the lady next him. Lavoisier, Beaumarchais, and I alone had listened to the lawyer's dream. The silence at this moment had something solemn about it. The gleam of the candles seemed to me magical.
M. de Brienne had come into office as a support to the king's desires and intentions, for the purpose of obtaining from the notables what was refused through their aversion for M. de Calonne; as soon as he was free of the notables as well as of M. de Calonne, he hesitated, drew back, waited, leaving time for a fresh opposition to form and take its measures.
M. de Calonne had reserved to himself the duty of explaining the great projects he had suggested to the king. "Gentle men," said he in his exordium, "the orders I am under at present do me the more honor in that the views of which the king has charged me to set before you the sum and the motives have been entirely adopted by him personally."
At the moment when M. Necker was publishing, as regarded the statements of M. de Calonne, an able rectification which did not go to the bottom of things any more than the Report had previously gone, the comptroller-general was succumbing beneath his enemies' attacks and his own errors.
"Why do you do that, monsieur?" I said. He winked at the comptroller. "Don't wake him," he said in a low voice. "A man is happy when asleep." "Pray, is sleep a financial scheme?" I whispered. "Indeed, yes!" said Calonne, who had guessed our words from the mere motion of our lips. "Would to God we could sleep long, and then the awakening you are about to see would never happen."
A minister who had risen by giving, could not maintain himself by asking. The notables, chosen by the government from the higher classes, formed a ministerial assembly, which had neither a proper existence nor a commission. It was, indeed, to avoid parliaments and states-general, that Calonne addressed himself to a more subordinate assembly, hoping to find it more docile.
Another letter, written three months later, explains to the emperor the object of some of the new arrangements which Calonne had introduced, having for one object, among others, the facilitation of a commercial intercourse, especially in tobacco, with the United States.
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