The useful reforms, the generous concern for the woes and the wants of the people, the initiative of which belonged to M.Necker, but which the king always regarded with favor, were by turns exclusively attributed to the minister and to Louis XVI.

in the pamphlets published every day.

Madame Necker became anxious and heartbroken at the vexation which such attacks caused her husband.

"The slightest cloud upon his character was the greatest suffering the affairs of life could cause him," writes Madame de Stael; "the worldly aim of all his actions, the land-breeze which sped his bark, was love of reputation." Madame Necker took it into her head to write, without her husband's knowledge, to M.de Maurepas to complain of the libels spread about against M.Necker, and ask him to take the necessary measures against these anonymous publications this was appealing to the very man who secretly encouraged them..

Although Madame Necker had plenty of wits, she, bred in the mountains of Switzerland, had no conception of such an idiosyncrasy as that of M.de Maurepas, a man who saw in an outspoken expression of feeling only an opportunity of discovering the vulnerable point.