After that your Majesty may do as you please with me; I shall have followed the promptings of the heartiest zeal for your service, I shall be able to say,-- 'Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domino.'" This mysterious plan, which was to produce results as desirable as rare, and which M.de Calonne had hit upon to strengthen his shaky position, was the same which, in 1628, had occurred to Cardinal Richelieu, when he wanted to cover his responsibility in regard to the court of Rome.

In view of the stress at the treasury, of growing discontent, of vanished illusions, the comptroller-general meditated convoking the Assembly of Notables, the feeble resource of the old French kingship before the days of pure monarchy, an expedient more insufficient and more dangerous than the most far-seeing divined after the lessons of the philosophers and the continuous abasement of the kingly Majesty.
The convocation of the Notables was the means upon which M.de Calonne relied; the object was the sanctioning of a financial system new in practice but old in theory.

When the comptroller-general proposed to the king to abolish privileges, and assess the impost equally, renouncing the twentieths, diminishing the gabel, suppressing custom-houses in the interior and establishing provincial assemblies, Louis XVI.

recognized an echo of his illustrious ministers.

"This is sheer Necker!" he exclaimed.
"In the condition in which things are, Sir, it is the best that can be done," replied M.de Calonne.