"I am younger than you," replied the king, "and my post is more difficult than yours." A few months later, the honest magistrate, overwhelmed by a task beyond his strength, had made up his mind to resign; he did not want to have any hand in the growing disorder of the finances; the king's brothers kept pressing him to pay their debts; Louis XVI.

himself, without any warning to the comptroller-general, had just purchased Rambouillet from the Duke of Penthievre, giving a bond of fourteen millions; but Madame d'Ormesson had taken a liking to grandeur; she begged her husband hard to remain, and he did.

It was not long before the embarrassments of the treasury upset his judgment: the tax-farming contract, so ably concluded by M.
Necker, was all at once quashed; a _regie_ was established; the Discount- fund (_Caisse d'Escompte+) had lent the treasury six millions: the secret of this loan was betrayed, and the holders of bills presented themselves in a mass demanding liquidation; a decree of the council forbade payment in coin over a hundred livres, and gave the bills a forced currency.

The panic became general; the king found himself obliged to dismiss M.
d'Ormesson, who was persecuted for a long while by the witticisms of the court.

His incapacity had brought his virtue into ridicule.
Marshal de Castries addressed to the king a private note.