The National Assembly had tried all means, first by themselves, and then with the assistance of Necker, to raise a supply, without which the affairs of the state could not, they believed, proceed; and all in vain. Then Necker had leave given him to pursue his own methods; and, popular as he was, no one had a doubt that he would succeed. But he failed, though he issued the most tempting proposals; offered the highest interest that ever was heard of, even in such an emergency; and exerted his utmost personal influence in favour of the loan. The subscription was not half filled: the reason of which was that many had no money, having spent it all in buying necessaries; and as many in France as had taken their money (much of it had gone into other countries) expected to want it themselves for the same purposes, or had not confidence enough in the stability of the government to take it for a creditor. So the king’s horses went on to eat borrowed hay or to want it; and the king’s servants to clamour for their wages; and the king’s tradesmen to decline orders on one pretence or another; and the police threatened to leave the home minister to keep order by himself; and state couriers went unwillingly forth on their journies; and business lagged in every department of the administration. At this moment, it entered some wise head that, if people would not lend money, they might lend or give something else; not corn or hay, or any of the necessaries of life; for every one knew there was still less of these things than of money; but gold and silver in any form. It would have been hard to say what lasting good this could do amidst the impossibility of procuring the necessaries of which gold and silver are only the representatives: but no matter for that. Nobody was asked to explain the affair, and apparently none troubled themselves to think about it; so delighted were all with the new notion of giving away trinkets to save the state. The idea of a patriotic contribution was charming,—a contribution in which almost everybody could join; women and children, and persons of many degrees below the class of capitalists. The court joined: the gentlemen sacrificing nearly half their watches and seals, and the ladies adopting simplicity as a fashion, and sending away the jewellery they could not wear as Arcadian shepherdesses and Sicilian nymphs. The Assembly followed, every member thereof stooping down at the same moment to strip his shoes of their buckles, so that their act of patriotic devotion made really a very fine show. This gave the signal to the whole country, and all France was forthwith unbuckled in respect of the feet. She became also quakerlike as to the hands, for not a maiden but took out her lover’s hair from his parting gift, and flung the ring into the lap of the nation; not a wife that did not part with the token of her wifehood in the cause. Pecks of gold rings, bushels of silver buckles, with huge store of other baubles, were at