once in the possession of the state; and the people no longer doubted that all would henceforth be well. And what was really the event?—The gold answered the same purpose as it does when a basin full of it coined stands on the banker’s counter during a run. It satisfied the ignorant that all must be safe where there is so much wealth actually before one’s eyes. It hushed the clamours of the people for a little while; and made the servants of the government willing to go on somewhat longer upon credit; so that more industry and briskness prevailed for a time, at the risk of ultimate disappointment, and an aggravation of popular fury,—now diverted but not dispersed. A mob went about to _levy_ these _voluntary_ offerings, an act ludicrously inconsistent with their next proceeding; if, indeed, any of the events of this extraordinary time could be regarded as ludicrous. They called at Charles’s house among others, whence, as it happened, no such offerings had yet gone forth. Charles had resisted Pauline’s wish to lend the queen her thimble, and Julien’s offer to pay his first tax with the silver-tipped riding-whip grandpapa had given him. Neither would he allow Marguerite’s few ornaments, all keepsakes, to be thrown away in any such manner. He would give the coat off his back to the state, he said, when it could do any service; but the proposed gifts could only help to make jewellery a drug, without supplying one more person with bread, or lessening by so much as one scruple the burdens of the state. He was disposed to be vexed when he came home one day, and found a short allowance of spoons at the dinner-table, the clock on the mantel-piece gone, and his wife as destitute of external ornament as any Arcadian shepherdess at Versailles. He laughed, however, at his wife’s apologies for having made a voluntary offering against her own will as well as his, and hoped that she would be as little the worse as the state would be the better for the sacrifice. Goldsmiths and jewellers of enterprise and capital would profit by the fancy, he observed, if nobody else did; and the many losers might find some comfort in sympathy with the very few winners.