facilities which the Bank were willing to afford, it was also arranged to open credit accounts for their benefit upon which they could operate to the extent of any deposits they might make in notes. It was hoped that these accounts would absorb at least 600,000,000 livres in notes, but so little advantage was taken of them that only about 250,000,000 livres were deposited. These schemes, however, were only directed to absorption of paper. They were valueless as means of relieving the distress of those who were in immediate need of money to satisfy the pressing wants of the moment. The price of food not only rapidly rose, but shop-keepers would only accept notes in payment at very high rates of discount, and in many cases refused to sell unless payment was made in specie. The distribution of silver by the commissaries had been of a very limited character, and merely served for the day upon which it was made. The probability of disturbances arising was strongly impressed upon the commission of finances unless provision was immediately made for extensive conversion of notes. It was accordingly arranged that the Bank should again be opened on 10th June for exchanging notes of 10 livres, and that on 11th June notes of 100 livres should also be exchanged for those of 10 livres. No more than one note of 10 livres was convertible into specie for each person, nor of 100 livres into small notes. These arrangements, designed with the best intentions, led unfortunately to a very alarming situation. The Bank was besieged by thousands of people during the few hours its doors were open, and a guard was stationed within the building to regulate the flow of the eager and excited multitude. Many were injured and crushed to death in the vast and unwieldy crowds, and the exasperating slowness of the process of exchange, by which only an insignificant portion of the crowd was satisfied each day, culminated not infrequently in attacks upon the soldiery who were thus under the necessity of charging them in order to prevent the possibility of the Bank being wrecked. To relieve the Bank, recourse was had again to the employment of the district commissaries, whose offices were open on Wednesdays and Saturdays, but the same scenes were enacted there as at the bank itself. “The doors,” says Buvat, “were only half open, so that the money seekers should only enter one by one, and none got in but the strongest. Most of them brought away nothing but sweat and fatigue instead of money, because the preferences that the commissaries gave to their friends had exhausted the funds, and they reserved a portion for themselves.” This system of decentralising the distribution of specie was, however, of short duration, the Regent and his advisers fearing that the creation of numerous centres of disturbance might at any moment lead to widespread revolt.