M. Laffitte had already, a year before, submitted to the committee of the Budget a minute proposing to fix the king's civil list at eighteen million francs. The committee had read the minute, and this degree of justice should be given to it: it had been afraid to bring it forward. Even that minute had left a very bad impression, so disturbing, that it had been agreed between the minister and the king, that the king should write a confidential letter to the minister, saying he had never thought of so high a sum as eighteen millions, and that the demand should be attributed to too hasty courtiers, whose devotion compromised the royal power they thought to serve. That confidential letter had been shown in confidence and had produced an excellent effect. But when it was learnt at court that the revolt at Lyons was not political, and that the _canuts_ were only rising because they could not live on eighteen sous per twenty-four hours, it was deemed that the right moment had come to give the king his fifty thousand francs per day. They asked for one single man that which, a hundred and twenty leagues away, was sufficient to keep fifty-four thousand men. It was thirty-seven times more than Bonaparte had asked as First Consul, and a hundred and forty-eight times more than the President of the United States handled. The time was all the more ill chosen in that, on 1 January 1832,--we are anticipating events by three months,--the Board of Charity of the 12th Arrondissement published the following circular-- "Twenty-four thousand persons are inscribed on the registers of the 12th Arrondissement of Paris as in need of food and clothing. Many are asking for a few trusses of straw on which to sleep." True, the request for eighteen millions of Civil List were stated to be for royal necessities,--people's necessities differ. Thus, whilst five or six thousand wretched people of the 12th Arrondissement were asking for a few trusses of straw on which to sleep, the king _was in need of_ forty-eight thousand francs for the medicaments necessary to his health; the king _was in need of_ three million seven hundred and seventy-three thousand five hundred francs for his personal service; the king _was in need of_ a million two hundred thousand francs to provide fuel for the kitchen fires of the royal household.