Light old M. de Maurepas, since the end of 1781, has been fixed in the frost of death: ‘Never more,’ said the good Louis, ‘shall I hear his step overhead;’ his light jestings and gyratings are at an end. No more can the importunate reality be hidden by pleasant wit, and today’s evil be deftly rolled over upon tomorrow. The morrow itself has arrived; and now nothing but a solid phlegmatic M. de Vergennes sits there, in dull matter of fact, like some dull punctual Clerk (which he originally was); admits what cannot be denied, let the remedy come whence it will. In him is no remedy; only clerklike “despatch of business” according to routine. The poor King, grown older yet hardly more experienced, must himself, with such no-faculty as he has, begin governing; wherein also his Queen will give help. Bright Queen, with her quick clear glances and impulses; clear, and even noble; but all too superficial, vehement-shallow, for that work! To govern France were such a problem; and now it has grown well-nigh too hard to govern even the Œil-de-Bœuf. For if a distressed People has its cry, so likewise, and more audibly, has a bereaved Court. To the Œil-de-Bœuf it remains inconceivable how, in a France of such resources, the Horn of Plenty should run dry: did it not _use_ to flow? Nevertheless Necker, with his revenue of parsimony, has “suppressed above six hundred places,” before the Courtiers could oust him; parsimonious finance-pedant as he was. Again, a military pedant, Saint-Germain, with his Prussian manœuvres; with his Prussian notions, as if merit and not coat-of-arms should be the rule of promotion, has disaffected military men; the Mousquetaires, with much else are suppressed: for he too was one of your suppressors; and unsettling and oversetting, did mere mischief—to the Œil-de-Bœuf. Complaints abound; scarcity, anxiety: it is a changed Œil-de-Bœuf. Besenval says, already in these years (1781) there was such a melancholy (such a _tristesse_) about Court, compared with former days, as made it quite dispiriting to look upon.