Such is the France of this year 1788. Not now a Golden or Paper Age of Hope; with its horse-racings, balloon-flyings, and finer sensibilities of the heart: ah, gone is that; its golden effulgence paled, bedarkened in _this_ singular manner,—brewing towards preternatural weather! For, as in that wreck-storm of _Paul et Virginie_ and Saint-Pierre,—“One huge motionless cloud” (say, of Sorrow and Indignation) “girdles our whole horizon; streams up, hairy, copper-edged, over a sky of the colour of lead.” Motionless itself; but “small clouds” (as exiled Parlements and suchlike), “parting from it, fly over the zenith, with the velocity of birds:”—till at last, with one loud howl, the whole Four Winds be dashed together, and all the world exclaim, There is the tornado! _Tout le monde s’écria, Voilà l’ouragan!_ For the rest, in such circumstances, the Successive Loan, very naturally, remains unfilled; neither, indeed, can that impost of the Second Twentieth, at least not on “strict valuation,” be levied to good purpose: “Lenders,” says Weber, in his hysterical vehement manner, “are afraid of ruin; tax-gatherers of hanging.” The very Clergy turn away their face: convoked in Extraordinary Assembly, they afford no gratuitous gift (_don gratuit_),—if it be not that of advice; here too instead of cash is clamour for States-General.[94] O Loménie-Brienne, with thy poor flimsy mind all bewildered, and now “three actual cauteries” on thy worn-out body; who art like to die of inflamation, provocation, milk-diet, _dartres vives_ and _maladie_—(best untranslated);[95] and presidest over a France with innumerable _actual cauteries_, which also is dying of inflammation and the rest! Was it wise to quit the bosky verdures of Brienne, and thy new ashlar Château there, and what it held, for _this?_ Soft were those shades and lawns; sweet the hymns of Poetasters, the blandishments of high-rouged Graces:[96] and always this and the other Philosophe Morellet (nothing deeming himself or thee a questionable Sham-Priest) could be so happy in making happy:—and also (hadst thou known it), in the Military School hard by there sat, studying mathematics, a dusky-complexioned taciturn Boy, under the name of: NAPOLEON BONAPARTE!—With fifty years of effort, and one final dead-lift struggle, thou hast made an exchange! Thou hast got thy robe of office,—as Hercules had his Nessus’-shirt.