Brienne, who now occupied the post of prime minister, wrote to M. Necker entreating him to return to the post of Controller of the Finance. Necker refused. He was not willing to take charge of the finances with Brienne prime minister. Bankruptcy, with its national disgrace and wide-spreading misery, was at hand. On the 16th of August an edict was issued that all payments at the royal treasury should be made three fifths in cash, and the remaining two fifths in promissory notes bearing interest. As the treasury was without credit the notes were comparatively valueless. This was virtual bankruptcy, in which the state offered to pay sixty cents on the dollar. The announcement of this edict rolled another surge of excitement and consternation over the kingdom. Count d'Artois called upon the queen and informed her of the terrible agitation pervading the public mind. She sat down in silence and wept. Brienne, pale, haggard, and trembling, frightened by the storm now raging, having contrived to secure for himself property to the amount of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, gave in his resignation, entered his carriage and drove off to Italy, leaving the king to struggle alone against the Revolution.[77] During these conflicts for power between the king and the nobles the moan of twenty-five millions crushed beneath the chariot-wheels of feudal aristocracy ascended, not unheeded, to the ear of Heaven. The hour of retribution if not of recompense approached. For weary ages the people had waited for its coming with hope ever deferred. Generation after generation had come and gone, and still fathers and mothers, sons and daughters were toiling in the furrows and in the shop, exclaiming, "O God, how long!" The dawn after the apparently interminable night was now at hand, but it was the dawn not of a bright but of a lurid day. France at this time presented the spectacle of millions in misery, of some thousands obtaining by the severest toil the bare necessaries of life, and of a few hundred rioting in wealth and luxury. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 58: Histoire Philosophique de la Revolution de France, par Ant. Fantin Desodoards, t. i., p. 58.] [Footnote 59: "Calonne has published a work on the French Revolution. At the end of it he gives an outline of his plan. Nothing can be more reasonable; and it remains an eternal indictment on the people of consequence then in France, more particularly on that part of them that composed the Assembly of Notables."--_Lectures on the French Revolution, by Wm. Smyth_, vol. i., p. 122.] [Footnote 60: Montgaillard, vol. i., p. 300.]