"Another cause of our poverty lies in our new wants. We pay our neighbors four millions of livres on one article, and five or six upon another, such, for example, as a stinking powder for stuffing up our noses brought from America. Our coffee, tea, chocolate, cochineal, indigo, spices, cost us above sixty millions a year. All these were unknown to us in the reign of Henry the IVth, except the spices, of which, however, the consumption was not so great as it is now. We burn a hundred times more wax-lights than were burnt then; and get more than the half of the wax from foreign countries, because we neglect our own hives. We see a hundred times more diamonds in the ears, round the necks, and on the hands of our city ladies of Paris, and other great towns, than were worn by all the ladies of Henry the IVth's court, the Queen included. Almost all the superfluities are necessarily paid for with ready specie. "Observe especially that we pay to foreigners above fifteen millions of annuities on the _Hôtel-de-Ville_; and that Henry the IVth, on his accession, having found two millions of debt in all on this imaginary _Hôtel_, very wisely paid off a part, to ease the state of this burden. "Consider that our civil wars were the occasion of the treasures of Mexico being poured into the kingdom, when Don Philip _el Discreto_ took it into his head to buy France, and that since that time, our foreign wars have eased us of a good half of our money. "These are partly the causes of our poverty; a poverty which we hide under varnished ceilings, or with the help of our dealers in fashion. We are poor with taste. There are some officers of revenue, there are contractors or jobbers, there are merchants, very rich; their children, their sons-in-law, are also very rich, but the nation in general is unfortunately not so." This old man's discourse, well or ill grounded, made a deep impression on me; for the curate of my parish, who had always had a friendship for me, had taught me a little of geometry and of history: and I begin to reflect a little, which is very rare in my province. I do not know whether he was right or not in every thing, but being very poor, I could very easily believe that I had a great many companions of my misery. II. DISASTER OF THE MAN OF FORTY CROWNS. I very readily make known to the _universe_ that I have a landed estate which would yield me forty crowns a year, were it not for the tax laid on it.