empty. Calonne and Necker pursued each a different policy, and with the
same results. The extravagance of the one and the economy of the other
were alike fatal. Nobody would make sacrifices in a great national
exigency. The nobles and the clergy adhered tenaciously to their
privileges, and the Court would curtail none of its unnecessary
expenses. Things went on from bad to worse, and the financiers were
filled with alarm. National bankruptcy stared everybody in the face.

If the King had been a Richelieu, he would have dealt summarily with the
nobles and rebellious mobs. He would have called to his aid the talents
of the nation, appealed to its patriotism, compelled the Court to make
sacrifices, and prevented the printing and circulation of seditious
pamphlets. The Government should have allied itself with the people,
granted their requests, and marched to victory under the name of
patriotism. But Louis XVI. was weak, irresolute, vacillating, and
uncertain. He was a worthy sort of man, with good intentions, and
without the vices of his predecessors. But he was surrounded with
incompetent ministers and bad advisers, who distrusted the people and
had no sympathy with their wrongs. He would have made concessions, if
his ministers had advised him. He was not ambitious, nor unpatriotic;
he simply did not know what to do.

In his perplexity, he called together the principal heads of the
nobility,--some hundred and twenty great seigneurs, called the Notables;
but this assembly was dissolved without accomplishing anything. It was
full of jealousies, and evinced no patriotism. It would not part with
its privileges or usurpations.

It was at this crisis that Mirabeau first appeared upon the stage, as a
pamphleteer, writing bitter and envenomed attacks on the government, and