to rest on me; I will bear a part in his government, his business,
that at any rate they who control be not my opponents, my enemies!"

For a while she yielded to her friends and favorites who wanted to
stand in the same relation to the queen that she did to the king--
she yielded, not like Louis, from weakness, but from the very power
of her love for them.

She yielded at the time when Diana de Polignac, urged by her
brother-in-law, Polignac, and by Lord Besenval, conjured the queen
to nominate Lord Calonne to be general comptroller of the finances.
She yielded, and Calonne, the flatterer, the courtier of Polignac,
received the important appointment, although Marie Antoinette
experienced twinges of conscience for it, and did not trust the man
whom she herself advanced to this high place. Public opinion,
meanwhile, gave out that Lord Calonne was a favorite of the queen;
and, while she bore him no special favor, and considered his
appointment as a misfortune to France, she who herself promoted him
became the object of public indignation.

Meanwhile the nomination of Lord Calonne was to be productive of
real good. It gave rise to the publication of a host of libels and
pamphlets which discussed the financial condition of France, and, in
biting and scornful words, in the language of sadness and despair,
developed the need and the misfortune of the land. The king gave the
chief minister of police strict injunctions to send him all these
ephemeral publications. He wanted to read them all, wanted to find
the kernel of wheat which each contained, and, from his enemies, who
assuredly would not flatter, he wanted to learn how to be a good
king. And the first of his cares he saw to be a frugal king, and to