be mentioned a manufacturer of hardware who, having retired from
business in 1790 with 321,000 _livres_, found his property in 1796
worth 14,000 _francs_.[76]

For this general distress arising from the development and collapse of
"fiat" money in France, there was, indeed, one exception. In Paris
and a few of the other great cities, men like Tallien, of the
heartless, debauched, luxurious, speculator, contractor and
stock-gambler class, had risen above the ruins of the multitudes of
smaller fortunes. Tallien, one of the worst demagogue "reformers,"
and a certain number of men like him, had been skillful enough to
become millionaires, while their dupes, who had clamored for issues of
paper money, had become paupers.

The luxury and extravagance of the currency gamblers and their
families form one of the most significant features in any picture of
the social condition of that period.[77]

A few years before this the leading women in French society showed a
nobility of character and a simplicity in dress worthy of Roman
matrons. Of these were Madame Boland and Madame Desmoulins; but now
all was changed. At the head of society stood Madame Tallien and
others like her, wild in extravagance, daily seeking new refinements
in luxury, and demanding of their husbands and lovers vast sums to
array them and to feed their whims. If such sums could not be
obtained honestly they must be had dishonestly. The more closely one
examines that period, the more clearly he sees that the pictures,
given by Thibaudeau and Challamel and De Goncourt are not at all
exaggerated.[78]