History of the United Netherlands, 1597-98 | Page 8

saying that he would instantly go and fetch his papers, left the
apartment for an interval, in order to give vent to the horrible agitation
which he had been enduring and so bravely concealing ever since the
fatal words had been spoken. That a city so important, the key to Paris,
without a moment's warning, without the semblance of a siege, should
thus fall into the hands of the enemy, was a blow as directly to the heart
of De Bethune as it could have been to any other of Henry's adherents.
But while they had been distracting the king by unavailing curses or
wailings, Henry, who had received the intelligence just as he was
getting into bed, had sent for support and consolation to the tried friend

of years, and he now reproachfully contrasted their pusillanimity with
De Rosny's fortitude.
A great plan for reorganising the finances of the kingdom was that very
night submitted by Rosny to the king, and it was wrought upon day by
day thereafter until it was carried into effect.
It must be confessed that the crudities and immoralities which the
project revealed do not inspire the political student of modern days
with so high a conception of the financial genius of the great minister
as his calm and heroic deportment on trying occasions, whether on the
battle- field or in the council-chamber, does of his natural authority
over his fellow-men. The scheme was devised to put money in the
king's coffers, which at that moment were completely empty. Its chief
features were to create a great many new offices in the various courts of
justice and tribunals of administration, all to be disposed of by sale to
the highest bidder; to extort a considerable loan from the chief courtiers
and from the richest burghers in the principal towns; to compel all the
leading peculators--whose name in the public service was legion--to
disgorge a portion of their ill-gotten gains, on being released from
prosecution; and to increase the tax upon salt.
Such a project hardly seems a masterpiece of ethics or political
economy, but it was hailed with rapture by the needy monarch. At once
there was a wild excitement amongst the jobbers and speculators in
places. The creation of an indefinite number of new judgeships and
magistracies, to be disposed of at auction, was a tempting opportunity
even in that age of corruption. One of the most notorious traders in the
judicial ermine, limping Robin de Tours by name, at once made a
private visit to Madame de Rosny and offered seventy-two thousand
crowns for the exclusive right to distribute these new offices. If this
could be managed to his satisfaction, he promised to give her a
diamond worth two thousand crowns, and another, worth six thousand,
to her husband. The wife of the great minister, who did not comprehend
the whole amount of the insult, presented Robin to her husband. She
was enlightened, however, as to the barefaced iniquity of the offer,
when she heard De Bethune's indignant. reply, and saw the jobber limp
away, crest-fallen and amazed. That a financier or a magistrate should
decline a bribe or interfere with the private sale of places, which were
after all objects of merchandise, was to him incomprehensible. The

industrious Robin, accordingly, recovering from his discomfiture, went
straightway to the chancellor, and concluded the same bargain in the
council chamber which had been rejected by De Bethune, with the
slight difference that the distribution of the places. was assigned to the
speculator for seventy-five thousand instead of seventy-two thousand
crowns. It was with great difficulty that De Bethune, who went at once
to the king with complaints and insinuations as to the cleanness of the
chancellor's hands, was able to cancel the operation. The day was fast
approaching when the universal impoverishment of the great nobles
and landholders--the result of the long, hideous, senseless massacres
called the wars of religion--was to open the way for the labouring
classes to acquire a property in the soil. Thus that famous fowl in every
pot was to make its appearance, which vulgar tradition ascribes to the
bounty of a king who hated everything like popular rights, and loved
nothing but his own glory and his own amusement. It was not until the
days of his grandchildren and great- grandchildren that Privilege could
renew those horrible outrages on the People, which were to be avenged
by a dread series of wars, massacres, and crimes, compared to which
even the religious conflicts of the sixteenth century grow pale.
Meantime De Bethune comforted his master with these financial plans,
and assured him in the spirit of prophecy that the King of Spain, now
tottering as it was thought to his grave, would soon be glad to make a
favourable peace with