DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61284#0162
CALONNE
7*
in love, but there is no doubt that as a financier Calonne had very loose
principles. No sooner had he obtained his appointment as Controller-
General than he had the audacity to go to the King and say : “ Sir, I owe
two hundred thousand francs. Another man would conceal the fact from
you, and pay his debts out of the funds entrusted to him ; I prefer to
acknowledge them ! ” King Louis, a simple soul, who was much impressed
by this candid avowal, went to his desk, and took out some securities to
the amount stated, which, without saying a word, he handed to the new
Minister. Calonne kept the shares, and paid his debts in some other way.
His governing principles in financial operations were that a man who
wishes to borrow must appear to be rich, and that in order to seem rich
he must make a great display. Economy, he said, is doubly disastrous ; it
warns the men with money not to lend to an embarrassed Treasury, and
it makes the arts languish as much as prodigality keeps them alive. The
application of these principles, in his case, was itself “ doubly disastrous.”
It sent him, half ruined, into exile, and it hastened the coming of the
Revolution.
Calonne, who gave away freely what did not belong to him, could have
had no difficulty with his conscience in spending the money wrung from
the tradespeople and peasantry on his own pleasures, but there is not
the smallest substantial evidence that he gave Madame Lebrun more than
a fair price for his portrait. Had he done so, the money would soon have
got into the hands of her rascally husband ; it was not suggested that she
received it secretly.
The story of the extravagance in which she lived, at the immediate
expense of Calonne, was repeated round and round, with just such varia-
tions as this kind of gossip always takes. Some jester in 1789, at a time
when Calonne was in London and Madame Lebrun still in the Rue de
Clery, published a letter in which she is supposed to write to the ex-Minister
from that address, beginning with “ My dear love,” and ending with the
hope that “ the beauties of Co vent Garden will not make you forget your
faithful V. Lebrun.” This bogus letter assures the exile that France owes
its regeneration to him in the same way in which London owed its
magnificence to the person who started the great conflagration of 1666.
It was the coal-fires of England that had made Calonne so pensive as he
now seemed to be. “ When you burnt rosewood in my grate,” says the
letter, “and lit my candle with bank-notes such ideas had not entered
your head.”
7*
in love, but there is no doubt that as a financier Calonne had very loose
principles. No sooner had he obtained his appointment as Controller-
General than he had the audacity to go to the King and say : “ Sir, I owe
two hundred thousand francs. Another man would conceal the fact from
you, and pay his debts out of the funds entrusted to him ; I prefer to
acknowledge them ! ” King Louis, a simple soul, who was much impressed
by this candid avowal, went to his desk, and took out some securities to
the amount stated, which, without saying a word, he handed to the new
Minister. Calonne kept the shares, and paid his debts in some other way.
His governing principles in financial operations were that a man who
wishes to borrow must appear to be rich, and that in order to seem rich
he must make a great display. Economy, he said, is doubly disastrous ; it
warns the men with money not to lend to an embarrassed Treasury, and
it makes the arts languish as much as prodigality keeps them alive. The
application of these principles, in his case, was itself “ doubly disastrous.”
It sent him, half ruined, into exile, and it hastened the coming of the
Revolution.
Calonne, who gave away freely what did not belong to him, could have
had no difficulty with his conscience in spending the money wrung from
the tradespeople and peasantry on his own pleasures, but there is not
the smallest substantial evidence that he gave Madame Lebrun more than
a fair price for his portrait. Had he done so, the money would soon have
got into the hands of her rascally husband ; it was not suggested that she
received it secretly.
The story of the extravagance in which she lived, at the immediate
expense of Calonne, was repeated round and round, with just such varia-
tions as this kind of gossip always takes. Some jester in 1789, at a time
when Calonne was in London and Madame Lebrun still in the Rue de
Clery, published a letter in which she is supposed to write to the ex-Minister
from that address, beginning with “ My dear love,” and ending with the
hope that “ the beauties of Co vent Garden will not make you forget your
faithful V. Lebrun.” This bogus letter assures the exile that France owes
its regeneration to him in the same way in which London owed its
magnificence to the person who started the great conflagration of 1666.
It was the coal-fires of England that had made Calonne so pensive as he
now seemed to be. “ When you burnt rosewood in my grate,” says the
letter, “and lit my candle with bank-notes such ideas had not entered
your head.”