fresh-colored man in a coach and six? He had six footmen, to each of whom he gave for his wages more than the double of my revenue. His head steward, who, by the way, looked in as good plight as himself, had of him a salary of two thousand livres, and robbed him every year of twenty thousand more. His mistress had in six months stood him in forty thousand crowns. I had formerly known him when he was less well-to-do than myself. He owned, by way of comfort to me, that he enjoyed four hundred thousand livres a year.
"I suppose, then," said I, "that you pay out of this income two hundred thousand to the state, to help to support that advantageous war we are carrying on, since I, who have but just a hundred and twenty livres a year, am obliged to pay half of them."
"I?" said he, "I contribute to the wants of the state? You are surely jesting, my friend. I have inherited from an uncle his fortune of eight millions, which he got at Cadiz and at Surat; I have not a foot of land; my estate lies in government contracts and in the funds. I owe the state nothing. It is for you to give half of your substance—you who are a proprietor of land. Do you not see that if the minister of the revenue were to require anything of me in aid of our country, he would be a blockhead that could not calculate? for everything is the produce of the land. Money and the paper currency are nothing but pledges of exchange. . . If,
