240 R. AI. Johnston circle of aristocratic hangers-on. Panchaud was also a freemason, and finance, free-masonry, and the opposition aristocracy all jostled very closely in his salons. It was there that Mirabeau met the Due de Chartres, the most important personage in the masonic world, soon to be known as Philippe Egalite, Due d' Orleans, his boon companion, the Due de Lauzun, and, among others, the Abbe de Perigord, who achieved renown later as the Prince de Talleyrand. Here then was the greatest practical intellect of the day, a man with no other principle than that of his own advancement, placed at the centre of all financial and secret intrigue, in the midst of the shrewdest bankers, the most scheming adventurers and the most unprejudiced and ambitious politicians of France. What Mr. Welschinger has failed to bring out is that in this group was con- centrated a power of money, of intellect and of secret intrigue, that made of it one of the principal forces of France. The bankers' ring having secured this new and invaluable ally were not long in putting his powers to the test. It so happened that Calonne, controller of the King's finances, who since he had suc- ceeded Necker two years before, had been engaged in a perpetual struggle to stave off bankruptcy, had arrived at the opinion that the secret of the low quotations of the state securities was the inflated price to which speculation had sent the shares of certain public companies. From this opinion, the controller drew a sage conclusion : if the quotations of the great speculative securities could be brought down to something like a representative price, the state securities would then attract more attention and rise in value. Starting from a totally different point of view, the bankers' ring were also anxious to de- preciate the prices of certain gambling stocks, though it may be sur- mised that it was not in the expectation of seeing the state securi- ties benefit from a big fall of prices. Be that as it may, Calonne and the ring, working together, intrusted their work to Mirabeau, and wonderfully well did he perform it. Claviere crammed him with the facts, and he put them into brilliant and masterly prose ; with so much expedition did he labor, it is said, that one production of three hundred pages only occupied him eight days. Before the avalanche of abuse, ridicule and invective thus showered forth, the shares of the Bank of St. Charles fell from 800 to 320, the Paris Water-Works fell 44 /o, the Caisse d'Escompte dropped in sympa- thy, despite the efforts of Beaumarchais and his friends, and a finan- cial panic ensued in which every quoted security, including of course those of the state, fell heavily . Panchaud, Claviere and their friends netted large profits over the operation, but as to poor M. de Calonne, he gained nothing but a somewhat expensive lesson in
