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Marjorie Bowen
Published by Good Press, 2022
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M. de Corday d'Armont discussed with avidity the proposals of the government to abolish monopolies, introduce free trade and land taxes; he keenly noted their failure before the opposition of clergy and nobility, and the rise of Necker, a Swiss banker, to be chief minister—Necker, a commoner and a Protestant, detested by all but the lower classes, whose reforms raised a clamour throughout France. The poor Norman gentilhomme also read many of the republican and atheistical books then flooding the country. The axioms of Locke and Montesquieu filtering through J. J. Rousseau, the materialism of Condillac and Helvetius, the infidel opinions of Voltaire, the new and startling Republic founded in North America, all the catchwords of the philosophes and the half-unintelligible jargon of their followers were discussed in the poor home in the shade of the ancient abbaye which seemed to stand as a permanent memorial of a changeless faith and an unshakable government.
The fall of the Necker ministry and the reactionary policy of M. de Calonne, with his vast loans raised to conciliate the Queen, the Princes and the nobility, filled M. de Corday d'Armont with mingled excitement and apprehension. Where was he, poor overburdened gentleman, to find his count in all this confusion? He had no fixed political ideas, he only knew that there was something very wrong with a condition of affairs that kept a man of his blood and rank in poverty.
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