under his orders; but there will not be half a crown the more in the kingdom.
The Man of Forty Crowns.—What will then remain to the government at the end of the year?
The Geometrician.—Once more, nothing. This is the case of government in general. It never lays by anything. It will have got its living—that is to say, its food, raiment, lodging, movables. The subject will have done so, too. Where a government amasses treasure, it will have squeezed from the circulation so much money as it will have amassed. It will have made so many wretched as it will have put by forty crowns in its coffers.
The Man of Forty Crowns.—At this rate, then, Henry IV. was but a mean-spirited wretch, a miser, a plunderer; for I have been told that he had chested up in the Bastille above fifty millions of livres according to our present currency.
The Geometrician.—He was a man as good and as prudent as he was brave. He was preparing to make a just war, and by amassing in his coffers twenty-two millions of the currency of that time, besides which he had twenty more to receive, which he left in circulation, he spared the people above a hundred millions that it would have cost if he had not taken those useful measures. He made himself morally sure of success against an enemy who had not taken the like precaution. The probabilities were prodigiously in his favor. His twenty-two millions in bank proved that there was then in this kingdom
