Up to our days they had, for fifty-one years, given him 5,000 livres of silver.

In a little while (1719), six hundred and forty millions of livres in these bills were in circulation, and soon after nearly half of the national debt was paid off'; in other words, people had been induced to exchange government securities, to the amount of eight hundred millions, for the Mississippi stock.

The French were so far seduced by these flattering appearances, as to offer the German adventurer thirty thousand livres for the communication of his secret art.

They had brought with them a present of six millions of livres to the National Assembly, and an appointment to General la Fayette to be commander-in-chief over their constituents, as a distinct body.

She makes numerous presents, and this under advice, without increasing her receipts, as well as reducing them annually two millions five hundred thousand livres by the diminution of the duty on salt; and so augments her expenses that, upon mature consideration, we shall rather be applauded for being in the state we still are after so many necessary outlays, than blamed for having incurred them.

It had been very much diminished by extravagance and speculation, but as she had in mind de la Rochefoucauld's maxim: "There are some good marriages, but no delicious ones," and did not contemplate ever wearing the chains of matrimony, she deposited her fortune in the sinking funds, reserving an income of about eight thousand livres per annum as sufficient to maintain her beyond the reach of want.

"'I live in the midst of affluence, and have not a livre at my disposal.

The Students are to have in Possession, or Reversion, an Estate of two thousand French Livres per Annum, which, as the present Exchange runs, will amount to at least one hundred and twenty six Pounds English.

Cardinal Mazarin left her a pension by his will, and she had a pension of two thousand livres from the king.

Time has washed out the significance of these old heroisms as the color is washed from flimsy cloths; so that chroniclers act wisely when they wave aside, with undipped pens, the episode of the brave Siennese and their green poison at Bellegarde, and the doings of the Anti-Pope there, and grudge the paper needful to record the remarkable method by which gaunt Tohil Vaca levied a tax of a livre on every chimney in Poictesme.

Rochemadour Fait tants miracles, tants hauts faits, C'uns moultes biax livres en est faits.'

Cardinal Richelieu, desirous of setting bounds to the ambition and the successes of the House of Austria, readily came into the views of the States; and an obligation for a loan of one million two hundred thousand livres during the year 1624, and one million more for each of the two succeeding years, was granted by the king of France, on condition that the republic made no new truce with Spain without his mediation.

The next event of interest was the final departure of M. de Sully from the capital, who, previously to quitting Paris, returned to the Regent the warrant for three hundred thousand livres with which she had, as she declared, sought to repay his past services.

The Queen's purse satisfied every creditor, to the tune of four hundred thousand livres, and Duc Jules found himself lord of an estate which added seventy thousand livres yearly to his exchequer, with another annual eighty thousand livres as revenue for his office of Director-General of Posts.