At this point it is necessary to bring up the awkward and distasteful subject of terms. Specifically, we must decide what is to be the discount at which your loan is to be sold—i.e., for each hundred livres tournoises of principal that you originally loaned to his majesty’s treasury, how many livres tournoises are you to receive from the buyer now? Such discussions are naturally repellent to Persons of Quality. Fortunately, we may refer the matter to an impartial judge: the market. For if you were the only man in France who had ever tried to sell such a loan, why, we should have to work out terms without any reference to established customs or precedents. Endless discussion would be entailed, every word of it beneath our dignity as nobility of France. But as it happens there are many hundreds of recent precedents. I myself have purchased no fewer than eighty-six loans. At the moment, you are one of seven men who is offering me such an opportunity. When the number of participants is so large, a price emerges, as if by magic. And so I can tell you that the price of one hundred livres tournoises of French government debt, three years ago, was eighty-one livres tournoises . Two years ago it was sixty-five, a year ago it was holding steady around forty, and today it is twenty-one. Which is to say that for every hundred you loaned the Treasury, I will pay you twenty-one today. Tomorrow the price may rise again, in which case it would benefit you to hold on to the loan, and sell it later; on the other hand, it might decline further, in which case you may wish you had sold it today. It is regrettably not possible for me to offer you advice in the matter.