Yet all through 1692 Castan temporized, and promised to pay interest, and sought alternatives to paying it back. The bad harvest that autumn rendered payment quite out of the question, and the lines of galériens marching through Lyon en route to Marseille—mostly ordinary Parisians who had been caught looting bakeries—served to place the "sufferings" of Lothar in perspective. The immense military operation of last year consumed what money the Treasury had. The French victories (costly though they were) at Heidelberg, at sea, at Landen, and in Piedmont might have given Lothar some hope of seeing his money again. If so, that hope died in the winter just past, along with so many other things. The bankers of Lyon now look upon Lothar’s April 1692 loan as the moment it all went wrong; the end of an epoch. My correspondents there tell me that real estate in that city is to be had for nothing now, because the Swiss and German bankers are all turning their backs on it, cutting their losses, packing their coffers, and moving out. One day France will have its equivalent of the Bank of England, and it will probably be in Paris; but not for a long time, and until then, her finances will be in perpetual confusion.