A French financier, nicknamed the Ame damnée , Familiar demon, of the parlement of Paris prior to the Revolution; "once, when it was objected to some financial scheme of his, 'What will the people do?' made answer, 'The people may eat grass,'" words which the people never forgot; when attacked by them "he defended himself like a mad lion, but was borne down, trampled, hanged, and mangled," his head thereafter paraded through the city on a pike and the mouth stuffed with grass (1715-1789).