which you have served me, and for the attachment and fidelity you have
always shown me.  I am very sorry not to have done for you what I should
have liked to do.  The bad times are the cause of that.  I request of
you, on my great-grandson's behalf, the same attention and fidelity that
you have shown me.  It is a child who will possibly have many crosses to
bear.  Follow the instructions my nephew gives you; he is about to govern
the kingdom, and I hope that he will do it well; I hope also that you
will all contribute to preserve unity.  I feel that I am becoming
unmanned, and that I am unmanning you also; I ask your pardon.  Farewell,
gentlemen; I feel sure that you will think of me sometimes."

The princesses had entered the king's closet; they were weeping and
making a noise.  "You must not cry so," said the king, who asked for them
to bid them farewell.  He sent for the little dauphin.  His governess,
the Duchess of Ventadour, brought him on to the bed.  "My child," said
the king to him, "you are going to be a great king.  Render to God that
which you owe to Him; recognize the obligations you have towards Him;
cause Him to be honored by your subjects.  Try to preserve peace with
your neighbors.  I have been too fond of war; do not imitate me in that,
any more than in the too great expenses I have incurred.  Take counsel in
all matters, and seek to discern which is the best in order to follow it.
Try to relieve your people, which I have been so unfortunate as not to
have been able to do."  He kissed the child, and said, "Darling, I give
you my blessing with all my heart."  He was taken away; the king asked
for him once more and kissed him again, lifting hands and eyes to Heaven
in blessings upon him.  Everybody wept.  The king caught sight in a glass
of two grooms of the chamber who were sobbing.  "What are you crying
for?" he said to them; "did you think that I was immortal?"  He was left
alone with Madame de Maintenon.  "I have always heard say that it was
difficult to make up one's mind to die," said he; "I do not find it so
hard."  "Ah, Sir," she replied, "it may be very much so, when there are
earthly attachments, hatred in the heart, or restitutions to make!"
"Ah!" replied the king, "as for restitutions to make, I owe nobody any
individually; as for those that I owe the kingdom, I have hope in the
mercy of God."

[Illustration: The Death-bed of Louis XIV.----50]

The Duke of Orleans came back again; the king had sent for him.  "When I
am dead," he said, "you will have the young king taken to Vincennes; the
air there is good; he will remain there until all the ceremonies are over
at Versailles, and the castle well cleaned afterwards; you will then
bring him back again."  He at the same time gave orders for going and
furnishing Vincennes, and directed a casket to be opened in which the
plan of the castle was kept, because, as the court had not been there for
fifty years, Cavoye, grand chamberlain of his household, had never
prepared apartments there.  "When I was king .  .  .  ," he said several
times.

A quack had brought a remedy which would cure gangrene, he said.  The
sore on the leg was hopeless, but they gave the king a dose of the elixir
in a glass of Alicante.  "To life and to death," said he as he took the
glass; "just as it shall please God."  The remedy appeared to act; the
king recovered a little strength.  The throng of courtiers, which, the
day before, had been crowding to suffocation in the rooms of the Duke of
Orleans, withdrew at once.  Louis XIV. did not delude himself about this
apparent rally.  "Prayers are offered in all the churches for your
Majesty's life," said the parish priest of Versailles.  "That is not the
question," said the king "it is my salvation that much needs praying
for."

Madame de Maintenon had hitherto remained in the back rooms, though
constantly in the king's chamber when he was alone.  He said to her once,
"What consoles me for leaving you, is that it will not be long before we
meet again."  She made no reply.  "What will become of you?" he added;
"you have nothing."  "Do not think of me," said she; "I am nobody; think
only of God."  He said farewell to her; she still remained a little while
in his room, and went out when he was no longer conscious.  She had given
away here and there the few movables that belonged to her, and now took
the road to St. Cyr.  On the steps she met Marshal Villeroy.  "Good by,
marshal," she said curtly, and covered up her face in her coifs.  He! it
was who sent her news of the king to the last moment.  The Duke of
Orleans, on becoming regent, went to see her, and took her the patent
(_brevet_) for a pension of sixty thousand livres, "which her
disinterestedness had made necessary for her," said the preamble.  It was
paid her up to the last day of her life.  History makes no further
mention of her name; she never left St. Cyr.  Thither the czar Peter the
Great, when he visited Paris and France, went to see her; she was
confined to her bed; he sat a little while beside her.  "What is your
malady?" he asked her through his interpreter.  "A great age," answered
Madame de Maintenon, smiling.  He looked at her a moment longer in
silence; then, closing the curtains, he went out abruptly.  The memory he
would have called up had vanished.  The woman on whom the great king had,
for thirty years, heaped confidence and affection, was old, forgotten,
dying; she expired at St. Cyr on the 15th of April, 1719, at the age of
eighty-three.

She had left the king to die alone.  He was in the agonies; the prayers
in extremity were being repeated around him; the ceremonial recalled him
to consciousness.  He joined his voice with the voices of those present,
repeating the prayers with them.  Already the court was hurrying to the
Duke of Orleans; some of the more confident had repaired to the Duke of
Maine's; the king's servants were left almost alone around his bed; the
tones of the dying man were distinctly heard above the great number of
priests.  He several times repeated, _Nunc et in hora mortis_.  Then he
said, quite loud, "O, my God, come Thou to help me, haste Thee to succor
me."  Those were his last words.  He expired on Sunday, the 1st of
September, 1715, at eight A. M. Next day, he would have been seventy-
seven years of age, and he had reigned seventy-two of them.

In spite of his faults and his numerous and culpable errors, Louis XIV.
had lived and died like a king.  The slow and grievous agony of olden
France was about to begin.

[Illustration: Versailles at Night----52]




CHAPTER LI.----LOUIS XV., THE REGENCY, AND CARDINAL DUBOIS. 1715-1723.

At the very moment when the master's hand is missed from his work,
the narrative makes a sudden bound out of the simple times of history.
Under Henry IV., under Richelieu, under Louis XIV., events found quite
naturally their guiding hand and their centre; men as well as
circumstances formed a group around the head of the nation, whether king
or minister, to thence unfold themselves quite clearly before the eyes of
posterity.  Starting from the reign of Louis XV. the nation has no longer
a head, history no longer a centre; at the same time with a master of the
higher order, great servants also fail the French monarchy; it all at
once collapses, betraying thus the exhaustion of Louis XIV.'s latter
years; decadence is no longer veiled by the remnants of the splendor
which was still reflected from the great king and his great reign; the
glory of olden France descends slowly to its grave.  At the same time,
and in a future as yet obscured, intellectual progress begins to dawn;
new ideas of justice, of humanity, of generous equity towards the masses
germinate sparsely in certain minds; it is no longer Christianity alone
that inspires them, though the honor is reflected upon it in a general
way and as regards the principles with which it has silently permeated
modern society, but they who contribute to spread them, refuse with
indignation to acknowledge the source whence they have drawn them.
Intellectual movement no longer appertains exclusively to the higher
classes, to the ecclesiastics, or to the members of the Parliaments;
vaguely as yet, and retarded by apathy in the government as well as by
disorder in affairs, it propagates and extends itself imperceptibly
pending that signal and terrible explosion of good and evil which is to
characterize the close of the eighteenth century.  Decadence and progress
are going on confusedly in the minds as well as in the material condition
of the nation.  They must be distinguished and traced without any
pretence of separating them.

There we have the reign of Louis XV. in its entirety.

[Illustration: The Regent Orleans----54]

The regency of the Duke of Orleans and the ministry of Cardinal Dubois
showed certain traits of the general tendencies and to a certain extent
felt their influence; they formed, however, a distinct epoch, abounding
in original efforts and bold attempts, which remained without result, but
which testified to the lively reaction in men's minds against the courses
and fundamental principles of the reign which had just ended.

Louis XIV. had made no mistake about the respect which his last wishes
were destined to meet with after his death.  In spite of the most extreme
precautions, the secret of the will had transpired, giving occasion for
some days past to secret intrigues.  Scarcely had the king breathed his
last, when the Duke of Orleans was urged to get the regency conferred
upon him by the dukes and peers, simply making to Parliament an
announcement of what had been done.  The Duke of Orleans was a better
judge of the moral authority belonging to that important body; and it was
to the Palace of Justice that he repaired on the morning of September 2,
1715.  The crowd there was immense; the young king alone was not there,
in spite of his great-grandfather's express instructions.  The day was a
decisive one; the legitimatized princes were present, "the Duke of Maine
bursting with joy," says St. Simon; "a smiling, satisfied air overrippled
that of audacity, of confidence, which nevertheless peeped through, and
the politeness which seemed to struggle against it.  He bowed right and
left, piercing every one with his looks.  Towards the peers, the
earnestness, it is not too much to say the respectfulness, the slowness,
the profoundness of his bow was eloquent.  His head remained lowered even
on recovering himself."  The Duke of Orleans had just begun to speak; his
voice was not steady; he repeated the terms of which the king had made
use, he said, for the purpose of confiding the dauphin to his care.  "To
you I commend him; serve him faithfully as you have served me, and labor
to preserve to him his kingdom.  I have made such dispositions as I
thought wisest; but one cannot foresee everything; if there is anything
that does not seem good, it will of course be altered."

The favor of the assembly was plainly with him, and the prince's accents
became more firm.  "I shall never," said he, "have any other purpose but
to relieve the people, to reestablish good order in the finances, to
maintain peace at home and abroad, and to restore unity and tranquillity
to the church; therein I shall be aided by the wise representations of
this august assembly, and I hereby ask for them in anticipation."  The
Parliament was completely won; the right of representation (or
remonstrance) was promised them; the will of Louis XIV. was as good as
annulled; it was opened, it was read, and so were the two codicils.  All
the authority was intrusted to a council of regency of which the Duke of
Orleans was to be the head, but without preponderating voice and without
power to supersede any of the members, all designated in advance by Louis
XIV.  The person and the education of the young king, as well as the
command of the household troops, were intrusted to the Duke of Maine.

"It was listened to in dead silence, and with a sort of indignation,
which expressed itself in all countenances," says St.  Simon.  "The king,
no doubt, did not comprehend the force of what he had been made to do,"
said the Duke of Orleans; "he assured me in the last days of his life
that I should find in his dispositions nothing that I was not sure to be
pleased with, and he himself referred the ministers to me on business,
with all the orders to be given."  He asked, therefore, to have his
regency declared such as it ought to be, "full and independent, with free
formation of the council of regency."  The Duke of Maine wished to say a
word.  "You shall speak in your turn, Sir," said the Duke of Orleans in a
dry tone.  The court immediately decided in his favor by acclamation, and
even without proceeding in the regular way to vote.  There remained the
codicils, which annulled in fact the Regent's authority.  A discussion
began between the Duke of Orleans and the Duke of Maine; it was causing
Philip of Orleans to lose the advantage he had just won; his friends
succeeded in making him perceive this, and he put off the session until
after dinner.  When they returned to the Palace of Justice the codicils
were puffed away like the will by the breath of popular favor.  The Duke
of Maine, despoiled of the command of the king's household, declared
that, under such conditions, it was impossible for him to be answerable
for the king's person, and that he "demanded to be relieved of that
duty."  "Most willingly, Sir," replied the Regent; "your services are no
longer required;" and he forthwith explained to the Parliament his
intention of governing affairs according to the plan which had been found
among the papers of the Duke of Burgundy.  "Those gentry know little or
nothing of the French, and of the way to govern them," had been the
remark of Louis XIV. on reading the schemes of Fenelon, the Duke of
Beauvilliers, and St. Simon.  The Parliament applauded the formation of
the six councils of foreign affairs, of finance, of war, of the marine,
of home or the interior, of conscience or ecclesiastical affairs; the
Regent was intrusted with the free disposal of graces.  "I want to be
free for good," said he, adroitly repeating a phrase from Telemaque, "I
consent to have my hands tied for evil."

The victory was complete.  Not a shred remained of Louis XIV.'s will.
The Duke of Maine, confounded and humiliated, retired to his Castle of
Sceaux, there to endure the reproaches of his wife.  The king's affection
and Madame de Maintenon's clever tactics had not sufficed to found his
power; the remaining vestiges of his greatness were themselves about to
vanish before long in their turn.

[Illustration: The Bed of Justice----57]

On the 12th of September, the little king held a bed of justice; his
governess, Madame de Ventadour, sat alone at the feet of the poor orphan,
abandoned on the pinnacle of power.  All the decisions of September 2
were ratified in the child's name.  Louis XIV. had just descended to the
tomb without pomp and without regret.  The joy of the people broke out
indecently as the funeral train passed by; the nation had forgotten the
glory of the great king; it remembered only the evils which had for so
long oppressed it during his reign.

The new councils had already been constituted, when it was discovered
that commerce had been forgotten; and to it was assigned a seventh body.
"Three sorts of men, the choice of whom was dictated by propriety,
weakness, and necessity, filled the lists: in the first place, great
lords, veterans in intrigue but novices in affairs, and less useful from
their influence than embarrassing from their pride and their pettinesses;
next, the Regent's friends, the cream of the rows, possessed with the
spirit of opposition and corruption, ignorant and clever, bold and lazy,
and far better calculated to harass than to conduct a government; lastly,
below them, were pitch-forked in, pell-mell, councillors of State,
masters of requests, members of Parliament, well-informed and industrious
gentlemen, fated henceforth to crawl about at the bottom of the
committees, and, without the spur of glory or emulation, to repair the
blunders which must be expected from the incapacity of the first and the
recklessness of the second class amongst their colleagues."  [Lemontey,
_Histoire de la Regence,_ t. i.  p. 67.]  "It is necessary," the young
king was made to say in the preamble to the ordinance which established
the councils, "that affairs should be regulated rather by unanimous
consent than by way of authority."

How singular are the monstrosities of experience!  At the head of the
council of finance, a place was found for the Duke of Noailles, active in
mind and restless in character, without any fixed principles, an adroit
and a shameless courtier, strict in all religious observances under Louis
XIV., and a notorious debauchee under the Regency, but intelligent,
insolent, ambitious, hungering and thirsting to do good if he could, but
evil if need were, and in order to arrive at his ends.  His uncle,
Cardinal Noailles, who had been but lately threatened by the court of
Rome with the loss of his hat, and who had seen himself forbidden to
approach the dying king, was now president of the council of conscience.
Marshal d'Huxelles, one of the negotiators who had managed the treaty of
Utrecht, was at the head of foreign affairs.  The Regent had reserved to
himself one single department, the Academy of Sciences.  "I quite
intend," said he, gayly, "to ask the king, on his majority, to let me
still be Secretary of State of the Academy."

The Regent's predilection, consolidating the work of Colbert, contributed
to the development of scientific researches, for which the neatness and
clearness of French thought rendered it thenceforth so singularly well
adapted.

The gates of the prison were meanwhile being thrown open to many a poor
creature; the Jansenists left the Bastille; others, who had been for a
long time past in confinement, were still ignorant of the grounds for
their captivity, which was by this time forgotten by everybody.  A
wretched Italian, who had been arrested the very day of his arrival in
Paris, thirty-five years before, begged to remain in prison; he had no
longer any family, or relatives, or resources.  For a while the
Protestants thought they saw their advantage in the clemency with which
the new reign appeared to be inaugurated, and began to meet again in
their assemblies; the Regent had some idea of doing them justice,
re-establishing the Edict of Nantes, and re-opening to the exiles the
doors of their country, but his councillors dissuaded him; the more
virtuous, like St. Simon, from Catholic piety, the more depraved from
policy and indifference.  However, the lot of the Protestants remained
under the Regency less hard than it had been under Louis XIV., and than
it became under the Duke of Bourbon.

The chancellor, Voysin, had just died.  To this post the Regent summoned
the attorney-general, D'Aguesseau, beloved and esteemed of all, learned,
eloquent, virtuous, but too exclusively a man of Parliament for the
functions which had been confided to him.  "He would have made a sublime
premier president," said St. Simon, who did not like him.  The magistrate
was attending mass at St. Andre-des-Arts; he was not ignorant of the
chancellor's death, when a valet came in great haste to inform him that
the Regent wanted him at the Palais-Royal.  D'Aguesseau piously heard out
the remainder of the mass before obeying the prince's orders.  The casket
containing the seals was already upon the table.  The Duke of Orleans
took the attorney-general by the arm and, going out with him into the
gallery thronged with courtiers, said, "Gentlemen, here is your new and
most worthy chancellor!" and he took him away with him to the Tuileries,
to pay his respects to the little king.

On returning home, still all in a whirl, D'Aguesseau went up to the room
of his brother, "M. de Valjouan, a sort of Epicurean (_voluptueux_)
philosopher, with plenty of wit and learning, but altogether one of the
oddest creatures."  He found him in his dressing-gown, smoking in front
of the fire.  "Brother," said he, as he entered, "I have come to tell you
that I am chancellor."  "Chancellor!" said the other, turning round; "and
what have you done with the other one?"  "He died suddenly to-night."
"O, very well, brother, I am very glad; I would rather it were you than
I;" and he resumed his pipe.  Madame D'Aguesseau was better pleased.  Her
husband has eulogized her handsomely.  "A wife like mine," he said, "is a
good man's highest reward."

The new system of government, as yet untried, and confided to men for
the most part little accustomed to affairs, had to put up with the most
formidable difficulties, and to struggle against the most painful
position.  The treasury was empty, and the country exhausted; the army
was not paid, and the most honorable men, such as the Duke of St. Simon,
saw no other remedy for the evils of the state but a total bankruptcy,
and the convocation of the States-general.  Both expedients were equally
repugnant to the Duke of Orleans.  The Duke of Noailles had entered upon
a course of severe economy; the king's household was diminished, twenty-
five thousand men were struck off the strength of the army, exemption
from talliage for six years was promised to all such discharged soldiers
as should restore a deserted house, and should put into cultivation the
fields lying waste.  At the same time something was being taken off the
crushing weight of the taxes, and the state was assuming the charge of
recovering them directly, without any regard for the real or supposed
advances of the receivers-general; their accounts were submitted to the
revision of the brothers Paris, sons of an innkeeper in the Dauphinese
Alps, who had made fortunes by military contracts, and were all four
reputed to be very able in matters of finance.  They were likewise
commissioned to revise the bills circulating in the name of the state, in
other words, to suppress a great number without re-imbursement to the
holder, a sort of bankruptcy in disguise, which did not help to raise the
public credit.  At the same time also a chamber of justice, instituted
for that purpose, was prosecuting the tax-farmers (_traitants_), as Louis
XIV. had done at the commencement of his reign, during the suit against
Fouquet.  All were obliged to account for their acquisitions and the
state of their fortunes; the notaries were compelled to bring their books
before the court.  Several tax-farmers (_traitants_) killed themselves to
escape the violence and severity of the procedure.  The Parliament,
anything but favorable to the speculators, but still less disposed to
suffer its judicial privileges to be encroached upon, found fault with
the degrees of the Chamber.  The Regent's friends were eager to profit by
the reaction which was manifesting itself in the public mind; partly from
compassion, partly from shameful cupidity, all the courtiers set
themselves to work to obtain grace for the prosecuted financiers.  The
finest ladies sold their protection with brazen faces; the Regent, who
had sworn to show no favor to anybody, yielded to the solicitations of
his friends, to the great disgust of M. Rouille-Ducoudray, member of the
council of finance, who directed the operations of the Chamber of Justice
with the same stern frankness which had made him not long before say to a
body of tax-farmers (_traitants_) who wanted to put at his disposal a
certain number of shares in their enterprise, "And suppose I were to go
shares with you, how could I have you hanged, in case you were rogues?"
Nobody was really hanged, although torture and the penalty of death had
been set down in the list of punishments to which the guilty were liable;
out of four thousand five hundred amenable cases, nearly three thousand
had been exempted from the tax.  "The corruption is so wide-spread," says
the preamble to the edict of March, 1727, which suppressed the Chamber of
Justice, "that nearly all conditions have been infected by it in such
sort that the most righteous severities could not be employed to punish
so great a number of culprits without causing a dangerous interruption to
commerce, and a kind of general shock in the system of the state."  The
resources derived from the punishment of the tax-farmers (_traitants_),
as well as from the revision of the state's debts, thus remaining very
much below expectation, the deficit went on continually increasing.  In
order to re-establish the finances, the Duke of Noailles demanded fifteen
years' impracticable economy, as chimerical as the increment of the
revenues on which he calculated; and the Duke of Orleans finally suffered
himself to bo led away by the brilliant prospect which was flashed before
his eyes by the Scotsman, Law, who had now for more than two years been
settled in France.

[Illustration: John Law----62]

Law, born at Edinburgh, in 1611, son of a goldsmith, had for a long time
been scouring Europe, seeking in a clever and systematic course of
gambling a source of fortune for himself, and the first foundation of the
great enterprises he was revolving in his singularly inventive and daring
mind.  Passionately devoted to the financial theories he had conceived,
Law had expounded them to all the princes of Europe in succession.  "He
says that of all the persons to whom he has spoken about his system, he
has found but two who apprehended it, to wit, the King of Sicily and my
son," wrote Madame, the Regent's mother.  Victor Amadeo, however, had
rejected Law's proposals.  "I am not powerful enough to ruin myself," he
had said.  Law had not been more successful with Louis XIV.  The Regent
had not the same repugnance for novelties of foreign origin; so soon as
he was in power, he authorized the Scot to found a circulating and
discount bank (_banque de circulation et d'escompte_), which at once had
very great success, and did real service.  Encouraged by this first step,
Law reiterated to the Regent that the credit of bankers and merchants
decupled their capital; if the state became the universal banker, and
centralized all the values in circulation, the public fortune would
naturally be decupled.  A radically false system, fated to plunge the
state, and consequently the whole nation, into the risks of speculation
and trading, without the guarantee of that activity, zeal, and prompt
resolution which able men of business can import into their private
enterprises.  The system was not as yet applied; the discreet routine of
the French financiers was scared at such risky chances, the pride of the
great lords sitting in the council was shocked at the idea of seeing the
state turning banker, perhaps even trader.  St. Simon maintained that
what was well enough for a free state, could not take place under an
absolute government.  Law went on, however; to his bank he had just added
a great company.  The king ceded to him Louisiana, which was said to be
rich in gold and silver mines, superior to those of Mexico and Peru.
People vaunted the fertility of the soil, the facility offered for trade
by the extensive and rapid stream of the Mississippi; it was by the name
of that river that the new company was called at first, though it soon
took the title of _Compagnie d' Occident,_ when it had obtained the
privilege of trading in Senegal and in Guinea; it became the _Compagnie
des Indes,_ on forming a fusion with the old enterprises which worked the
trade of the East.  For the generality, and in the current phraseology,
it remained the Mississippi; and that is the name it has left in history.
New Orleans was beginning to arise at the mouth of that river.  Law had
bought Belle-Isle-en-Mer and was constructing the port of Lorient.

The Regent's councillors were scared and disquieted; the chancellor
proclaimed himself loudly against the deception or illusion which made of
Louisiana a land of promise; he called to mind that Crozat had been
ruined in searching for mines of the precious metals there.  "The worst
of him was his virtue," said Duclos.  The Regent made a last effort to
convert him, as well as the Duke of Noailles, to the projects of Law.
It was at a small house in the faubourg St. Antoine, called La Roquette,
belonging to the last named, that the four interlocutors discussed the
new system thoroughly.  "With the use of very sensible language Law had
the gift of explaining himself so clearly and intelligibly that he left
nothing to desire as concerned making himself comprehended.  The Duke of
Orleans liked him and relished him.  He regarded him and all he did as
work of his own creation.  He liked, moreover, extraordinary and
out-of-the-way methods, and he embraced them the more readily in that he
saw the resources which had become so necessary for the state and all the
ordinary operations of finance vanishing away.  This liking of the
Regent's wounded Noailles, as being adopted at his expense.  He wanted to
be sole master in the matter of finance, and all the eloquence of Law
could not succeed in convincing him."  The chancellor stood firm; the
Parliament, which ever remained identified in his mind with his country,
was in the same way opposed to Law.  The latter declared that the
obstacles which arrested him at every step through the ill will of the
Council and of the magistrates, were ruining all the fruits of his
system.  The representations addressed by the Parliament to the king, on
the 20th of January, touching a re-coinage of all moneys, which had been
suggested by Law, dealt the last blow at the chancellor's already
tottering favor.  On the morning of the 23d M. de La Vrilliere went to
him on behalf of the Regent and demanded the return of the seals.
D'Aguesseau was a little affected and surprised.  "Monseigneur," he wrote
to the Duke of Orleans, "you gave me the seals without any merit on my
part, you take them away without any demerit."  He had received orders to
withdraw to his estate at Fresnes; the Regent found his mere presence
irksome.  D'Aguesseau set out at once.  "He had taken his elevation like
a sage," says St. Simon, "and it was as a sage too that he fell."  "The
important point," wrote the disgraced magistrate to his son, "is to be
well with one's self."

The Duke of Noailles had resigned his presidency of the council of
finance; but, ever adroit, even in disgrace, he had managed to secure
himself a place in the council of regency.  The seals were intrusted to
M. d'Argenson, for some years past chief of police at Paris.  "With a
forbidding face, which reminded one of the three judges of Hades, he made
fun out of everything with excellence of wit, and he had established such
order amongst that innumerable multitude of Paris, that there was no
single inhabitant of whose conduct and habits he was not cognizant from
day to day, with exquisite discernment in bringing a heavy or light hand
to bear on every matter that presented itself, ever leaning towards the
gentler side, with the art of making the most innocent tremble before
him."  [St. Simon, t. xv.  p. 387.]  Courageous, bold, audacious in
facing riots, and thereby master of the people, he was at the same time
endowed with prodigious activity.  "He was seen commencing his audiences
at three in the morning, dictating to four secretaries at once on various
subjects, and making his rounds at night whilst working in his carriage
at a desk lighted with wax candles.  For the rest, without any dread of
Parliament, which had often attacked him, he was in his nature royal and
fiscal; he cut knots, he was a foe to lengthiness, to useless forms or
such as might be skipped, to neutral or wavering conditions."  [Lemontey,
_Histoire de la Regence,_ t. i.  p. 77.]  The Regent considered that he
had secured to himself an effective instrument of his views; acceptance
of the system had been the condition _sine qua non_ of M. d'Argenson's
elevation.

He, however, like his predecessors, attempted before long to hamper the
march of the audacious foreigner; but the die had been cast, and the Duke
of Orleans outstripped Law himself in the application of his theories.
A company, formed secretly, and protected by the new keeper of the seals,
had bought up the general farmings (_fermes generales_), that is to say,
all the indirect taxes, for the sum of forty-eight million fifty-two
thousand livres; the _Compagnie des Indes_ re-purchased them for fifty-
two millions; the general receipts were likewise conceded to it, and
Law's bank was proclaimed a Royal Bank; the company's shares already
amounted to the supposed value of all the coin circulating in the
kingdom, estimated at seven or eight millions.  Law thought he might risk
everything in the intoxication which had seized all France, capital and
province.  He created some fifteen hundred millions of new shares,
promising his shareholders a dividend of twelve per cent.  From all parts
silver and gold flowed into his hands; everywhere the paper of the Bank
was substituted for coin.  The delirium had mastered all minds.  The
street called Quincampoix, for a long time past devoted to the operations
of bankers, had become the usual meeting-place of the greatest lords as
well as of discreet burgesses.  It had been found necessary to close the
two ends of the street with gates, open from six A. M. to nine P. M.;
every house harbored business agents by the hundred; the smallest room
was let for its weight in gold.  The workmen who made the paper for the
bank-notes could not keep up with the consumption.  The most modest
fortunes suddenly became colossal, lacqueys of yesterday were
millionaires to-morrow; extravagance followed the progress of this
outburst of riches, and the price of provisions followed the progress of
extravagance.  Enthusiasm was at its height in favor of the able author
of so many benefits.  Law became a convert to Catholicism, and was made
comptroller-general; all the court was at his feet.  "My son was looking
for a duchess to escort my granddaughter to Genoa," writes Madame, the
Regent's mother.  "'Send and choose one at Madame Law's,' said I; 'you
will find them all sitting in her drawing-room.'"  Law's triumph was
complete; the hour of his fall was about to strike.

At the pinnacle of his power and success the new comptroller-general fell
into no illusion as to the danger of the position.  "He had been forced
to raise seven stories on foundations which he had laid for only three,"
said a contemporary, as clear-sighted as impartial.  Some large
shareholders were already beginning to quietly realize their profits.
The warrants of the _Compagnie des Indes_ had been assimilated to the
bank-notes; and the enormous quantity of paper tended to lower its value.
First, there was a prohibition against making payments in silver above
ten francs, and in gold above three hundred.  Soon afterwards money was
dislegalized as a tender, and orders were issued to take every kind to
the Bank on pain of confiscation, half to go to the informer.  Informing
became a horrible trade; a son denounced his father.  The Regent openly
violated law, and had this miscreant punished.  The prince one day saw
President Lambert de Vernon coming to visit him.  "I am come," said the
latter, "to denounce to your Royal Highness a man who has five hundred
thousand livres in gold."  The Duke of Orleans drew back a step.  "Ah,
Mr. President," he cried, "what low vocation have you taken to?"
"Monseigneur," rejoined the president, "I am obeying the law; but your
Royal Highness may be quite easy; it is myself whom I have come to
denounce, in hopes of retaining at least a part of this sum, which I
prefer to all the bank-notes."  "My money is at the king's service," was
the proud remark of Nicolai, premier president of the Exchequer-Chamber,
"but it belongs to nobody."  The great mass of the nation was of the same
opinion as the two presidents; forty-five millions only found their way
to the Bank; gold and silver were concealed everywhere.  The crisis was
becoming imminent; Law boldly announced that the value of the notes was
reduced by a half.  The public outcry was so violent that the Regent was
obliged to withdraw the edict, as to which the council had not been
consulted.  "Since Law became comptroller-general, his head has been
turned," said the prince.  That same evening Law was arrested by the
major of the Swiss; it was believed to be all over with him, but the
admirable order in which were his books, kept by double entry after the
Italian manner, as yet unknown in France, and the ingenious expedients
he indicated for restoring credit, gave his partisans a moment's fresh
confidence.  He ceased to be comptroller-general, but he remained
director of the Bank.  The death-blow, however, had been dealt his
system, for a panic terror had succeeded to the insensate enthusiasm of
the early days.  The Prince of Conti had set the example of getting back
the value of his notes; four wagons had been driven up to his house laden
with money.  It was suffocation at the doors of the Bank, changing small
notes, the only ones now payable in specie.  Three men were crushed to
death on one day in the crowd.  It was found necessary to close the
entrances to Quincampoix Street, in order to put a stop to the feverish
tumult arising from desperate speculation.  The multitude moved to the
Place Vendome; shops and booths were thrown up; there was a share-fair;
this ditty was everywhere sung in the streets:--

[Illustration: La Rue Quincampoix---68]

"On On Monday I bought share on share;
On Tuesday I was a millionaire;
On Wednesday took a grand abode;
On Thursday in my carriage rode;
On Friday drove to the Opera-ball;
On Saturday came to the paupers' hall."

To restore confidence, Law conceived the idea of giving the seals back to
D'Aguesseau; and the Regent authorized him to set out for Fresnes.  In
allusion to this step, so honorable for the magistrate who was the object
of it, Law afterwards wrote from Venice to the Regent, "In my labors I
desired to be useful to a great people, as the chancellor can bear me
witness.  .  .  .  At his return I offered him my shares, which were then
worth more than a hundred millions, to be distributed by him amongst
those who had need of them."  The chancellor came back, though his
influence could neither stop the evil, nor even assuage the growing
disagreement between the Duke of Orleans and the Parliament.  None could
restore the public sense of security, none could prevent the edifice from
crumbling to pieces.  With ruin came crimes.  Count Horn, belonging to
the family of the celebrated Count Horn, who was beheaded under Philip
II., in company with Count Lamoral d'Egmont, murdered at an inn a poor
jobber whom he had inveigled thither on purpose to steal his pocket-book.
In spite of all his powerful family's entreaties, Count Horn died on the
wheel, together with one of his accomplices.  It was represented to the
Regent that the count's house had the honor of being connected with his.
"Very, well, gentlemen," said he, "then I will share the shame with you,"
and he remained inflexible.

The public wrath and indignation fastened henceforth upon Law, the author
and director of a system which had given rise to so many hopes, and had
been the cause of so many woes.  His carriage was knocked to pieces in
the streets.  President de Mesmes entered the Grand Chamber, singing with
quite a solemn air,--

"Sirs, sirs, great news!  What is it?
It's--They've smashed Law's carriage all to bits."

The whole body jumped up, more regardful of their hatred than of their
dignity; and "Is Law torn in pieces?"  was the cry.  Law had taken refuge
at the Palais Royal.  One day he appeared at the theatre in the Regent's
box; low murmurs recalled to the Regent's mind the necessity for
prudence; in the end he got Law away secretly in a carriage lent him by
the Duke of Bourbon.

Law had brought with him to France a considerable fortune; he had
scarcely enough to live upon when he retired to Venice, where he died
some years later (1729), convinced to the last of the utility of his
system, at the same time that he acknowledged the errors he had committed
in its application.  "I do not pretend that I did not make mistakes," he
wrote from his retreat; "I know I did, and that if I had to begin again I
should do differently.  I should go more slowly but more surely, and I
should not expose the state and my own person to the dangers which may
attend the derangement of a general system."  "There was neither avarice
nor rascality in what he did," says St. Simon; "he was a gentle, kind,
respectful man, whom excess of credit and of fortune had not spoilt, and
whose bearing, equipage, table, and furniture could not offend anybody.
He bore with singular patience and evenness the obstructions that were
raised against his operations, until at the last, finding himself short
of means, and nevertheless seeking for them and wishing to present a
front, he became crusty, gave way to temper, and his replies were
frequently ill-considered.  He was a man of system, calculation,
comparison, well informed and profound in that sort of thing, who was the
dupe of his Mississippi, and in good faith believed in forming great and
wealthy establishments in America.  He reasoned Englishwise, and did not
know how opposed to those kinds of establishments are the levity of our
nation and the inconveniences of a despotic government, which has a
finger in everything, and under which what one minister does is always
destroyed or changed by his successor."  The disasters caused by Law's
system have recoiled upon his memory.  Forgotten are his honesty, his
charity, his interest in useful works; remembered is nothing but the
imprudence of his chimerical hopes and the fatal result of his
enterprises, as deplorable in their effects upon the moral condition of
France, as upon her wealth and her credit.

The Regent's rash infatuation for a system, as novel as it was seductive,
had borne its fruits.  The judgment which his mother had pronounced upon
Philip of Orleans was justified to the last.  "The fairies," said Madame,
"were all invited to the birth of my son; and each endowed him with some
happy quality.  But one wicked fairy, who had been forgotten, came
likewise, leaning upon her stick, and not being able to annul her
sisters' gifts, declared that the prince should never know how to make
use of them."

Throughout the successive periods of intoxication and despair caused by
the necessary and logical development of Law's system, the Duke of
Orleans had dealt other blows and directed other affairs of importance.
Easy-going, indolent, often absorbed by his pleasures, the Regent found
no great difficulty in putting up with the exaltation of the
legitimatized princes; it had been for him sufficient to wrest authority
from the Duke of Maine, he let him enjoy the privileges of a prince of
the blood.  "I kept silence during the king's lifetime," he would say;
"I will not be mean enough to break it now he is dead."  But the Duke of
Bourbon, heir of the House of Conde, fierce in temper, violent in his
hate, greedy of honors as well as of money, had just arrived at man's
estate, and was wroth at sight of the bastards' greatness.  He drew after
him the Count of Charolais his brother, and the Prince of Conti his
cousin; on the 22d of April, 1716, all three presented to the king a
request for the revocation of Louis XIV.'s edict declaring his
legitimatized sons princes of the blood, and capable of succeeding to the
throne.  The Duchess of Maine, generally speaking very indifferent about
her husband, whom she treated haughtily, like a true daughter of the
House of Conde, flew into a violent passion, this time, at her cousins'
unexpected attack; she was for putting her own hand to the work of
drawing up the memorial of her husband and of her brother-in-law, the
Count of Toulouse.  "The greater part of the nights was employed at it,"
says Madame de Stael, at that time Mdlle. do Launay, a person of much
wit, half lady's maid, half reader to the duchess.  "The huge volumes,
heaped up on her bed like mountains overwhelming her, caused her," she
used to say, "to look, making due allowances, like Enceladus, buried
under Mount AEtna.  I was present at the work, and I also used to turn
over the leaves of old chronicles and of ancient and modern
jurisconsults, until excess of fatigue disposed the princess to take
some repose."

[Illustration: The Duke of Maine----71]

All this toil ended in the following declaration on the part of the
legitimatized princes: "The affair, being one of state, cannot be decided
but by a king, who is a major, or indeed by the States-general."  At the
same time, and still at the instigation of the Duchess of Maine, thirty-
nine noblemen signed a petition, modestly addressad to "Our Lords of the
Parliament," demanding, in their turn, that the affair should be referred
to the states-general, who alone were competent, when it was a question
of the succession to the throne.

The Regent saw the necessity of firmness.  "It is a maxim," he declared,
"that the king is always a major as regards justice; that which was done
without the states-general has no need of their intervention to be
undone."  The decree of the council of regency, based on the same
principles, suppressed the right of succession to the crown, and cut
short all pretensions on the part of the legitimatized princes' issue to
the rank of princes of the blood; the rights thereto were maintained in
the case of the Duke of Maine and the Count of Toulouse, for their lives,
by the bounty of the Regent, "which did not prevent the Duchess of Maine
from uttering loud shrieks, like a maniac," says St.  Simon, "or the
Duchess of Orleans from weeping night and day, and refusing for two
months to see anybody."  Of the thirty-nine members of the nobility who
had signed the petition to Parliament, six were detained in prison for a
month, after which the Duke of Orleans pardoned them.  "You know me, well
enough to be aware that I am only nasty when I consider myself positively
obliged to be," he said to them.  The patrons, whose cause these noblemen
had lightly embraced, were not yet at the end of their humiliations.

[Illustrations: The Duchess of Maine----72]

The Duke of Bourbon was not satisfied with their exclusion from the
succession to the throne; he claimed the king's education, which belonged
of right, he said, to the first prince of the blood, being a major.  In
his hatred, then, towards the legitimatized, he accepted with alacrity
the Duke of St. Simon's proposal to simply reduce them to their rank by
seniority in the peerage, with the proviso of afterwards restoring the
privileges of a prince of the blood in favor of the Count of Toulouse
alone, as a reward for his services in the navy.  The blow thus dealt
gratified all the passions of the House of Conde and the wrath of Law,
as well as that of the keeper of the seals, D'Argenson, against the
Parliament, which for three months past had refused to enregister all
edicts.  On the 24th of August, 1718, at six in the morning, the
Parliament received orders to repair to the Tuileries, where the king was
to hold a bed of justice., The Duke of Maine, who was returning from a
party, was notified, as colonel of the Swiss, to have his regiment under
arms; at eight o'clock the council of regency was already assembled; the
Duke of Maine and the Count of Toulouse arrived in peer's robes.  The
Regent had flattered himself that they would not come to the bed of
justice, and had not summoned them.  He at once advanced towards the
Count of Toulouse, and said out loud that he was surprised to see him in
his robes, and that he had not thought proper to notify him of the bed of
justice, because he knew that, since the last edict, he did not like
going to the Parliament.  The Count of Toulouse replied that that was
quite true, but that, when it was a question of the welfare of the State,
he put every other consideration aside.  The Regent was disconcerted; he
hesitated a moment, then, speaking low and very earnestly to the Count of