A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times Volume VI Part 2

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 circ.u.mstances 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 ma.s.ses germinate spa.r.s.ely 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 cla.s.ses, to the ecclesiastics, or to the members of the Parliaments; vaguely as yet, and r.e.t.a.r.ded 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 a.s.sembly 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 a.s.sembly, and I hereby ask for them in antic.i.p.ation." 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 a.s.sured 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 pa.s.sed 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 const.i.tuted, when it was discovered that commerce had been forgotten; and to it was a.s.signed 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 embarra.s.sing 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 hara.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.semblies; 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 ma.s.s 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 ma.s.s 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 a.s.suming 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-imburs.e.m.e.nt 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, inst.i.tuted 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 compa.s.sion, 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?"

n.o.body 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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. Pa.s.sionately 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 t.i.tle 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 mult.i.tude 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 subst.i.tuted 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 a.s.similated to the bank-notes; and the enormous quant.i.ty 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 n.o.body." The great ma.s.s 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 mult.i.tude moved to the Place Vendome; shops and booths were thrown up; there was a share-fair; this ditty was everywhere sung in the streets:--

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 a.s.suage 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.ds' 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 pa.s.sion, 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 d.u.c.h.ess. "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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 d.u.c.h.ess of Maine, thirty- nine n.o.blemen signed a pet.i.tion, 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.