“And well he may be.  Coachmen and valets have liveries of their own these days.  Servants now eat from plate, and clerks have their own coaches.  Paris is packed with people, and, look you, they are people no longer clamoring for bread.  Who has done this?  Why, my brother, John Law of Lauriston, Lady Catharine, who loves you, and loves you dearly.”

The old wrinkle of perplexity gathered between the brows of the woman before him.  Her face was clouded, the changeful eyes now deep covered by their lids.

Lacking the precise word for that crucial moment, Will Law broke further on into material details.  “To be explicit, as I have said,” resumed he, “everything seems to center about my brother, the director-general of finance.  He took the old notes of the government, worth not half their face, and in a week made them treble their face value.  The king owes him over one hundred million livres to-day.  My brother has taken over the farming of the royal taxes.  And now he forms a little Company of the Indies; and to this he adds the charter of the Senegal Company.  Not content, he adds the entire trade of the Indies, of China and the South Seas.  He has been given the privilege of the royal farming of tobacco, for which he pays the king the little trifle of two hundred million livres, and assures to the king certain interest moneys, which, I need not say, the king will actually obtain.  In addition to these things, he has lately been given the mint of France.  The whole coinage of the realm has been made over to this Company of the Indies.  My brother pays the king fifty million livres for this privilege, and this he will do within fifteen months.  All France is indeed in the hands of my brother.  Now, call John Law an adventurer, a gambler, if you will, and if you can; but at least admit that he has given life and hope to the poor of France, that he has given back to the king a people which was despoiled and ruined by the former king.  He has trebled the trade of France, he has saved her honor, and opened to her the avenues of a new world.  Are these things nothing?  They have all been done by my brother, this man whom you believe incapable of faith and constancy.  Good God!  It surely seems that he has at least been constant to himself!”

“Oh, I hear talk of it all.  I hear that a share in the new company promises dividends of two hundred livres.  I hear talk of shares and ‘sub-shares,’ called ‘mothers,’ and ‘daughters,’ and ‘granddaughters,’ and I know not what.  It seems as though half the coin were divided into centimes, and as though each centime had been planted by your brother and had grown to be worth a thousand pounds.  I admit somewhat of knowledge of these miracles.”

“True, Lady Catharine.  Can there not be one miracle more?”

Lady Catharine Knollys bent her face forward upon her hands, unhappiness in every gesture.

“Sir,” said she, “it grieves my heart to say it; yet this answer you must take to your brother, John Law.  That miracle hath not yet been wrought which can give us back the past again.”