But if Mr. Law goes, what will become of the System?  And what would the System be without Mr. Law?  And what would Paris be without the System?  Why, listen, Lady Catharine!  I gained fifty thousand livres yesterday, and my coachman, the rascal, in some manner seems to have done quite as well for himself.  I doubt not he will yet build a mansion of his own, and perhaps my husband may drive for him!  These be strange days indeed.  I only hope they may continue, in spite of what my husband says.”

“And what says he?” asked Lady Catharine, her own voice sounding to her unfamiliar and far away.

“Why, that the city is mad, and that this soon must end—­this Mississippi bubble, as my Lord Stair calls it at the embassy.”

“Yet I have heard all France is prosperous.”

“Oh, yes indeed.  ’Tis said that but yesterday the kingdom paid four millions of its debt to Bavaria, three millions of its debt to Sweden—­yet these are not the most pressing debts of France.”

“Meaning—­”

“Why, the debts of the regent to his friends—­those are the important things.  But the other day he gave eighty thousand livres to Madame Chateauthiers, as a little present.  He gave two hundred thousand livres to the Abbe Something-or-other, who asked for it, and another thousand livres to that rat Dubois.  The thief D’Argenson ever counsels him to give in abundance now that he hath abundance, and the regent is ready with a vengeance with his compliance.  Saint Simon, that priggish duke, has had a million given him to repay a debt his father took on for the king a generation ago.  To the captain of the guard the regent gives six hundred thousand livres, for carrying the fan of the regent’s forgotten wife; to the Prince Courtenay, two hundred thousand, most like because the prince said he had need of it; a pension of two hundred thousand annually to the Marquise de Bellefonte, the second such sum, because perhaps she once made eyes at him; a pension of sixty thousand livres to a three-year-old relative to the Prince de Conti, because Conti cried for it; one hundred thousand livres to Mademoiselle Haidee, because she has a consumption; and as much more to the Duchesse de Falari, because she has not a consumption.  Bah!  The credit of France might indeed, as my husband says, be called leaking through the slats of fans.”

“But, look you!” she went on, “how Mr. Law feathers his own nest.  He bought lately, for a half million livres, the house of the Comte de Tesse; and on the same day, as you know, the Hotel Mazarin.  There is no limit to his buying of estates.  This, so says my husband, is the great proof of his honesty.  He puts his money here in France, and does not send it over seas.  He seems to have no doubt, and indeed no fear, of anything.”

Lady Warrington paused, half for want of breath.  Silence fell in the great room.  A big and busy fly, deep down in the crystal cylindre which sheltered a taper on a near-by table, buzzed out a droning protest.  The face of Lady Catharine was averted.