“Down with Jean L’as!  Down with Jean L’as!” rose a cadenced, rhythmic shout, the accord of a mob of Paris beating into its tones.  And this steady burden was broken by the cries of “Enter!  Enter!  Break down the door!  Kill the monster!  Assassin!  Thief!  Traitor!” No word of the vocabulary of scorn and loathing was wanting in their cries.

Hearing these cries, the face of this fighting man now grew hot with anger, and now it paled with grief and sorrow.  Yet he faltered not, but stepped on, confidently.  The Swiss opened the door and stood at the head of the flight of stairs.  Tall, calm, pale, fearless, John Law stood facing the angry mob, his eyes shining brightly.  He laid his hand for an instant upon his sword, yet it was but to unbuckle the belt.  The weapon he left leaning against the wall, and so stepped on down toward the crowd.

He was met by a rush of excited men and women, screaming, cursing, giving vent to inarticulate and indistinguishable speech.  A man laid his hand upon his shoulder.  Law caught the hand, and with a swift wrench of the wrist, threw the owner of it to the ground.  At this the others gave back, and for half a moment silence ensued.  The mob lacked just the touch of rage to hurl themselves upon him.  He raised his hand and motioned them aside.

“Are you not Jean L’as?” cried one dame, excitedly, waving in his face a handful of the paper shares of the latest issue in the Company of the Indies.  “Are you not Jean L’as?  Tell me, then, where is my money for these things?  What shall I get for this rotten paper?”

“You are Jean L’as, the director-general!” cried a man, pushing up to his side. “’Twas you that ruined the Company.  See!  Here is all that I have!” He wept as he shook his bunch of paper in John Law’s face.  “Last week I was worth half a million!” He wept, and tore across, with impotent rage, the bundle of worthless paper.

“Down with Jean L’as!  Down with Jean L’as!” came the recurrent cry.  A rush followed.  The carriage, towering above the ring of the surrounding crowd, showed its coat of arms, and thus was recognized.  A paving-stone crashed through its heavy window.  A knife ripped up the velvets of the cushions.

The coachman was pulled from his box.  The horses, plunging with terror, were cut loose from the pole and led away.  With shouts and cries of rage and busy zeal, one madman vied with another in tearing, cutting and destroying the vehicle, until it stood there ruined, without means of locomotion, defaced and useless.  And still the ring of desperate humanity closed around him who had late been master of all France.

“What do you want, my friends?” asked he, calmly, as for an instant there came a lull in the tumult.  He stood looking at them curiously now, his dulling eyes regarding them as though they presented some new and interesting study.  “What is it that you desire?” he repeated.

“We want our money,” cried a score of voices.  “We want back that which you have stolen.”