Never had excitement or madness been heard of which approached this.

M. le Duc d’Orleans distributed a large number of the Company’s shares to all the general officers and others employed in the war against Spain.  A month after, the value of the specie was diminished; then the whole of the coin was re-cast.

Money was in such abundance—­that is to say, the notes of Law, preferred then to the metallic currency—­that four millions were paid to Bavaria, and three millions to Sweden, in settlement of old debts.  Shortly after, M. le Duc d’Orleans gave 80,000 livres to Meuse; and 80,000 livres to Madame de Chateauthiers, dame d’atours of Madame.  The Abbe Alari, too, obtained 2000 livres pension.  Various other people had augmentation of income given to them at this time.

Day by day Law’s bank and his Mississippi increased in favour.  The confidence in them was complete.  People could not change their lands and their houses into paper fast enough, and the result of this paper was, that everything became dear beyond all previous experience.  All heads were turned, Foreigners envied our good fortune, and left nothing undone to have a share in it.  The English, even, so clear and so learned in banks, in companies, in commerce, allowed themselves to be caught, and bitterly repented it afterwards.  Law, although cold and discreet, felt his modesty giving way.  He grew tired of being a subaltern.  He hankered after greatness in the midst of this splendour; the Abbe Dubois and M. le Duc d’Orleans desired it for him more than he; nevertheless, two formidable obstacles were in the way:  Law was a foreigner and a heretic, and he could not be naturalised without a preliminary act of abjuration.  To perform that, somebody must be found to convert him, somebody upon whom good reliance could be placed.  The Abbe Dubois had such a person all ready in his pocket, so to speak.  The Abbe Tencin was the name of this ecclesiastic, a fellow of debauched habits and shameless life, whom the devil has since pushed into the most astonishing good fortune; so true it is that he sometimes departs from his ordinary rules, in order to recompense his servitors, and by these striking examples dazzle others, and so secure them.

As may be imagined, Law did not feel very proud of the Abbe who had converted him:  more especially as that same Abbe was just about this time publicly convicted of simony, of deliberate fraud, of right-down lying (proved by his own handwriting), and was condemned by the Parliament to pay a fine, which branded him with infamy, and which was the scandal of the whole town.  Law, however, was converted, and this was a subject which supplied all conversation.

Soon after, he bought, for one million livres, the Hotel Mazarin for his bank, which until then had been established in a house he hired of the Chief-President, who had not need of it, being very magnificently lodged in the Palace of the Parliament by virtue of his office.  Law bought, at the same time, for 550,000 livres, the house of the Comte de Tesse.