Law came several other times to my house, and showed much desire to grow intimate with me.  I kept to civilities, because finance entered not into my head, and I regarded as lost time all these conversations.  Some time after, the Regent, who spoke to me tolerably often of Law with great prepossession, said that he had to ask of me, nay to demand of me, a favour; it was, to receive a visit from Law regularly every week.  I represented to him the perfect inutility of these conversations, in which I was incapable of learning anything, and still more so of enlightening Law upon subjects he possessed, and of which I knew naught.  It was in vain; the Regent wished it; obedience was necessary.  Law, informed of this by the Regent, came then to my house.  He admitted to me with good grace, that it was he who had asked the Regent to ask me, not daring to do so himself.  Many compliments followed on both sides, and we agreed that he should come to my house every Tuesday morning about ten o’clock, and that my door should be closed to everybody while he remained.  This first visit was not given to business.  On the following Tuesday morning he came to keep his appointment, and punctually came until his discomfiture.  An hour-and-a-half, very often two hours, was the ordinary time for our conversations.  He always took care to inform me of the favour his bank was obtaining in France and foreign countries, of its products, of his views, of his conduct, of the opposition he met with from the heads of finance and the magistracy, of his reasons, and especially of his balance sheet, to convince me that he was more than prepared to face all holders of notes whatever sums they had to ask for.

I soon knew that if Law had desired these regular visits at my house, it was not because he expected to make me a skilful financier; but because, like a man of sense—­and he had a good deal—­he wished to draw near a servitor of the Regent who had the best post in his confidence, and who long since had been in a position to speak to him of everything and of everybody with the greatest freedom and the most complete liberty; to try by this frequent intercourse to gain my friendship; inform himself by me of the intrinsic qualities of those of whom he only saw the outside; and by degrees to come to the Council, through me, to represent the annoyances he experienced, the people with whom he had to do; and lastly, to profit by my dislike to the Duc de Noailles, who, whilst embracing him every day, was dying of jealousy and vexation, and raised in his path, under-hand, all the obstacles and embarrassments possible, and would have liked to stifle him.  The bank being in action and flourishing, I believed it my duty to sustain it.  I lent myself, therefore, to the instructions Law proposed, and soon we spoke to each other with a confidence I never have had reason to repent.  I will not enter into the details of this bank, the other schemes which followed it, or the operations made in consequence.  This subject of finance would fill several volumes.  I will speak of it only as it affects the history of the time, or what concerns me in particular.  It is the history of my time I have wished to write; I should have been too much turned from it had I entered into the immense details respecting finance.  I might add here what Law was.  I defer it to a time when this curiosity will be more in place.