“That’s true,” replied M. le Duc, “but it was you who gave them to me to send to him; but I never asked you for them, or to let him leave the realm.  I know that I have the credit for it amongst the public, and I am glad of this opportunity to explain here the facts of the case.  I was against the proposition for sending M. Law to the Bastille, or to any other prison, because I believed that it was not to your interest to sanction this, after having made use of him as you had; but I never asked you to let him leave the realm, and I beg you, Monsieur, in presence of the King, and before all these gentlemen, to say if I ever did.”

“’Tis true,” replied the Regent, “you never asked me; I allowed him to go, because I thought his presence in France would injure public credit, and the operations of the public.”

“So far was I from asking you,” said M. le Duc, “that if you had done me the honour to demand my opinion, I should have advised you to take good care not to let him depart from the country.”

This strange conversation, which roused our astonishment to an incredible point, and which was sustained with so much out-spoken freedom by M. le Duc, demands a word or two of explanation.

M. le Duc was one of those who, without spending a farthing, had drawn millions from Law’s notes and shares.  He had had large allotments of the latter, and now that they had become utterly valueless, he had been obliged to make the best of a bad bargain, by voluntarily giving them up, in order to lighten the real responsibilities of the Company.  This he had done at the commencement of the Council, M. le Prince de Conti also.  But let me explain at greater length.

The 22nd of May, the day of the decree, was the period at which commenced the final decay of the Company, and of the bank, and the extinction of all confidence by the sad discovery that there was no longer any money wherewith to pay the bank notes, they being so prodigiously in excess of the coin.  After this, each step had been but a stumble:  each operation a very feeble palliation.  Days and weeks had been gained, obscurity had been allowed to give more chance, solely from fear of disclosing the true and terrible state of affairs, and the extent of the public ruin.  Law could not wash his hands of all this before the world; he could not avoid passing for the inventor and instrument, and he would have run great risk at the moment when all was unveiled.  M. le Duc d’Orleans, who, to satisfy his own prodigality, and the prodigious avidity of his friends, had compelled Law to issue so many millions of livres of notes more than he had any means of paying, and who had thus precipitated him into the abyss, could not let him run the chance of perishing, still less to save him, could he proclaim himself the real criminal.  It was to extricate himself from this embarrassment that he made Law leave the country, when he saw that the monstrous deceit could no longer be hidden.