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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Memoirs of Louis XIV., Volume 13
+by Duc de Saint-Simon
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Memoirs of Louis XIV., Volume 13
+       And His Court and of The Regency
+
+Author: Duc de Saint-Simon
+
+Release Date: December 3, 2004 [EBook #3872]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MEMOIRS OF LOUIS XIV., ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+          MEMOIRS OF LOUIS XIV AND HIS COURT AND OF THE REGENCY
+
+                        BY THE DUKE OF SAINT-SIMON
+
+
+
+VOLUME 13.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCVII
+
+To go back, now, to the remaining events of the year 1719.
+
+The Marquise de Charlus, sister of Mezieres, and mother of the Marquis de
+Levi, who has since become a duke and a peer, died rich and old.  She was
+the exact picture of an "old clothes" woman and was thus subject to many
+insults from those who did not know her, which she by no means relished.
+To relieve a little the seriousness of these memoirs, I will here relate
+an amusing adventure of which she was heroine.
+
+She was very avaricious, and a great gambler.  She would have passed the
+night up to her knees in water in order to play.  Heavy gambling at
+lansquenet was carried on at Paris in the evening, at Madame la Princesse
+de Conti's.  Madame de Charlus supped there one Friday, between the
+games, much company being present.  She was no better clad than at other
+times, and wore a head-dress, in vogue at that day, called commode, not
+fastened, but put on or taken off like a wig or a night-cap.  It was
+fashionable, then, to wear these headdresses very high.
+
+Madame de Charlus was near the Archbishop of Rheims, Le Tellier.  She
+took a boiled egg, that she cracked, and in reaching for some salt, set
+her head dress on fire, at a candle near, without perceiving it. The
+Archbishop, who saw her all in flames, seized the head-dress and flung it
+upon the ground.  Madame de Charlus, in her surprise, and indignant at
+seeing her self thus uncovered, without knowing why, threw her egg in the
+Archbishop's face, and made him a fine mess.
+
+Nothing but laughter was heard; and all the company were in convulsions
+of mirth at the grey, dirty, and hoary head of Madame de Charlus, and the
+Archbishop's omelette; above all, at the fury and abuse of Madame de
+Charlus, who thought she had been affronted, and who was a long time
+before she would understand the cause, irritated at finding herself thus
+treated before everybody.  The head-dress was burnt, Madame la Princesse
+de Conti gave her another, but before it was on her head everybody had
+time to contemplate her charms, and she to grow in fury.  Her, husband
+died three months after her.  M. de Levi expected to find treasures;
+there had been such; but they had taken wing and flown away.
+
+About this time appeared some verses under the title of Philippiques,
+which were distributed with extraordinary promptitude and abundance.  La
+Grange, formerly page of Madame la Princesse de Conti, was the author,
+and did not deny it.  All that hell could vomit forth, true and false,
+was expressed in the most beautiful verses, most poetic in style, and
+with all the art and talent imaginable.  M. le Duc d'Orleans knew it, and
+wished to see the poem, but he could not succeed in getting it, for no
+one dared to show it to him.
+
+He spoke of it several times to me, and at last demanded with such
+earnestness that I should bring it to him, that I could not refuse.  I
+brought it to him accordingly, but read it to him I declared I never
+would.  He took it, therefore, and read it in a low tone, standing in the
+window of his little cabinet, where we were.  He judged it in reading
+much as it was, for he stopped from time to time to speak to me, and
+without appearing much moved.  But all on a sudden I saw him change
+countenance, and turn towards me, tears in his eyes, and himself ready to
+drop.
+
+"Ah," said he, "this is too much, this horrible poem beats me
+completely."
+
+He was at the part where the scoundrel shows M. le Duc d'Orleans having
+the design to poison the King, and quite ready to execute his crime.
+It is the part where the author redoubles his energy, his poetry, his
+invocations, his terrible and startling beauties, his invectives, his
+hideous pictures, his touching portraits of the youth and innocence of
+the King, and of the hopes he has, adjuring the nation to save so dear a
+victim from the barbarity of a murderer; in a word, all that is most
+delicate, most tender, stringent, and blackest, most pompous, and most
+moving, is there.
+
+I wished to profit by the dejected silence into which the reading of this
+poem had thrown M. le Duc d'Orleans, to take from him the execrable
+paper, but I could not succeed; he broke out into just complaints against
+such horrible wickedness, and into tenderness for the King; then finished
+his reading, that he interrupted more than once to speak to me.  I never
+saw a man so penetrated, so deeply touched, so overwhelmed with injustice
+so enormous and sustained.  As for me, I could not contain myself.  To
+see him, the most prejudiced, if of good faith, would have been convinced
+he was innocent of the come imputed to him, by the horror he displayed at
+it.  I have said all, when I state that I recovered myself with
+difficulty, and that I had all the pains in the world to compose him a
+little.
+
+This La Grange, who was of no personal value, yet a good poet--only that,
+and never anything else--had, by his poetry, insinuated himself into
+Sceaux, where he had become one of the great favourites of Madame du
+Maine.  She and her husband knew his life, his habits, and his mercenary
+villainy.  They knew, too, haw to profit by it.  He was arrested shortly
+afterwards, and sent to the Isle de Sainte Marguerite, which he obtained
+permission to leave before the end of the Regency.  He had the audacity
+to show himself everywhere in Paris, and while he was appearing at the
+theatres and in all public places, people had the impudence to spread the
+report that M. le Duc d'Orleans had had him killed!  M. le Duc d'Orleans
+and his enemies have been equally indefatigable; the latter in the
+blackest villainies, the Prince in the most unfruitful clemency, to call
+it by no more expressive name.
+
+Before the Regent was called to the head of public affairs, I recommended
+him to banish Pere Tellier when he had the power to do so.  He did not
+act upon my advice, or only partially; nevertheless, Tellier was
+disgraced, and after wandering hither and thither, a very firebrand
+wherever he went, he was confined by his superiors in La Fleche.
+
+This tyrant of the Church, furious that he could no longer move, which
+had been his sole consolation during the end of his reign and his
+terrible domination, found himself at La Fleche, reduced to a position as
+insupportable as it was new to him.
+
+The Jesuits, spies of each other, and jealous and envious of those who
+have the superior authority, are marvellously ungrateful towards those
+who, having occupied high posts, or served the company with much labour
+and success, become useless to it, by their age or their infirmities.
+They regard them with disdain, and instead of bestowing upon them the
+attention merited by their age, their services, and their merit, leave
+them in the dreariest solitude, and begrudge them even their food!
+
+I have with my own eyes seen three examples of this in these Jesuits, men
+of much piety and honour, who hid filled positions of confidence and of
+talent, and with whom I was very intimate.  The first had been rector of
+their establishment at Paris, was distinguished by excellent works of
+piety, and was for several years assistant of the general at Rome, at the
+death of whom he returned to Paris; because the rule is, that the new
+general has new assistants.  Upon his return to the Paris establishment
+he was put into a garret, at the very top of the house, amid solitude,
+contempt, and want.
+
+The direction of the royal conscience had been the principal occupation
+of the two others, one of whom had even been proposed as confessor to
+Madame la Dauphine.  One was long ill of a malady he died of.  He was not
+properly nourished, and I sent him his dinner every day, for more than
+five months, because I had seen his pittance.  I sent him even remedies,
+for he could not refrain from admitting to me that he suffered from the
+treatment he was subjected to.
+
+The third, very old and very infirm, had not a better fate.  At last,
+being no longer able to hold out, he asked to be allowed to pay a visit
+to my Versailles house (after having explained himself to me), under
+pretext of fresh air.  He remained there several months, and died at the
+noviciate in Paris.  Such is the fate of all the Jesuits, without
+excepting the most famous, putting aside a few who having shone at the
+Court and in the world by their sermons and their merit, and having made
+many friends--as Peres Bordaloue, La Rue, Gaillard--have been guaranteed
+from the general disgrace, because, often visited by the principal
+persons of the Court and the town, policy did not permit them to be
+treated like the rest, for fear of making so many considerable people
+notice what they would not have suffered without disturbance and scandal.
+
+It was, then, in this abandonment and this contempt that Pere Tellier
+remained at La Fleche, although he had from the Regent four thousand
+livres pension.  He had ill-treated everybody.  When he was confessor of
+the King, not one of his brethren approached him without trembling,
+although most of them were the "big-wigs" of the company.  Even the
+general of the company was forced to bend beneath the despotism he
+exercised upon all.  There was not a Jesuit who did not disapprove the
+violence of his conduct, or who did not fear it would injure the society.
+All hated him, as a minister is hated who is coarse, harsh, inaccessible,
+egotistical, and who takes pleasure in showing his power and his disdain.
+
+His exile, and the conduct that drew it upon him, were fresh motives for
+hatred against him, unveiling, as they did, a number of secret intrigues
+he had been concerned in, and which he had great interest in hiding.  All
+these things together did not render agreeable to Tellier his forced
+retirement at La Fleche.  He found there sharp superiors and equals,
+instead of the general terror his presence had formerly caused among the
+Jesuits.  All now showed nothing but contempt for him, and took pleasure
+in making him sensible of it.  This King of the Church, in part of the
+State, and in private of his society, became a common Jesuit like the
+rest, and under superiors; it may be imagined what a hell this was to a
+man so impetuous and so accustomed to a domination without reply, and
+without bounds, and abused in every fashion.  Thus he did not endure it
+long.  Nothing more was heard of him, and he died after having been only
+six months at La Fleche.
+
+There was another death, which I may as well mention here, as it occurred
+about the same time.
+
+On Saturday evening, the 15th of April, 1719, the celebrated and fatal
+Madame de Maintenon died at Saint-Cyr.  What a stir this event would have
+made in Europe, had it happened a few years earlier.  It was scarcely
+mentioned in Paris!
+
+I have already said so much respecting this woman, so unfortunately
+famous, that I will say but little more now.  Her life at Saint-Cyr was
+divided between her spiritual duties, the letters she received, from her
+religious correspondents, and the answers she gave to them.  She took the
+communion twice a-week, ordinarily between seven and eight o'clock in the
+morning; not, as Dangeau says in his Memoires, at midnight or every day.
+She was very rich, having four thousand livres pension per month from the
+Regent, besides other emoluments.  She had, too, her estate at Maintenon,
+and some other property.  With all this wealth, too, she had not a
+farthing of expense at Saint-Cyr.  Everything was provided for herself
+and servants and their horses, even wood, coals, and candles.  She had
+nothing to buy, except dress for herself and for her people.  She kept a
+steward, a valet, people for the horses and the kitchen, a coach, seven
+or eight horses, one or two others for the saddle, besides having the
+young ladies of Saint-Cyr, chambermaids, and Mademoiselle d'Aumale to
+wait upon her.
+
+The fall of the Duc du Maine at the Bed of justice struck the first blow
+at her.  It is not too much to presume that she was well informed of the
+measures and the designs of this darling, and that this hope had
+sustained her; but when she saw him arrested she succumbed; continuous
+fever seized her, and she died at eighty-three years of age, in the full
+possession of all her intellect.
+
+Regret for her loss, which was not even universal in Saint-Cyr, scarcely
+passed the walls of that community.  Aubigny, Archbishop of Rouen, her
+pretended cousin, was the only man I ever heard of, who was fool enough
+to die of grief on account of it.  But he was so afflicted by this loss,
+that he fell ill, and soon followed her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCVII.
+
+Madame la Duchesse de Berry was living as usual, amid the loftiest pride,
+and the vilest servitude; amid penitence the most austere at the
+Carmelite convent of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and suppers the most
+profaned by vile company, filthiness, and impiety; amid the most
+shameless debauchery, and the most horrible fear of the devil and death;
+when lo! she fell ill at the Luxembourg.
+
+I must disguise nothing more, especially as what I am relating belongs to
+history; and never in these memoirs have I introduced details upon
+gallantry except such as were necessary to the proper comprehension of
+important or interesting matters to which they related.  Madame la
+Duchesse de Berry would constrain herself in nothing; she was indignant
+that people would dare to speak of what she did not take the trouble to
+hide from them; and nevertheless she was grieved to death that her
+conduct was known.
+
+She was in the family way by Rion, but hid--it as much as she could.
+Madame de Mouchy was their go-between, although her conduct was as clear
+as day.  Rion and Mouchy, in fact, were in love with each other, and had
+innumerable facilities for indulging their passion.  They laughed at the
+Princess, who was their dupe, and from whom they drew in council all they
+could.  In one word, they were the masters of her and of her household,
+and so insolently, that M. le Duc and Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans, who
+knew them and hated them, feared them also and temporised with them.
+Madame de Saint-Simon, sheltered from all that, extremely loved and
+respected by all the household, and respected even by this couple who
+made themselves so much dreaded and courted, only saw Madame la Duchesse
+de Berry during the moments of presentation at the Luxembourg, whence she
+returned as soon as all was finished, entirely ignorant of what was
+passing, though she might have been perfectly instructed.
+
+The illness of Madame la Duchesse de Berry came on, and this illness, ill
+prepared for by suppers washed down by wine and strong liquors, became
+stormy and dangerous.  Madame de Saint-Simon could not avoid becoming
+assiduous in her attendance as soon as the peril appeared, but she never
+would yield to the instances of M. le Duc and Madame la Duchesse
+d'Orleans, who, with all the household; wished her to sleep in the
+chamber allotted to her, and which she never put foot in, not even during
+the day.  She found Madame la Duchesse de Berry shut up in a little
+chamber, which had private entrances--very useful just then, with no one
+near her but La Mouchy and Rion, and a few trusty waiting-women.  All in
+attendance had free entrance to this room.  M. le Duc and Madame la
+Duchesse d'Orleans were not allowed to enter when they liked; of course
+it was the same with the lady of honour, the other ladies, the chief
+femme de chambre, and the doctors.  All entered from time to time, but
+ringing for an instant.  A bad headache or want of sleep caused them
+often to be asked to stay away, or, if they entered, to leave directly
+afterwards.  They did not press their presence upon the sick woman,
+knowing only too well the nature of her malady; but contented themselves
+by asking after her through Madame de Mouchy, who opened the door to
+reply to them, keeping it scarcely ajar: This ridiculous proceeding
+passed before the crowd of the Luxembourg, of the Palais Royal, and of
+many other people who, for form's sake or for curiosity, came to inquire
+the news, and became common town-talk.
+
+The danger increasing, Languet, a celebrated cure of Saint-Sulpice, who
+had always rendered himself assiduous, spoke of the sacraments to M. le
+Duc d'Orleans.  The difficulty was how to enter and propose them to
+Madame la Duchesse de Berry.  But another and greater difficulty soon
+appeared.  It was this: the cure, like a man knowing his duty, refused to
+administer the sacrament, or to suffer it to be administered, while Rion
+or Madame de Mouchy remained in the chamber, or even in the Luxembourg!
+He declared this aloud before everybody, expressly in presence of M. le
+Duc d'Orleans, who was less shocked than embarrassed.  He took the cure
+aside, and for a long time tried to make him give way.  Seeing him
+inflexible, he proposed reference to the Cardinal de Noailles.  The cure
+immediately agreed, and promised to defer to his orders, Noailles being
+his bishop, provided he was allowed to explain his reasons.  The affair
+passed, and Madame la Duchesse de Berry made confession to a Cordelier,
+her confessor.  M. le Duc d'Orleans flattered himself, no doubt, he would
+find the diocesan more flexible than the cure.  If he hoped so he
+deceived himself.
+
+The Cardinal de Noailles arrived; M. le Duc d'Orleans took him aside with
+the cure, and their conversation lasted more than half an hour.  As the
+declaration of the cure had been public, the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris
+judged it fitting that his should be so also.  As all three approached
+the door of the chamber, filled with company, the Cardinal de Noailles
+said aloud to the cure, that he had very worthily done his duty, that he
+expected nothing less from such a good, experienced, and enlightened man
+as he was; that he praised him for what he had demanded before
+administering the sacrament to Madame la Duchesse de Berry; that he
+exhorted him not to give in, or to suffer himself to be deceived upon so
+important a thing; and that if he wanted further authorisation he, as his
+bishop, diocesan, and superior, prohibited him from administering the
+sacraments, or allowing them to be administered, to Madame la Duchesse de
+Berry while Rion and Madame de Mouchy were in the chamber, or even in the
+Luxembourg.
+
+It may be imagined what a stir such inevitable scandal as this made in a
+room so full of company; what embarrassment it caused M. le Duc
+d'Orleans, and what a noise it immediately made everywhere.  Nobody, even
+the chiefs of the constitution, the mass without, enemies of the Cardinal
+de Noailles, the most fashionable bishops, the most distinguished women,
+the libertines even--not one blamed the cure or his archbishop: some
+because they knew the rules of the Church, and did not dare to impugn
+them; others, the majority, from horror of the conduct of Madame la
+Duchesse de Berry, and hatred drawn upon her by her pride.
+
+Now came the question between the Regent, the Cardinal, and the cure,
+which should announce this determination to Madame la Duchesse de Berry,
+who in no way expected it, and who, having confessed, expected every
+moment to see the Holy Sacrament enter, and to take it.  After a short
+colloquy urged on by the state of the patient, the Cardinal and the cure
+withdrew a little, while M. le Duc d'Orleans slightly opened the door and
+called Madame de Mouchy.  Then, the door ajar, she within, he without, he
+told her what was in debate.  La Mouchy, much astonished, still more
+annoyed, rode the high horse, talked of her merit, and of the affront
+that bigots wished to cast upon her and Madame la Duchesse de Berry, who
+would never suffer it or consent to it, and that she would die--in the
+state she was--if they had the impudence and the cruelty to tell it to
+her.
+
+The conclusion was that La Mouchy undertook to announce to Madame la
+Duchesse de Berry the resolution that had been taken respecting the
+sacraments--what she added of her own may be imagined.  A negative
+response did not fail to be quickly delivered to M. le Duc d'Orleans
+through the half-opened door.  Coming through such a messenger, it was
+just the reply he might have expected.  Immediately after, he repeated it
+to the Cardinal, and to the cure; the cure, being supported by his
+archbishop, contented himself with shrugging his shoulders.  But the
+Cardinal said to M. le Duc d'Orleans that Madame de Mouchy, one of the
+two who ought to be sent away, was not a fit person to bring Madame la
+Duchesse to reason; that it was his duty to carry this message to her,
+and to exhort her to do her duty as a Christian shortly about to appear
+before God; and the Archbishop pressed the Regent to go and say so to
+her.  It will be believed, without difficulty, that his eloquence gained
+nothing.  This Prince feared too much his daughter, and would have been
+but a feeble apostle with her.
+
+Reiterated refusals determined the Cardinal to go and speak to Madame la
+Duchesse de Berry, accompanied by the cure, and as he wished to set about
+it at once, M. le Duc d'Orleans, who did not dare to hinder him, but who
+feared some sudden and dangerous revolution in his daughter at the sight
+and at the discourses of the two pastors, conjured him to wait until
+preparations could be made to receive him.  He went, therefore, and held
+another colloquy through the door with Madame de Mouchy, the success of
+which was equal to the other.  Madame la Duchesse de Berry flew into
+fury, railed in unruly terms against these hypocritical humbugs, who took
+advantage of her state and their calling to dishonour her by an unheard-
+of scandal, not in the least sparing her father for his stupidity and
+feebleness in allowing it.  To have heard her, you would have thought
+that the cure and the Cardinal ought to be kicked downstairs.
+
+M. le Duc d'Orleans returned to the ecclesiastics, looking very small,
+and not knowing what to do between his daughter and them.  However, he
+said to them that she was so weak and suffering that they must put off
+their visit, persuading them as well as he could.  The attention and
+anxiety of the large company which filled the room were extreme:
+everything was known afterwards, bit by bit, during the day.
+
+The Cardinal de Noailles remained more than two hours with M. le Duc
+d'Orleans, round whom people gathered at last.  The Cardinal, seeing that
+he could not enter the chamber without a sort of violence, much opposed
+to persuasion, thought it indecent and useless to wait any longer.  In
+going away, he reiterated his orders to the cure, and begged him to watch
+so as not to be deceived respecting the sacraments, lest attempts were
+made to administer them clandestinely.  He afterwards approached Madame
+de Saint-Simon, took her aside, related to her what had passed, and
+deplored with her a scandal that he had not been able to avoid.  M. le
+Duc d'Orleans hastened to announce to his daughter the departure of the
+Cardinal, at which he himself was much relieved.  But on leaving the
+chamber he was astonished to find the cure glued against the door, and
+still more so to hear he had taken up his post there, and meant to
+remain, happen what might, because he did not wish to be deceived
+respecting the sacraments.  And, indeed, he remained there four days and
+four nights, except during short intervals for food and repose that he
+took at home, quite close to the Luxembourg, and during which his place
+was filled by two priests whom he left there.  At last, the danger being
+passed, he raised the siege.
+
+Madame la Duchesse de Berry, safely delivered of a daughter, had nothing
+to do but to re-establish herself; but she remained firm against the cure
+and the Cardinal de Noailles, neither of whom she ever pardoned.  She
+became more and more bewitched by the two lovers, who laughed at her, and
+who were attached to her only for their fortune and their interest.  She
+remained shut up without seeing M. and Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans,
+except for a few moments; no one, commencing with Madame de Saint-Simon,
+showed any eagerness to see her, for everybody knew what kept the door
+shut.
+
+Madame la Duchesse de Berry, infinitely pained by the manner in which
+everybody, even the people, looked upon her malady, thought to gain a
+little lost ground by throwing open the gardens of the Luxembourg to the
+public, after having long since closed them.  People were glad: they
+profited by the act; that was all.  She made a vow that she would give
+herself up to religion, and dress in white--that is, devote herself to
+the service of the Virgin--for six months.  This vow made people laugh a
+little.
+
+Her illness had begun on the 26th of March, 1719, and Easter-day fell on
+the 9th of April.  She was then quite well, but would not see a soul.  A
+new cause of annoyance had arisen to trouble her.  Rion, who saw himself
+so successful as the lover of Madame la Duchesse de Berry, wished to
+improve his position by becoming her husband.  He was encouraged in this
+desire by his uncle, M. de Lauzun, who had also advised him to treat her
+with the rigour, harshness--nay, brutality, which I have already
+described.  The maxim of M. de Lauzun was, that the Bourbons must be ill-
+used and treated with a high hand in order to maintain empire over them.
+Madame de Mouchy was as strongly in favour of this marriage as Rion.  She
+knew she was sure of her lover, and that when he became the husband of
+Madame la Duchesse de Berry, all the doors which shut intimacy would be
+thrown down.  A secret marriage accordingly took place.
+
+This marriage gave rise to violent quarrels, and much weeping.  In order
+to deliver herself from these annoyances, and at the same time steer
+clear of Easter, the Duchess resolved to go away to Meudon on Easter
+Monday.  It was in vain that the danger was represented to her, of the
+air, of the movement of the coach, and of the change of place at the end
+of a fortnight.  Nothing could make her endure Paris any longer.  She set
+out, therefore, followed by Rion and the majority of her ladies and her
+household.
+
+M. le Duc d'Orleans informed me then of the fixed design of Madame la
+Duchesse de Berry to declare the secret marriage she had just made with
+Rion.  Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans was at Montmartre for a few days, and
+we were walking in the little garden of her apartments.  The marriage did
+not surprise me much, knowing the strength of her passion, her fear of
+the devil, and the scandal which had just happened.  But I was
+astonished, to the last degree, at this furious desire to declare the
+marriage, in a person so superbly proud.
+
+M. le Duc d'Orleans dilated upon his troubles, his anger, that of Madame
+(who wished to proceed to the most violent extremities), and the great
+resolve of Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans.  Fortunately the majority of the
+officers destined to serve against Spain, (war with that country had just
+been declared) were leaving every day, and Rion had remained solely on
+account of the illness of Madame la Duchesse de Berry, M. le Duc
+d'Orleans thought the shortest plan would be to encourage hope by delay,
+in forcing Rion to depart, flattering himself that the declaration would
+be put off much more easily in his absence than in his presence.  I
+strongly approved this idea, and on the morrow, Rion received at Meudon a
+curt and positive order to depart at once and join his regiment in the
+army of the Duc de Berwick.  Madame la Duchesse de Berry was all the more
+outraged, because she knew the cause of this order, and consequently felt
+her inability to hinder its execution.  Rion on his side did not dare to
+disobey it.  He set out, therefore; and M. le Duc d'Orleans, who had not
+yet been to Meudon, remained several days without going there.
+
+Father and daughter feared each other, and this departure had not put
+them on better terms.  She had told him, and repeated it, that she was a
+rich widow, mistress of her own actions, independent of him; had flown
+into a fury, and terribly abused M. le Duc d'Orleans when he tried to
+remonstrate with her.  He had received much rough handling from her at
+the Luxembourg when she was better; it was the same at Meudon during the
+few visits he paid her there.  She wished to declare her marriage; and
+all the art, intellect, gentleness, anger, menace, prayers, and interest
+of M. le Duc d'Orleans barely sufficed to make her consent to a brief
+delay.
+
+If Madame had been listened to, the affair would have been finished
+before the journey to Meudon; for M. le Duc d'Orleans would have thrown
+Rion out of the windows of the Luxembourg!
+
+The premature journey to Meudon, and quarrels so warm, were not
+calculated to re-establish a person just returned from the gates of
+death.  The extreme desire she had to hide her state from the public, and
+to conceal the terms on which she was with her father ( for the rarity of
+his visits to her began to be remarked), induced her to give a supper to
+him on the terrace of Meudon about eight o'clock one evening.  In vain
+the danger was represented to her of the cool evening air so soon after
+an illness such as she had just suffered from, and which had left her
+health still tottering.  It was specially on this account that she stuck
+more obstinately to her supper on the terrace, thinking that it would
+take away all suspicion she had been confined, and induce the belief that
+she was on the same terms as ever with M. le Duc d'Orleans, though the
+uncommon rarity of his visits to her had been remarked.
+
+This supper in the open air did not succeed.  The same night she was
+taken ill.  She was attacked by accidents, caused by the state in which
+she still was, and by an irregular fever, that the opposition she met
+with respecting the declaration of her marriage did not contribute to
+diminish.  She grew disgusted with Meudon, like people ill in body and
+mind, who in their grief attribute everything to the air and the place.
+She was annoyed at the few visits she received from M. le Duc and Madame
+la Duchesse d'Orleans,-her pride, however, suffering more than her
+tenderness.
+
+In despite of all reason, nothing could hinder her from changing her
+abode.  She was transferred from Meudon to the Muette, wrapped up in
+sheets, and in a large coach, on Sunday, the 14th of May, 1719.  Arrived
+so near Paris, she hoped M. le Duc and Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans would
+come and see her more frequently, if only for form's sake.
+
+This journey was painful by the sufferings it caused her, added to those
+she already had, which no remedies could appease, except for short
+intervals, and which became very violent.  Her illness augmented; but
+hopes and fears sustained her until the commencement of July.  During all
+this time her desire to declare her marriage weakened, and M. le Duc and
+Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans, as well as Madame, who passed the summer at
+Saint-Cloud, came more frequently to see her.  The month of July became
+more menacing because of the augmentation of pain and fever.  These ills
+increased so much, in fact, that, by the 14th of July, fears for her life
+began to be felt.
+
+The night of the 14th was so stormy, that M. le Duc d'Orleans was sent to
+at the Palais Royal, and awakened.  At the same time Madame de Pons wrote
+to Madame de Saint-Simon, pressing her to come and establish herself at
+La Muette.  Madame de Saint-Simon, although she made a point of scarcely
+ever sleeping under the same roof as Madame la Duchesse de Berry (for
+reasons which need no further explanation than those already given),
+complied at once with this request, and took up her quarters from this
+time at La Muette.
+
+Upon arriving, she found the danger great.  Madame la Duchesse de Berry
+had been bled in the arm and in the foot on the 10th, and her confessor
+had been sent for.  But the malady still went on increasing.  As the pain
+which had so long afflicted her could not induce her to follow a regimen
+necessary for her condition, or to think of a future state, relations and
+doctors were at last obliged to speak a language to her, not used towards
+princesses, except at the most urgent extremity.  This, at last, had its
+effect.  She submitted to the medical treatment prescribed for her, and
+received the sacrament with open doors, speaking to those present upon
+her life and upon her state, but like a queen in both instances.  After
+this sight was over, alone with her familiars, she applauded herself for
+the firmness she had displayed, asked them if she had not spoken well,
+and if she was not dying with greatness and courage.
+
+A day or two after, she wished to receive Our Lord once more.  She
+received, accordingly, and as it appeared, with much piety, quite
+differently from the first time.
+
+At the extremity to which she had arrived, the doctors knew not what to
+do; everybody was tried.  An elixir was spoken of, discovered by a
+certain Garus, which made much stir just then, and the secret of which
+the King has since bought.  Garus was sent for and soon arrived.  He
+found Madame la Duchesse de Berry so ill that he would answer for
+nothing.  His remedy was given, and succeeded beyond all hopes.  Nothing
+remained but to continue it.  Above all things, Garus had begged that
+nothing should, on any account, be given to Madame la Duchesse de Berry
+except by him, and this had been most expressly commanded by M. le Duc
+and Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans.  Madame la Duchesse de Berry continued
+to be more and more relieved and so restored, that Chirac, her regular
+doctor, began to fear for his reputation, and taking the opportunity when
+Garus was asleep upon a sofa, presented, with impetuosity, a purgative to
+Madame la Duchesse de Berry, and made her swallow it without saying a
+word to anybody, the two nurses standing by, the only persons present,
+not daring to oppose him.
+
+The audacity of this was as complete as its villainy, for M. le Duc and
+Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans were close at hand in the salon.  From this
+moment to that in which the patient fell into a state worse than that
+from which the elixir had drawn her, there was scarcely an interval.
+Garus was awaked and called.  Seeing this disorder, he cried that a
+purgative had been given, and whatever it might be, it was poison in the
+state to which the princess was now reduced.  He wished to depart, he was
+detained, he was taken to Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans.  Then followed a
+great uproar, cries from Garus, impudence and unequalled hardihood of
+Chirac, in defending what he had done.
+
+He could not deny it, for the two nurses had been questioned, and had
+told all.  Madame la Duchesse de Berry drew near her end during this
+debate, and neither Chirac nor Garus could prevent it.  She lasted,
+however, the rest of the day, and did not die until about midnight.
+Chirac, seeing the death-agony advance, traversed the chamber, made an
+insulting reverence at the foot of the bed, which was open, and wished
+her "a pleasant journey" (in equivalent terms), and thereupon went off to
+Paris.  The marvel is that nothing came of this, and that he remained the
+doctor of M. le Duc d'Orleans as before!
+
+While the end was yet approaching, Madame de Saint-Simon, seeing that
+there was no one to bear M. le Duc d'Orleans company, sent for me to
+stand by him in these sad moments.  It appeared to me that my arrival
+pleased him, and that I was not altogether useless to him in relieving
+his grief.  The rest of the day was passed in entering for a moment at a
+time into the sick-chamber.  In the evening I was nearly always alone
+with him.
+
+He wished that I should charge myself with all the funeral arrangements,
+and in case Madame la Duchesse de Berry, when opened, should be found to
+be enceinte, to see that the secret was kept.  I proposed that the
+funeral should be of the simplest, without show or ceremonial.  I
+explained my reasons, he thanked me, and left all the orders in my hands.
+Getting rid of these gloomy matters as quickly as possible, I walked with
+him from time to time in the reception rooms, and in the garden, keeping
+him from the chamber of the dying as much as possible.
+
+The night was well advanced, and Madame la Duchesse de Berry grew worse
+and worse, and without consciousness since Chirac had poisoned her.  M.
+le Duc d'Orleans returned into the chamber, approached the head of the
+bed--all the curtains being pulled back; I allowed him to remain there
+but a few moments, and hurried him into the cabinet, which was deserted
+just then.  The windows were open, he leaned upon the iron balustrade,
+and his tears increased so much that I feared lest they should suffocate
+him.  When this attack had a little subsided, he began to talk of the
+misfortunes of this world, and of the short duration of its most
+agreeable pleasures.  I urged the occasion to say to him everything God
+gave me the power to say, with all the gentleness, emotion, and
+tenderness, I could command.  Not only he received well what I said to
+him, but he replied to it and prolonged the conversation.
+
+After we had been there more than an hour, Madame de Saint-Simon gently
+warned me that it was time to try and lead M. le Duc d'Orleans away,
+especially as there was no exit from the cabinet, except through the
+sick-chamber.  His coach, that Madame de Saint-Simon had sent for, was
+ready.  It was without difficulty that I succeeded in gently moving away
+M. le Duc d'Orleans, plunged as he was in the most bitter grief.  I made
+him traverse the chamber at once, and supplicated him to return to Paris.
+At last he consented.  He wished me to remain and give orders, and
+begged, with much positiveness, Madame de Saint-Simon to be present when
+seals were put upon the effects, after which I led him to his coach, and
+he went away.  I immediately repeated to Madame de Saint-Simon the orders
+he had given me respecting the opening of the body, in order that she
+might have them executed, and I hindered her from remaining in the
+chamber, where there was nothing now but horror to be seen.
+
+At last, about midnight, on the 21st of July, 1819, Madame la Duchesse de
+Berry died, ten days after Chirac had consummated his crime.  M. le Duc
+d'Orleans was the only person touched.  Some people grieved; but not one
+of them who had enough to live upon appeared ever to regret her loss.
+Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans felt her deliverance, but paid every
+attention to decorum.  Madame constrained herself but little.  However
+affected M. le Duc d'Orleans might be, consolation soon came.  The yoke
+to which he had submitted himself, and which he afterwards found heavy,
+was severed.  Above all, he was free from all annoyance on the score of
+Rion's marriage, and its results, annoyance that would have been all the
+greater, inasmuch as at the opening of the poor princess she was found to
+be again enceinte; it was also found that her brain was deranged.  These
+circumstances were for the time carefully hidden.  It may be imagined
+what a state Rion fell into in learning at the army the death of Madame
+la Duchesse de Berry.  All his romantic notions of ambition being
+overturned, he was more than once on the point of killing himself, and
+for a long time was always kept in sight by his friends.  He sold out at
+the end of the campaign.  As he had been gentle and polite to his
+friends, they did not desert him.  But he ever afterwards remained in
+obscurity.
+
+On account of this death the theatres were closed for eight days.
+
+On Saturday, the 22nd of July, the heart of Madame la Duchesse de Berry
+was taken to the Val-de-Grace.
+
+On Sunday, the 23rd of July, her body was carried in an eight-horse coach
+to Saint-Denis.  There was very little display; only about forty torches
+were carried by pages and guards.
+
+The funeral service was performed at Saint-Denis in the early part of
+September.  There was no funeral oration.
+
+Madame de Saint-Simon had been forced, as I have shown, to accept the
+post of lady of honour to Madame la Duchesse de Berry, and had never been
+able to quit it.  She had been treated with all sorts of consideration,
+had been allowed every liberty, but this did not console her for the post
+she occupied; so that she felt all the pleasure, not to say the
+satisfaction, of a deliverance she did not expect, from a princess
+twenty-four years of age.  But the extreme fatigue of the last days of
+the illness, and of those which followed death, caused her a malignant
+fever, which left her at death's portal during six weeks in a house at
+Passy.  She was two months recovering herself.
+
+This accident, which almost turned my head, sequestered me from anything
+for two months, during which I never left the house, scarcely left the
+sick-chamber, attended to nothing, and saw only a few relatives or
+indispensable friends.
+
+When my wife began to be re-established, I asked M. le Duc d'Orleans for
+a lodging at the new chateau at Meudon.  He lent me the whole chateau;
+completely furnished.  We passed there the rest of this summer, and
+several other summers afterwards.  It is a charming place for rides or
+drives.  We counted upon seeing only our friends there, but the proximity
+to Paris overwhelmed us with people, so that all the new chateau was
+sometimes completely filled, without reckoning the people of passage.
+
+I have little need to say anything more of Madame la Duchesse de Berry.
+These pages have already painted her.  She was a strange mixture of pride
+and shamelessness.  Drunkenness, filthy conversation, debauchery of the
+vilest kind, and impiety, were her diversions, varied, as has been seen,
+by occasional religious fits.  Her indecency in everything, language,
+acts, behaviour, passed all bounds; and yet her pride was so sublime that
+she could not endure that people should dare to speak of her amid her
+depravity, so universal and so public; she had the hardihood to declare
+that nobody had the right to speak of persons of her rank, or blame their
+most notorious actions!
+
+Yet she had by nature a superior intellect, and, when she wished, could
+be agreeable and amiable.  Her face was commanding, though somewhat
+spoiled at last by fat.  She had much eloquence, speaking with an ease
+and precision that charmed and overpowered.  What might she not have
+become, with the talents she possessed!  But her pride, her violent
+temper, her irreligion, and her falsehood, spoiled all, and made her what
+we have seen her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCIX
+
+Law had established his Mississippi Company, and now began to do marvels
+with it.  A sort of language had been invented, to talk of this scheme,
+language which, however, I shall no more undertake to explain than the
+other finance operations.  Everybody was mad upon Mississippi Stock.
+Immense fortunes were made, almost in a breath; Law, besieged in his
+house by eager applicants, saw people force open his door, enter by the
+windows from the garden, drop into his cabinet down the chimney!  People
+talked only of millions.
+
+Law, who, as I have said, came to my house every Tuesday, between eleven
+and twelve, often pressed me to receive some shares for nothing, offering
+to manage them without any trouble to me, so that I must gain to the
+amount of several millions!  So many people had already gained enormously
+by their own exertions that it was not doubtful Law could gain for me
+even more rapidly.  But I never would lend myself to it.  Law addressed
+himself to Madame de Saint-Simon, whom he found as inflexible.  He would
+have much preferred to enrich me than many others; so as to attach me to
+him by interest, intimate as he saw me with the Regent.  He spoke to M.
+le Duc d'Orleans, even, so as to vanquish me by his authority.  The
+Regent attacked me more than once, but I always eluded him.
+
+At last, one day when we were together by appointment, at Saint-Cloud,
+seated upon the balustrade of the orangery, which covers the descent into
+the wood of the goulottes, the Regent spoke again to me of the
+Mississippi, and pressed me to receive some shares from Law.
+
+The more I resisted, the more he pressed me, and argued; at last he grew
+angry, and said that I was too conceited, thus to refuse what the King
+wished to give me (for everything was done in the King's name), while so
+many of my equals in rank and dignity were running after these shares.
+I replied that such conduct would be that of a fool, the conduct of
+impertinence, rather than of conceit; that it was not mine, and that
+since he pressed me so much I would tell him my reasons.  They were,
+that since the fable of Midas, I had nowhere read, still less seen,
+that anybody had the faculty of converting into gold all he touched;
+that I did not believe this virtue was given to Law, but thought that all
+his knowledge was a learned trick, a new and skilful juggle, which put
+the wealth of Peter into the pockets of Paul, and which enriched one at
+the expense of the other; that sooner or later the game would be played
+out, that an infinity of people would be ruined; finally, that I abhorred
+to gain at the expense of others, and would in no way mix myself up with
+the Mississippi scheme.
+
+M. le Duc d'Orleans knew only too well how to reply to me, always
+returning to his idea that I was refusing the bounties of the King.
+I said that I was so removed from such madness, that I would make a
+proposition to him, of which assuredly I should never have spoken, but
+for his accusation.
+
+I related to him the expense to which my father had been put in defending
+Blaye against the party of M. le Prince in years gone by.  How he had
+paid the garrison, furnished provisions, cast cannon, stocked the place,
+during a blockade of eighteen months, and kept up, at his own expense,
+within the town, five hundred gentlemen, whom he had collected together.
+How he had been almost ruined by the undertaking, and had never received
+a sou, except in warrants to the amount of five hundred thousand livres,
+of which not one had ever been paid, and that he had been compelled to
+pay yearly the interest of the debts he had contracted, debts that still
+hung like a mill-stone upon me.  My proposition was that M. le Duc
+d'Orleans should indemnify me for this loss, I giving up the warrants, to
+be burnt before him.
+
+This he at once agreed to.  He spoke of it the very next day to Law: my
+warrants were burnt by degrees in the cabinet of M. le Duc d'Orleans, and
+it was by this means I paid for what I had done at La Ferme.
+
+Meanwhile the Mississippi scheme went on more swimmingly than ever.  It
+was established in the Rue Quincampoix, from which horses and coaches
+were banished.  About the end of October of this year, 1817, its business
+so much increased, that the office was thronged all day long, and it was
+found necessary to place clocks and guards with drums at each end of the
+street, to inform people, at seven o'clock in the morning, of the opening
+of business, and of its close at night: fresh announcements were issued,
+too, prohibiting people from going there on Sundays and fete days.
+
+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.
+
+Yet it was not all sunshine with this famous foreigner, for the sky above
+him was heavy with threatening clouds.  In the midst of the flourishing
+success of his Mississippi, it was discovered that there was a plot to
+kill him.  Thereupon sixteen soldiers of the regiment of the Guards were
+given to him as a protection to his house, and eight to his brother, who
+had come to Paris some little time before.
+
+Law had other enemies besides those who were hidden.  He could not get on
+well with Argenson, who, as comptroller of the finances, was continually
+thrown into connection with him.  The disorder of the finances increased
+in consequence every day, as well as the quarrels between Law and
+Argenson, who each laid the blame upon the other.  The Scotchman was the
+best supported, for his manners were pleasing, and his willingness to
+oblige infinite.  He had, as it were, a finance tap in his hand, and he
+turned it on for every one who helped him.  M. le Duc, Madame la
+Duchesse, Tesse, Madame de Verue, had drawn many millions through this
+tap, and drew still.  The Abbe Dubois turned it on as he pleased.  These
+were grand supports, besides that of M. le Duc d'Orleans, who could not
+part with his favourite.
+
+Argenson, on the contrary, was not much liked.  He had been at the head
+of the police so long that he could not shake off the habits he had
+acquired in that position: He had been accustomed to give audiences upon
+all sorts of police matters at dead of night, or at the small hours of
+the morning, and he appeared to see no reason why he should not do the
+same now that he was Keeper of the Seals.  He irritated people beyond all
+bearing, by making appointments with them at these unreasonable hours,
+and threw into despair all who worked under him, or who had business with
+him.  The difficulty of the finances, and his struggles with Law, had
+thrown him into ill-humour, which extended through all his refusals.
+Things, in fact, had come to such a pass, that it was evident one or the
+other must give up an administration which their rivalry threw into
+confusion.
+
+Argenson saw the storm coming, and feeling the insecurity of his
+position, wished to save himself.  He had too much sense and too much
+knowledge of the world not to feel that if he obstinately clung to the
+finances he should not only lose them but the seals also.  He yielded
+therefore to Law, who was at last declared comptroller-general of the
+finances, and who, elevated to this (for him) surprising point, continued
+to visit me as usual every Tuesday morning, always trying to persuade me
+into belief of his past miracles, and of those to come.
+
+Argenson remained Keeper of the Seals, and skilfully turned to account
+the sacrifice he had made by obtaining through it the permission to
+surrender his appointment of Chancellor of the Order of Saint-Louis to
+his eldest son, and the title, effectively, to his younger son.  His
+place of Conseiller d'Etat, that he had retained,--he also gave to his
+eldest son, and made the other lieutenant of police.  The murmur was
+great upon seeing a foreigner comptroller-general, and all abandoned to a
+finance system which already had begun to be mistrusted.  But Frenchmen
+grow accustomed to everything, and the majority were consoled by being no
+longer exposed to the sharp humour of Argenson, or his strange hours of
+business.
+
+But Law's annoyances were not over when this change had been made.  M. le
+Prince de Conti began to be troublesome.  He was more grasping than any
+of his relatives, and that is not saying a little.  He accosted Law now,
+pistol in hand, so to speak, and with a perfect "money or your life"
+manner.  He had already amassed mountains of gold by the easy humour of
+M. le Duc d'Orleans; he had drawn, too, a good deal from Law, in private.
+Not content with this, he wished to draw more.  M. le Duc d'Orleans grew
+tired, and was not over-pleased with him.  The Parliament just then was
+at its tricks again; its plots began to peep out, and the Prince de Conti
+joined in its intrigues in order to try and play a part indecent,
+considering his birth; little fitting his age; shameful, after the
+monstrous favours unceasingly heaped upon him.
+
+Repelled by the Regent, he turned, as I have said, towards Law, hoping
+for more success.  His expectations were deceived; prayers, cringing
+meanness (for he stopped at nothing to get money) being of no effect, he
+tried main strength, and spared Law neither abuse nor menaces.  In fact,
+not knowing what else to do to injure his bank, he sent three waggons
+there, and drove them away full of money, which he made Law give him for
+paper he held.  Law did not dare to refuse, and thus show the poverty of
+his metallic funds, but fearing to accustom so insatiable a prince to
+such tyranny as this, he went, directly the waggons left, to M. le Duc
+d'Orleans, and complained of what had occurred.  The Regent was much
+annoyed; he saw the dangerous results, and the pernicious example of so
+violent a proceeding, directed against an unsupported foreigner, whom
+rather lightly he had just made comptroller-general.  He flew into a
+violent rage, sent for the Prince de Conti, and, contrary to his nature,
+reprimanded him so severely, that he was silenced and cried for mercy.
+But annoyed at having failed, and still more at the sharp scolding he had
+received, the Prince de Conti consoled himself, like a woman, by
+spreading all sorts of reports against Law, which caused him but little
+fear, and did him still less harm, but which did slight honour to M. le
+Prince de Conti, because the cause of these reports, and also the large
+sums he had drawn from the financier, were not unknown to the public;
+blame upon him was general, and all the more heavy, because Law had
+fallen out of public favour, which a mere trifle had changed into spite
+and indignation.
+
+This is the trifle.  The Marechal de Villeroy, incapable of inspiring the
+King with any solid ideas, adoring even to worship the deceased King,
+full of wind, and lightness, and frivolity, and of sweet recollections of
+his early years, his grace at fetes and ballets, his splendid
+gallantries, wished that the King, in imitation of the deceased monarch,
+should dance in a ballet.  It was a little too early to think of this.
+This pleasure seemed a trifle too much of pain to so young a King; his
+timidity should have been vanquished by degrees, in order to accustom him
+to society which he feared, before engaging him to show himself off in
+public, and dance upon a stage.
+
+The deceased King,--educated in a brilliant Court, where rule and
+grandeur were kept up with much distinction, and where continual
+intercourse with ladies, the Queen-mother, and others of the Court, had
+early fashioned and emboldened him, had relished and excelled in these
+sorts of fetes and amusements, amid a crowd of young people of both
+sexes, who all rightfully bore the names of nobility, and amongst whom
+scarcely any of humble birth were mixed, for we cannot call thus some
+three or four of coarser stuff, who were admitted simply for the purpose
+of adding strength and beauty to the ballet, by the grace of their faces
+and the elegance of their movements, with a few dancing-masters to
+regulate and give the tone to the whole.  Between this time and that I am
+now speaking of was an abyss.  The education of those days instructed
+every one in grace, address, exercise, respect for bearing, graduated and
+delicate politeness, polished and decent gallantry.  The difference,
+then, between the two periods is seen at a glance, without time lost in
+pointing it out.
+
+Reflection was not the principal virtue of the Marechal de Villeroy.  He
+thought of no obstacle either on the part of the King or elsewhere, and
+declared that his Majesty would dance in a ballet.  Everything was soon
+ready for the execution.  It was not so with the action.  It became
+necessary to search for young people who could dance: soon, whether they
+danced ill or well, they were gladly received; at last the only question
+was, "Whom can we get?" consequently a sorry lot was obtained.  Several,
+who ought never to have been admitted, were, and so easily, that from one
+to the other Law had the temerity to ask M. le Duc d'Orleans to allow his
+son, who danced very well, to join the ballet company!  The Regent,
+always easy, still enamoured of Law, and, to speak truth, purposely
+contributing as much as possible to confusion of rank, immediately
+accorded the demand, and undertook to say so to the Marechal de Villeroy.
+
+The Marechal, who hated and crossed Law with might and main, reddened
+with anger, and represented to the Regent what, in fact, deserved to be
+said: the Regent, in reply, named several young people, who, although of
+superior rank, were not so well fitted for the ballet as young Law; and
+although the answer to this was close at hand, the Marechal could not
+find it, and exhausted himself in vain exclamations.  He could not,
+therefore, resist the Regent; and having no support from M. le Duc,
+superintendent of the King's education and a great protector of Law and
+of confusion, he gave in, and the financier's son was named for the
+ballet.
+
+It is impossible to express the public revolt excited by this bagatelle,
+at which every one was offended.  Nothing else was spoken of for some
+days; tongues wagged freely, too; and a good deal of dirty water was
+thrown upon other dancers in the ballet.
+
+At last the public was satisfied.  The small-pox seized Law's son, and
+(on account of its keeping him from the ballet) caused universal joy.
+The ballet was danced several times, its success answering in no way to
+the Marechal de Villeroy.  The King was so wearied, so fatigued, with
+learning, with rehearsing, and with dancing this ballet, that he took an
+aversion for these fetes and for everything offering display, which has
+never quitted him since, and which does not fail to leave a void in the
+Court; so that this ballet ceased sooner than was intended, and the
+Marechal de Villeroy never dared to propose another.
+
+M. le Duc d'Orleans, either by his usual facility, or to smooth down the
+new elevation of Law to the post of comptroller-general, bestowed a
+number of pecuniary favours; he gave 600,000 livres to La Fare, captain
+of his guard; 200,000 livres to Castries, chevalier d'honneur to Madame
+la Duchesse d'Orleans; 200,000 livres to the old Prince de Courtenay, who
+much needed them; 20,000 livres pension to the Prince de Talmont; 6000
+livres to the Marquise de Bellefonds, who already had a similar sum; and
+moved by cries on the part of M. le Prince de Conti, 60,000 livres to the
+Comte de la Marche his son, scarcely three years old; he gave, also,
+smaller amounts to various others.  Seeing so much depredation, and no
+recovery to hope for, I asked M. le Duc d'Orleans to attach 12,000
+livres, by way of increase, to my government of Senlis, which was worth
+only 1000 livres, and of which my second son had the reversion.  I
+obtained it at once.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER C
+
+About the commencement of the new year, 1720, the system of Law
+approached its end.  If he had been content with his bank his bank within
+wise and proper limits--the money of the realm might have been doubled,
+and an extreme facility afforded to commerce and to private enterprise,
+because, the establishment always being prepared to meet its liabilities,
+the notes it issued would have been as good as ready money, and sometimes
+even preferable, on account of the facility of transport.  It must be
+admitted, however, as I declared to M. le Duc d'Orleans in his cabinet,
+and as I openly said in the Council of the Regency when the bank passed
+there, that good as this establishment might be in itself, it could only
+be so in a republic, or in a monarchy, like that of England, where the
+finances are absolutely governed by those who furnish them, and who
+simply furnish as much or as little as they please; but in a trivial,
+changing, and more than absolute state like France solidity necessarily
+is wanting, consequently confidence (at least of a discreet and proper
+kind): since a king, and under his name, a mistress, a minister,
+favourites; still more, extreme necessities, such as the deceased King
+experienced in the years 1707-8-9 and 10,--a hundred things, in fact,
+could overthrow the bank, the allurements of which were, at once, too
+great and too easy. But to add to the reality of this bank, the chimera
+of the Mississippi, with its shares, its special jargon, its science (a
+continual juggle for drawing money from one person to give it to
+another), was to almost guarantee that these shares should at last end in
+smoke (since we had neither mines, nor quarries of the philosopher's
+stone), and that the few would be enriched at the expense of the many, as
+in fact happened.
+
+What hastened the fall of the bank, and of the system, was the
+inconceivable prodigality of M. le Duc d'Orleans, who, without bounds,
+and worse still, if it can be, without choice, could not resist the
+importunities even of those whom he knew, beyond all doubt, to have been
+the most opposed to him, and who were completely despicable, but gave
+with open hands; and more frequently allowed money to be drawn from him
+by people who laughed at him, and who were grateful only to their
+effrontery.  People with difficulty believe what they have seen; and
+posterity will consider as a fable what we ourselves look upon as a
+dream.  At last, so much was given to a greedy and prodigal nation,
+always covetous and in want on account of its luxury, its disorder, and
+its confusion of ranks, that paper became scarce, and the mills could not
+furnish enough.
+
+It may be imagined by this, what abuse had been made of a bank,
+established as a resource always ready, but which could not exist as such
+without being always delicately adjusted; and above all, kept in a state
+to meet the obligations it had contracted.  I obtained information on
+this point from Law, when he came to me on Tuesday mornings; for a long
+time he played with me before admitting his embarrassments, and
+complained modestly and timidly, that the Regent was ruining everything
+by his extravagance.  I knew from outsiders more than he thought, and it
+was this that induced me to press him upon his balance-sheet.  In
+admitting to me, at last, although faintly, what he could no longer hide,
+he assured me he should not be wanting in resources provided M. le Duc
+d'Orleans left him free.  That did not persuade me.  Soon after, the
+notes began to lose favour; then to fall into discredit, and the
+discredit to become public.  Then came the necessity to sustain them by
+force, since they could no longer be sustained by industry; and the
+moment force showed itself every one felt that all was over.  Coercive
+authority was resorted to; the use of gold, silver, and jewels was
+suppressed (I speak of coined money); it was pretended that since the
+time of Abraham,--Abraham, who paid ready money for the sepulchre of
+Sarah,--all the civilised nations in the world had been in the greatest
+error and under the grossest delusion, respecting money and the metals it
+is made of; that paper alone was useful and necessary; that we could not
+do greater harm to our neighbours--jealous of our greatness and of our
+advantages--than to send to them all our money and all our jewels; and
+this idea was in no way concealed, for the Indian Company was allowed to
+visit every house, even Royal houses, confiscate all the louis d'or, and
+the coins it could find there; and to leave only pieces of twenty sous
+and under (to the amount of not more than 200 francs), for the odd money
+of bills, and in order to purchase necessary provisions of a minor kind,
+with prohibitions, strengthened by heavy punishment, against keeping
+more; so that everybody was obliged to take all the ready money he
+possessed to the bank, for fear of its being discovered by a valet.  But
+nobody, as may be imagined, was persuaded of the justice of the power
+accorded to the Company, and accordingly authority was more and more
+exerted; all private houses were searched, informations were laid against
+people in order that no money might be kept back, or if it were, that the
+guilty parties might be severely punished.
+
+Never before had sovereign power been so violently exercised, never had
+it attacked in such a manner the temporal interests of the community.
+Therefore was it by a prodigy, rather than by any effort or act of the
+government, that these terribly new ordonnances failed to produce the
+saddest and most complete revolutions; but there was not even talk of
+them; and although there were so many millions of people, either
+absolutely ruined or dying of hunger, and of the direst want, without
+means to procure their daily subsistence, nothing more than complaints
+and groans was heard.
+
+This violence was, however, too excessive, and in every respect too
+indefensible to last long; new paper and new juggling tricks were of
+necessity resorted to; the latter were known to be such--people felt them
+to be such--but they submitted to them rather than not have twenty crowns
+in safety in their houses; and a greater violence made people suffer the
+smaller.  Hence so many projects, so many different faces in finance, and
+all tending to establish one issue of paper upon another; that is to say,
+always causing loss to the holders of the different paper (everybody
+being obliged to hold it), and the universal multitude.  This is what
+occupied all the rest of the government, and of the life of M. le Duc
+d'Orleans; which drove Law out of the realm; which increased six-fold the
+price of all merchandise, all food even the commonest; which ruinously
+augmented every kind of wages, and ruined public and private commerce;
+which gave, at the expense of the public, sudden riches to a few noblemen
+who dissipated it, and were all the poorer in a short time; which enabled
+many financiers' clerks, and the lowest dregs of the people, profiting by
+the general confusion, to take advantage of the Mississippi, and make
+enormous fortunes; which occupied the government several years after the
+death of M. le Duc d'Orleans; and which, to conclude, France never will
+recover from, although it may be true that the value of land is
+considerably augmented.  As a last affliction, the all-powerful,
+especially the princes and princesses of the blood, who had been mixed
+up, in the Mississippi, and who had used all their authority to escape
+from it without loss, re-established it upon what they called the Great
+Western Company, which with the same juggles and exclusive trade with the
+Indies, is completing the annihilation of the trade of the realm,
+sacrificed to the enormous interest of a small number of private
+individuals, whose hatred and vengeance the government has not dared to
+draw upon itself by attacking their delicate privileges.
+
+Several violent executions, and confiscations of considerable sums found
+in the houses searched, took place.  A certain Adine, employed at the
+bank, had 10,000 crowns confiscated, was fined 10,000 francs, and lost
+his appointment.  Many people hid their money with so much secrecy, that,
+dying without being able to say where they had put it, these little
+treasures remained buried and lost to the heirs.
+
+In the midst of the embarrassments of the finances, and in spite of them,
+M. le Duc d'Orleans continued his prodigal gifts.  He attached pensions
+of 6000 livres and 4000 livres to the grades of lieutenant-general and
+camp-marshal.  He gave a pension of 20,000 livres to old Montauban; one
+of 6000 livres to M. de Montauban (younger brother of the Prince de
+Guemene); and one of 6000 livres to the Duchesse de Brissac.  To several
+other people he gave pensions of 4000 livres; to eight or ten others,
+3000 or 2000 livres.  I obtained one of 8000 livres for Madame Marechal
+de Lorges; and one of 6000 livres was given to the Marechal de Chamilly,
+whose affairs were much deranged by the Mississippi.  M. de Soubise and
+the Marquis Noailles had each upwards of 200,000 livres.  Even Saint-
+Genies, just out of the Bastille, and banished to Beauvais, had a pension
+of 1000.  Everybody in truth wanted an augmentation of income, on account
+of the extreme high price to which the commonest, almost necessary things
+had risen, and even all other things; which, although at last diminshed
+by degrees, remain to this day much dearer than they were before the
+Mississippi.
+
+The pensions being given away, M. le Duc d'Orleans began to think how he
+could reduce the public expenditure.  Persuaded by those in whose
+financial knowledge he had most confidence, he resolved to reduce to two
+per cent. the interest upon all the funds.  This much relieved those who
+paid, but terribly cut down the income of those who received, that is to
+say, the creditors of the state, who had lent their money at five per
+cent., according to the loan--and, public faith and usage, and who had
+hitherto peacefully enjoyed that interest.  M. le Duc d'Orleans assembled
+at the Palais Royal several financiers of different rank, and resolved
+with them to pass this edict.  It made much stir among the Parliament
+men, who refused to register it.  But M. le Duc d'Orleans would not
+change his determination, and maintained his decree in spite of them.
+
+By dint of turning and turning around the Mississippi, not to say of
+juggling with it, the desire came to establish, according to the example
+of the English, colonies in the vast countries beyond the seas.  In order
+to people these colonies, persons without means of livelihood, sturdy
+beggars, female and male, and a quantity of public creatures were carried
+off.  If this had been executed with discretion and discernment, with the
+necessary measures and precautions, it would have ensured the object
+proposed, and relieved Paris and the provinces of a heavy, useless, and
+often dangerous burthen; but in Paris and elsewhere so much violence, and
+even more roguery, were mixed up with it, that great murmuring was
+excited.  Not the slightest care had been taken to provide for the
+subsistence of so many unfortunate people, either while in the place they
+were to embark from, or while on the road to reach it; by night they were
+shut up, with nothing to eat, in barns, or in the dry ditches of the
+towns they stopped in, all means of egress being forbidden them.  They
+uttered cries which excited pity and indignation; but the alms collected
+for them not being sufficient, still less the little their conductors
+gave them, they everywhere died in frightful numbers.
+
+
+[Illustration: Mississippi Colonization--Painted by C. E. Delort--1176]
+
+
+This inhumanity, joined to the barbarity of the conductors, to violence
+of a kind unknown until this, and to the rascality of carrying off people
+who were not of the prescribed quality, but whom others thus got rid of
+by whispering a word in the ear of the conductors and greasing their
+palms; all these things, I say, caused so much stir, so much excitement,
+that the system, it was found, could not be kept up.  Some troops had
+been embarked, and during the voyage were not treated much better than
+the others.  The persons already collected were set at liberty, allowed
+to do what they pleased, and no more were seized.  Law, regarded as the
+author of these seizures, became much detested, and M. le Duc d'Orleans
+repented having ever fallen in with the scheme.
+
+The 22nd of May of this year, 1720, became celebrated by the publication
+of a decree of the Council of State, concerning the shares of the Company
+of the Indies (the same as that known under the name of Mississippi) and
+the notes of Law's bank.  This decree diminished by degrees, and from
+month to month, the value of the shares and the notes, so that, by the
+end of the year, that value would have been reduced one-half.
+
+This, in the language of finance and of bankruptcy, was to turn tail with
+a vengeance: and its effect, while remedying nothing, was to make people
+believe that things were in a worse state than was actually the case.
+Argenson, who, as we have seen, had been turned out of the finances to
+make room for Law, was generally accused of suggesting this decree out of
+malice, already foreseeing all the evils that must arise from it.  The
+uproar was general and frightful.  There was not a rich person who did
+not believe himself lost without resource; not a poor one who did not see
+himself reduced to beggary.  The Parliament, so opposed to the new money
+system, did not let slip this fine opportunity.  It rendered itself the
+protector of the public by refusing to register the decree, and by
+promptly uttering the strongest remonstrance against it.  The public even
+believed that to the Parliament was due the sudden revocation of the
+edict, which, however, was simply caused by the universal complaining,
+and the tardy discovery of the fault committed in passing it.  The little
+confidence in Law remaining was now radically extinguished; not an atom
+of it could ever be set afloat again.  Seditious writings and analytical
+and reasonable pamphlets rained on all sides, and the consternation was
+general.
+
+The Parliament assembled on Monday, the 27th of May, in the morning, and
+named certain of its members to go to M. le Duc d'Orleans, with
+remonstrances against the decree.  About noon of the same day, M. le Duc
+d'Orleans sent La Vrilliere to say to the Parliament that he revoked that
+decree, and that the notes would remain as before.  La Vrilliere, finding
+that the Parliament had adjourned, went to the Chief-President, to say
+with what he was charged.  After dinner the Parliamentary deputies came
+to the Palais Royal, where they were well received; M. le Duc d'Orleans
+confirmed what they had already heard from La Vrilliere, and said to them
+that he would re-establish the funds of the Hotel de Ville at two-and-a-
+half percent.  The deputies expected that in justice and in goodness he
+ought to raise them to at least three per cent.  M. le Duc d'Orleans
+answered, that he should like not only to raise them to three, but to
+four, nay, five per cent.; but that the state of affairs would not permit
+him to go beyond two-and-a-half.  On the next day was published the
+counter-decree, which placed the shares and actions as they were before
+the 22nd of May.  The decree of that date was therefore revoked in six
+days, after having caused such a strange effect.
+
+On Wednesday, the 29th, a pretty little comedy was played.  Le Blanc,
+Secretary of State, went to Law, told him that M. le Duc d'Orleans
+discharged him from his office as comptroller-general of the finances,
+thanked him for the attention he had given to it, and announced that as
+many people in Paris did not like him, a meritorious officer should keep
+guard in his house to prevent any accident that might happen to him.  At
+the same time, Benzualde, major of the regiment of Swiss guards, arrived
+with sixteen of his men to remain night and day in Law's house.
+
+The Scotchman did not in the least expect this dismissal or this guard,
+but he appeared very tranquil respecting both, and maintained his usual
+coolness.  The next day he was taken by the Duc de la Force to the Palais
+Royal.  Then comedy number two was played.  M. le Duc d'Orleans refused
+to see the financier, who went away without an interview.  On the day
+after, however, Law was admitted by the back stairs, closeted with the
+Regent, and was treated by him as well as ever.  The comedies were over.
+
+On Sunday, the 2nd of June, Benzualde and his Swiss withdrew from Law's
+house.  Stock-jobbing was banished at the same time from the Rue
+Quincampoix, and established in the Place Vendome.  In this latter place
+there was more room for it.  The passers-by were not incommoded.  Yet
+some people did not find it as convenient as the other.  At this time the
+King gave up to the bank one hundred million of shares he had in it.
+
+On the 5th July, a decree of the Council was issued, prohibiting people
+from possessing jewels, from keeping them locked up, or from selling them
+to foreigners.  It may be imagined what a commotion ensued.  This decree
+was grafted upon a number of others, the object of all, too visibly,
+being to seize upon all coin, in favour of the discredited paper, in
+which nobody could any longer have the slightest confidence.  In vain M.
+le Duc d'Orleans, M. le Duc, and his mother, tried to persuade others, by
+getting rid of their immense stores of jewels, that is to say, by sending
+them abroad on a journey--nothing more: not a person was duped by this
+example; not a person omitted to conceal his jewels very carefully: a
+thing much more easy to accomplish than the concealment of gold or silver
+coin, on account of the smaller value of precious stones.  This jewellery
+eclipse was not of long duration.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER CI
+
+Immediately after the issue of this decree an edict was drawn up for the
+establishment of an Indian commercial company, which was to undertake to
+reimburse in a year six, hundred millions of bank notes, by paying fifty
+thousand dollars per month.  Such was the last resource of Law and his
+system.  For the juggling tricks of the Mississippi, it was found
+necessary to substitute something real; especially since the edict of the
+22nd of May, so celebrated and so disastrous for the paper.  Chimeras
+were replaced by realities--by a true India Company; and it was this name
+and this thing which succeeded, which took the place of the undertaking
+previously known as the Mississippi.  It was in vain that the tobacco
+monopoly and a number of other immense monopolies were given to the new
+company; they could not enable it to meet the proper claims spread among
+the public, no matter what trouble might be taken to diminish them at all
+hazard and at all loss.
+
+It was now necessary to seek other expedients.  None could be found
+except that of rendering this company a commercial one; this was, under a
+gentler name, a name vague and unpretending, to hand over to it the
+entire and exclusive commerce of the country.  It may be imagined how
+such a resolution was received by the public, exasperated by the severe
+decree, prohibiting people, under heavy penalties, from having more than
+five-hundred livres, in coin, in their possession, subjecting them to
+visits of inspection, and leaving them nothing but bank notes to, pay for
+the commonest necessaries of daily life.  Two things resulted; first,
+fury, which day by day was so embittered by the difficulty of obtaining
+money for daily subsistence, that it was a marvel all Paris did not
+revolt at once, and that the emeute was appeased; second, the Parliament,
+taking its stand upon this public emotion, held firm to the end in
+refusing to register the edict instituting the new company.
+
+On the 15th of July, the Chancellor showed in his own house the draught
+of the edict to deputies from the Parliament, who remained with him until
+nine o'clock at night, without being persuaded.  On the morrow, the 16th,
+the edict was brought forward in the Regency Council.  M. le Duc
+d'Orleans, sustained by M. le Duc, spoke well upon it, because he could
+not speak ill, however bad his theme.  Nobody said a word, and all bowed
+their necks.  It was resolved, in this manner, to send the edict to the
+Parliament on the morrow, the 17th of July.
+
+That same 17th of July, there was such a crowd in the morning, at the
+bank and in the neighbouring streets, for the purpose of obtaining enough
+money to go to market with, that ten or twelve people were stifled.
+Three of the bodies were tumultuously carried to the Palais Royal, which
+the people, with loud cries, wished to enter.  A detachment of the King's
+guards at the Tuileries was promptly sent there.  La Vrilliere and Le
+Blanc separately harangued the people.  The lieutenant of police came;
+brigades of the watch were sent for.  The dead bodies were afterwards
+carried away, and by gentleness and cajoleries the people were at length
+dispersed.  The detachment of the King's guards returned to the
+Tuileries.  By about ten o'clock in the morning, all being over, Law took
+it into his head to go to the Palais Royal.  He received many
+imprecations as he passed through the streets.  M. le Duc d'Orleans
+thought it would be well not to let him leave the Palais Royal, and gave
+him a lodging there.  He sent back Law's carriage, however, the windows
+of which were smashed on the way by the stones thrown at them.  Law's
+house, too, was attacked, amid much breaking of windows.  All this was
+known so late in our quarter of the Jacobins of the Saint-Dominique, that
+when I arrived at the Palais Royal there was not a vestige visible of any
+disturbance.  M. le Duc d'Orleans, in the midst of a very small company,
+was very tranquil, and showed that you would not please him unless you
+were so also.  I did not stop long, having nothing to do or say.
+
+This same morning the edict was carried to the Parliament, which refused
+to register it, and sent a deputation to M. le Duc d'Orleans with its
+reasons for this, at which the Regent was much vexed.  The next morning
+an ordonnance of the King was pasted all over the town, prohibiting the
+people, under heavy penalties, to assemble, and announcing that in
+consequence of the disturbances which had taken place the previous day at
+the bank, that establishment would remain closed until further notice,
+and no more money would be paid by it.  Luck supplied the place of
+prudence; for people knew not how they were to live in the meanwhile, yet
+no fresh disturbance occurred fact which shows the goodness and obedience
+of the people, subjected to so many and to such strange trials.  Troops,
+however, were collected at Charenton, who were at work upon the canal of
+Montargis: some regiments of cavalry and of dragoons were stationed at
+Saint-Denis, and the King's regiment was posted upon the heights of
+Chaillot.  Money was sent to Gonesse to induce the bakers to come as
+usual, and for fear they should refuse bank notes, like the Paris workmen
+and shopkeepers, nearly all of whom would no longer receive any paper,
+the regiment of the guards had orders to hold itself ready, and the
+musketeers to keep within their quarters, their horses saddled and
+bridled.
+
+As for the Parliament, M. le Duc d'Orleans determined to punish its
+disobedience by sending it to Blois.  This resolution was carried in full
+council.  The Regent hoped that the Parliamentary men, accustomed to the
+comfort of their Paris homes, and to the society there of their wives;
+children, and friends, would soon grow tired of being separated from
+them, and of the extra expense they would be put to, and would give in.
+I agreed to the project, although I saw, alas! that by this exile the
+Parliament would be punished, but would be neither conciliated nor tamed
+into submission.  To make matters worse, Blois was given up, and Pontoise
+was substituted for it!  This latter town being close to Paris, the
+chastisement became ridiculous, showed the vacillating weakness of the
+Regent, and encouraged the Parliament to laugh at him.  One thing was,
+however, well done.  The resolution taken to banish the Parliament was
+kept so secret that that assembly had not the slightest knowledge of it.
+
+On Sunday, the 21st of July, squadrons of the guards, with officers at
+their head, took possession, at four o'clock in the morning, of all the
+doors of the Palais de justice.  The musketeers seized at the same time
+upon the doors of the Grand Chamber, whilst others invaded the house of
+the Chief-President, who was in much fear during the first hour.  Other
+musketeers went in parties of four to all the officers of the Parliament,
+and served them with the King's order, commanding them to repair to
+Pontoise within twice twenty-four hours.  All passed off very politely on
+both sides, so that there was not the slightest complaint: several
+members obeyed the same day and went to Pontoise.
+
+Rather late in the evening M. le Duc d'Orleans sent to the Attorney-
+General 200,000 livres in coin, and as much in bank notes of 100 livres,
+and of 10 livres to be given to those who should need them for the
+journey, but not as gifts.  The Chief-President was more brazen and more
+fortunate; he made so many promises, showed so much meanness, employed so
+much roguery, that abusing by these means the feebleness and easiness of
+the Regent, whom he laughed at, he obtained more than 100,000 ecus for
+his expenses.  The poor prince gave him the money, under the rose, in two
+or three different payments, and permitted the Duc de Bouillon to lend
+him his house at Pontoise, completely furnished, and the garden of which,
+on the banks of the river, is admirable and immense, a masterpiece of its
+kind, and had been the delight of Cardinal Bouillon, being perhaps the
+only thing in France he regretted.  With such fine assistance the Chief-
+President--on bad terms with his companions, who had openly despised him
+for some time--perfectly made it up with them.  He kept at Pontoise open
+table for the Parliament; all were every day at liberty to use it if they
+liked, so that there were always several tables, all equally, delicately,
+and splendidly served.  He sent, too, to those who asked for them,
+liquors, etc., as they could desire.  Cooling drinks and fruits of all
+kinds were abundantly served every afternoon, and there were a number of
+little one and two-horse vehicles always ready for the ladies and old men
+who liked a drive, besides play-tables in the apartments until supper
+time.  The result of all this magnificence was, as I have said, that the
+Chief-President completely reinstated himself in the good graces of his
+companions; but it was at the expense of the Regent, who was laughed at
+for his pains.  A large number of the members of the Parliament did not
+go to Pontoise at all, but took advantage of the occasion to recreate
+themselves in the country.  Only a few of the younger members mounted
+guard in the assembly, where nothing but the most trivial and make-
+believe business was conducted.  Everything important was deliberately
+neglected.  Woe!  to those, therefore, who had any trial on hand.  The
+Parliament, in a word, did nothing but divert itself, leave all business
+untouched, and laugh at the Regent and the government.  Banishment to
+Pontoise was a fine punishment!
+
+This banishment of the Parliament to Pontoise was followed by various
+financial operations and by several changes in the administrations.  Des
+Forts had the general control of the finances and all authority, but
+without the name.  The disordered state of the exchequer did not hinder
+M. le Duc d'Orleans from indulging in his strange liberalities to people
+without merit and without need, and not one of whom he could possibly
+care a straw for.  He gave to Madame la Grande Duchesse an augmentation
+of her pension of 50,000 livres; one of 8,000 livres to Trudaine: one of
+9,000 livres to Chateauneuf; one of 8,000 livres to Bontems, chief valet
+de chambre of the King; one of 6,000 livres to the Marechal de
+Montesquieu; one of 3,000 livres to Faucault; and one of 9,000 livres to
+the widow of the Duc d'Albemarle, secretly remarried to the son of
+Mahoni.
+
+All this time the public stock-jobbing still continued on the Place
+Vendome.  The Mississippi had tempted everybody.  It was who should fill
+his pockets first with millions, through M. le Duc d'Orleans and Law.
+The crowd was very great.  One day the Marechal de Villars traversed the
+Place Vendome in a fine coach, loaded with pages and lackeys, to make way
+for which the mob of stock-jobbers had some difficulty.  The Marechal
+upon this harangued the people in his braggart manner from the carriage
+window, crying out against the iniquity of stock-jobbing, and the shame
+it cast upon all.  Until this point he had been allowed to say on, but
+when he thought fit to add that his own hands were clean, and that he had
+never dabbled in shares, a voice uttered a cutting sarcasm, and all the
+crowd took up the word, at which the Marechal, ashamed and confounded,
+despite his ordinary authority, buried himself in his carriage and
+finished his journey across the Place Vendome at a gentle trot in the
+midst of a hue and cry, which followed him even beyond, and which
+diverted Paris at his expense for several days, nobody pitying him.
+
+At last it was found that this stock-jobbing too much embarrassed the
+Place Vendome and the public way; it was transferred, therefore, to the
+vast garden of the Hotel de Soissons.  This was, in fact, its proper
+place.  Law, who had remained at the Palais Royal some time, had returned
+to his own house, where he received many visits.  The King several times
+went to see the troops that had been stationed near Paris; after this
+they were sent away again.  Those which had formed a little camp at
+Charenton, returned to Montargis to work at the canal making there.
+
+Law, for commercial reasons, had some time ago caused Marseilles to be
+made a free port.  The consequence of this was that an abundance of
+vessels came there, especially vessels from the Levant, and from want of
+precautions the plague came also, lasted a long while, desolated the
+town, province; and the neighbouring provinces.  The care and precautions
+afterwards taken restrained it as much as possible, but did not hinder it
+from lasting a long time, or from creating frightful disorders.  These
+details are so well known that they can be dispensed with here.
+
+I have a few more words to say of Law and his Mississippi.  The bubble
+finally burst at the end of the year (1720).  Law, who had no more
+resources, being obliged secretly to depart from the realm, was
+sacrificed to the public.  His flight was known only through the eldest
+son of Argenson, intendant at Mainbeuge, who had the stupidity to arrest
+him.  The courier he despatched with the news was immediately sent back,
+with a strong reprimand for not having deferred to the passport with
+which Law had been furnished by the Regent.  The financier was with his
+son, and they both went to Brussels where the Marquis de Prie, Governor
+of the Imperial Low Countries, received them very well, and entertained
+them.  Law did not stop long, gained Liege and Germany, where he offered
+his talents to several princes, who all thanked him; nothing more.  After
+having thus roamed, he passed through the Tyrol, visited several Italian
+courts, not one of which would have him, and at last retired to Venice.
+This republic, however, did not employ him.  His wife and daughter
+followed him some time after.  I don't know what became of them or of the
+son.
+
+Law was a Scotchman; of very doubtful birth; tall and well made; of
+agreeable face and aspect; gallant, and on very good terms with the
+ladies of all the countries he had travelled in.  His wife was not his
+wife; she was of a good English family and well connected; had followed
+Law for love; had had a son and a daughter by him, passed for his wife,
+and bore his name without being married to him.  This was suspected
+towards the end; after his departure it became certain.  She had one eye
+and the top of one cheek covered by an ugly stain as of wine; otherwise
+she was well made, proud, impertinent in her conversation and in her
+manners, receiving compliments, giving next to none, paying but few
+visits, these rare and selected, and exercising authority in her
+household.  I know not whether her credit over her husband was great; but
+he appeared full of regard, of care, and of respect for her; at the time
+of their departure they were each about fifty and fifty-five years old.
+Law had made many acquisitions of all kinds and still more debts, so that
+this tangle is not yet unravelled by the committee of the council
+appointed to arrange his affairs with his creditors.  I have said
+elsewhere, and I repeat it here, that there was neither avarice nor
+roguery in his composition.  He was a gentle, good, respectable man, whom
+excess of credit and fortune had not spoiled, and whose deportment,
+equipages, table, and furniture could not scandalise any one.  He
+suffered with singular patience and constancy all the vexations excited
+by his operations, until towards the last, when, finding himself short of
+means and wishing to meet his difficulty, he became quick and bad-
+tempered, and his replies were often ill-measured.  He was a man of
+system, of calculation, of comparison, well and profoundly instructed in
+these things, and, without ever cheating, had everywhere gained at play
+by dint of understanding--which seems to me incredible--the combinations
+of cards.
+
+His bank, as I have elsewhere said, was an excellent thing for a
+republic, or for a country like England, where finance is as in a
+republic.  His Mississippi he was the dupe of, and believed with good
+faith he should make great and rich establishments in America.  He
+reasoned like an Englishman, and did not know how opposed to commerce and
+to such establishments are the frivolity of the (French) nation, its
+inexperience, its avidity to enrich itself at once, the inconvenience of
+a despotic government, which meddles with everything, which has little or
+no consistency, and in which what one minister does is always destroyed
+by his successor.
+
+Law's proscription of specie, then of jewels, so as to have only paper in
+France, is a system I have never comprehended, nor has anybody, I fancy,
+during all the ages which have elapsed since that in which Abraham, after
+losing Sarah, bought, for ready-money, a sepulchre for her and for her
+children.  But Law was a man of system, and of system so deep, that
+nobody ever could get to the bottom of it, though he spoke easily, well
+and clearly, but with a good deal of English in his French.
+
+He remained several years at Venice, upon very scanty means, and died
+there a Catholic, having lived decently, but very humbly, wisely, and
+modestly, and received with piety the last sacraments of the Church.
+
+Thus terminates all I have to say of Law.  But a painful truth remains.
+I have to speak of the woful disorder in the finances which his system
+led to, disorder which was not fully known until after his departure from
+France.  Then people saw, at last, where all the golden schemes that had
+flooded upon popular credulity had borne us;--not to the smiling and
+fertile shores of Prosperity and Confidence, as may be imagined; but to
+the bleak rocks and dangerous sands of Ruin and Mistrust, where dull
+clouds obscure the sky, and where there is no protection against the
+storm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER CII
+
+Not long after the flight of Law, that is to say, on Sunday, the 24th of
+January, of the new year, 1721, a council was held at the Tuileries, at
+four o'clock in the afternoon, principally for the purpose of examining
+the state of the finances and of Law's Bank and India Company.  It was,
+in fact, high time to do something to diminish the overgrown disorder and
+confusion everywhere reigning.  For some time there had been complete
+stagnation in all financial matters; the credit of the King had step by
+step diminished, private fortune had become more and more uncertain.  The
+bag was at last empty, the cards were cast aside, the last trick was
+played: The administration of the finances had passed into the hands of
+La Houssaye, and his first act was to call the attention of the Regency
+Council to the position of the bank and the company.  We were prepared to
+hear that things were in a very bad state, but we were scarcely prepared
+to find that they so closely resembled utter ruin and bankruptcy.
+
+I need not relate all that passed at this council; the substance of it is
+enough.  From the statement there of M. le Duc d'Orleans, it appeared
+that Law had issued 1,200,000,000 livres of bank notes more than he ought
+to have issued.  The first 600,00,000 livres had not done much harm,
+because they had been kept locked up in the bank; but after the 22nd of
+May, another issue of 600,000,000 had taken place, and been circulated
+among the public, without the knowledge of the Regent, without the
+authorisation of any decree.  "For this," said M. le Duc d'Orleans, "Law
+deserved to be hanged, but under the circumstances of the case, I drew
+him from his embarrassment, by an ante-dated decree, ordering the issue
+of this quantity of notes."
+
+Thereupon M. le Duc said to the Regent, "But, Monsieur, why, knowing
+this, did you allow him to leave the realm?"
+
+"It was you who furnished him with the means to do so," replied M. le Duc
+d'Orleans.
+
+"I never asked you to allow him to quit the country," rejoined M. le Duc.
+
+"But," insisted the Regent, "it was you yourself who sent him his
+passports."
+
+"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.
+
+This manifestation, which so strongly interested the shareholders, and
+the holders of bank notes, especially those who had received shares or
+notes as favours due to their authority, and who could show no other
+title to them, threw every one into despair.  The most important holders,
+such as the Princes of the Blood, and others, whose profits had been
+immense, had by force or industry delayed this manifestation as long as
+possible.  As they knew the real state of affairs, they felt that the
+moment all the world knew it also, their gains would cease, and their
+paper become worthless, that paper from which they had drawn so much, and
+which had not cost them a farthing!  This is what induced M. le Duc
+d'Orleans to hide from them the day of this manifestation, so as to avoid
+being importuned by them; and by a surprise, to take from them the power
+of preparing any opposition to the measures it was proposed to carry out.
+M. le Duc, when he learned this, flew into a fury, and hence the strange
+scene between him and M. le Duc d'Orleans, which scandalised and
+terrified everybody in the Council.
+
+M. le Duc d'Orleans, who, from taste, and afterwards from necessity,
+lived upon schemes and trickery, thought he had done marvels in saddling
+M. le Duc with the passport of Law.  He wished to lay the blame of Law's
+departure upon M. le Duc; but as I have shown, he was defeated by his own
+weapons.  He had to do with a man as sharp as himself.  M. le Duc, who
+knew he had nothing to fear, would not allow it to be supposed that he
+had sanctioned the flight of the financier.  That was why he pressed M.
+le Duc d'Orleans so pitilessly, and forced him to admit that he had never
+asked him to allow Law to leave the country.
+
+The great and terrible fact brought out by this Council was, that Law,
+without the knowledge or authority of the Regent, had issued and
+disseminated among the public 600,000,000 livres of notes; and not only
+without being authorised by any edict, but contrary to express
+prohibition.  But when the Regent announced this, who did he suppose
+would credit it?  Who could believe that Law would have had the hardihood
+to issue notes at this rate without the sanction and approbation of his
+master?
+
+However, to leave once and for all these unpleasant matters, let me say
+what was resolved upon by way of remedy to the embarrassments discovered
+to exist.  The junction of the India Company with the bank, which had
+taken place during the previous February, had led to transactions which
+made the former debtor to the latter to an immense amount.  But the bank
+being a governmental establishment, the King became thus the creditor of
+the Company.  It was decreed, in fact, that the Company should be
+considered as debtor to the King.  It was decided, however, that other
+debtors should receive first attention.  Many private people had invested
+their money in the shares of the Company.  It was not thought just that
+by the debt of the Company to the King, these people should be ruined;
+or, on the other hand, that those who had left the Company in good time,
+who had converted their shares into notes, or who had bought them at a
+low price in the market, should profit by the misfortune of the bona fide
+shareholders.  Accordingly, commissioners, it was decided, were to be
+named, to liquidate all these papers and parchments, and annul those
+which did not proceed from real purchases.
+
+M. le Duc said, upon this, "There are at least eighty thousand families,
+the whole of whose wealth consists of these effects; how are they to live
+during this liquidation?"
+
+La Houssaye replied, that so many commissioners could be named, that the
+work would soon be done.
+
+And so the Council ended.
+
+But I must, perforce, retrace my steps at this point to many other
+matters, which I have left far behind me in going on at once to the end
+of this financial labyrinth.  And first let me tell what happened to that
+monstrous personage, Alberoni, how he fell from the lofty pinnacle of
+dower on which he had placed himself, and lost all consideration and all
+importance in the fall.  The story is mightily curious and instructive.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER CIII
+
+Alberoni had made himself detested by all Europe,--for all Europe, in one
+way or another, was the victim of his crimes.  He was detested as the
+absolute master of Spain, whose guides were perfidy, ambition, personal
+interest, views always oblique, often caprice, sometimes madness; and
+whose selfish desires, varied and diversified according to the fantasy
+of the moment, were hidden under schemes always uncertain and oftentimes
+impossible of execution.  Accustomed to keep the King and Queen of Spain
+in chains, and in the narrowest and obscurest prison, where he allowed
+them to communicate with no one, and made them see, feel, and breathe
+through him, and blindly obey his every wish; he caused all Spain to
+tremble, and had annihilated all power there, except his own, by the most
+violent acts, constraining himself in no way, despising his master and
+his mistress, whose will and whose authority he had utterly absorbed.
+He braved successively all the powers of Europe, and aspired to nothing
+less than to deceive them all, then to govern them, making them serve all
+his ends; and seeing at last his cunning exhausted, tried to execute
+alone, and without allies, the plan he had formed.
+
+This plan was nothing less than to take away from the Emperor all that
+the peace of Utrecht had left him in Italy; all that the Spanish house of
+Austria had possessed there; to dominate the Pope and the King of Sicily;
+to deprive the Emperor of the help of France and England, by exciting the
+first against the Regent through the schemes of the ambassador Cellamare
+and the Duc du Maine; and by sending King James to England, by the aid of
+the North, so as to keep King George occupied with a civil war.  In the
+end he wished to profit by all these disorders, by transporting into
+Italy (which his cardinalship made him regard as a safe asylum against
+all reverses) the immense treasures he had pillaged and collected m
+Spain, under pretext of sending the sums necessary to sustain the war,
+and the conquests he intended to make; and this last project was,
+perhaps, the motive power of all the rest.  The madness of these schemes,
+and his obstinacy in clinging to them, were not discovered until
+afterwards.  The astonishment then was great indeed, upon discovering the
+poverty of the resources with which he thought himself capable of
+carrying out these wild projects.  Yet he had made such prodigious
+preparations for war, that he had entirely exhausted the country without
+rendering it able for a moment to oppose the powers of Europe.
+
+Alberoni, abhorred in Spain as a cruel tyrant, in France, in England, in
+Rome, and by the Emperor as an implacable and personal enemy, did not
+seem to have the slightest uneasiness.  Yet he might have had some, and
+with good cause, at the very moment when he fancied himself most powerful
+and most secure.
+
+The Regent and the Abbe Dubois, who for a long time had only too many
+reasons to regard Alberoni as their personal enemy, were unceasingly
+occupied in silently plotting his fall; they believed the present moment
+favourable, and did not fail to profit by it.  How they did so is a
+curious fact, which, to my great regret, has never reached me.  M. le Duc
+d'Orleans survived Dubois such a few months that many things I should
+have liked to have gained information upon, I had not the time to ask him
+about; and this was one.
+
+All I know is, that what Alberoni always dreaded, at last happened to
+him.  He trembled, at every one, no matter of how little importance, who
+arrived from Parma (the Queen of Spain, it has not been forgotten, was of
+that Duchy); he omitted nothing by the aid of the Duke of Parma, and by
+other means, to hinder the Parmesans from coming to Madrid; and was in
+terror of the few of those whose journey he could not hinder, and whose
+dismissal he could not obtain.
+
+Among these few people there was nobody he feared so much as the Queen's
+nurse, whom he drew up with a round turn occasionally, so to speak, but
+less from policy than ill-temper.  This nurse, who was a rough country-
+woman of Parma, was named Donna Piscatori Laura.  She had arrived in
+Spain some years after the Queen, who had always liked her, and who made
+her, shortly after her arrival, her 'assofeta', that is to say, her chief
+'femme de chambre'; an office more considerable in Spain than with us.
+Laura had brought her husband with her, a peasant in every way, seen and
+known by nobody; but Laura had intelligence, shrewdness, cleverness, and
+ambitious views, in spite of the external vulgarity of her manners, which
+she had preserved either from habit, or from policy, for make herself
+less suspected.  Like all persons of this extraction, she was thoroughly
+selfish.  She was not unaware how impatiently Alberoni endured her
+presence, and feared her favour with the Queen, whom he wished to possess
+alone; and, more sensible to the gentle taps she from time to time
+received from him, than to his ordinary attentions, she looked upon him
+simply as a very formidable enemy, who kept her within very narrow
+limits, who hindered her from profiting by the favour of the Queen, and
+whose design was to send her back to Parma, and to leave nothing undone
+until he had carried it out.
+
+This is all the information I have ever been able to obtain.  The
+probability is, that Donna Laura was gained by the money of the Regent
+and the intrigues gained Dubois; and that she succeeded in convincing the
+Queen of Spain that Alberoni was a minister who had ruined the country,
+who was the sole obstacle in the way of peace, and who had sacrificed
+everything and everybody to his personal views, their Catholic Majesties
+included.  However, as I relate only what I know, I shall be very brief
+upon this interesting event.
+
+Laura succeeded.  Alberoni, at the moment he least expected it, received
+a note from the King of Spain ordering him to withdraw at once, without
+attempting to see him or the Queen, or to write to them; and to leave
+Spain in twice twenty-four hours!  An officer of the guards was to
+accompany him until his departure: How this overruling order was
+received, and what the Cardinal did, I know not; I only know that he
+obeyed it, and took the road for Arragon.  So few precautions had been
+taken, that he carried off an immense number of papers, money, and
+jewels; and it was not until a few days had elapsed, that the King of
+Spain was informed that the original will of Charles the Second could not
+be found.  It was at once supposed that Alberoni had carried away this
+precious document (by which Charles the Second named Philippe V. King of
+Spain), in order to offer it, perhaps, to the Emperor, so as to gain his
+favour and good graces.  Alberoni was stopped.  It was not without
+trouble, the most terrible menaces, and loud cries from him, that he
+surrendered the testament, and some other important papers which it was
+perceived were missing.  The terror he had inspired was so profound,
+that, until this moment, no one had dared to show his joy, or to speak,
+though the tyrant was gone.  But this event reassured every one against
+his return, and the result was an unexampled overflow of delight, of
+imprecations, and of reports against him, to the King and Queen, of the
+most public occurrences (which they alone were ignorant of) and of.
+private misdeeds, which it was no longer thought necessary to hide.
+
+M. le Duc d'Orleans did not restrain his joy, still less the Abbe Dubois;
+it was their work which had overthrown their personal enemy; with him
+fell the wall of separation, so firmly erected by Alberoni between the
+Regent and the King of Spain; and (at the same time) the sole obstacle
+against peace.  This last reason caused joy to burst out in Italy, in
+Vienna, in London; and peace between France, and Spain soon resulted.
+
+The allied princes felicitated themselves on what had happened; even the
+Dutch were ravished to be delivered of a minister so double-dealing, so
+impetuous, so powerful.  M. le Duc d'Orleans dispatched the Chevalier de
+Morcieu, a very skilful and intelligent man, and certainly in the hands
+of the Abbe Dubois, to the extreme confines of the frontiers to wait for
+Alberoni, accompanying him until the moment of his embarkation in
+Provence for Italy; with orders never to lose sight of him, to make him
+avoid the large towns and principal places as much as possible; suffer no
+honours to be rendered to him; above all, to hinder him from
+communicating with anybody, or anybody with him; in a word, to conduct
+him civilly, like a prisoner under guard.
+
+Morcieu executed to the letter this disagreeable commission; all the more
+necessary, because, entirely disgraced as was Alberoni, everything was to
+be forced from him while traversing a great part of France, where all who
+were adverse to the Regent might have recourse to him.  Therefore it was
+not without good reason that every kind of liberty was denied him.
+
+It may be imagined what was suffered by a man so impetuous, and so
+accustomed to unlimited power; but he succeeded in accommodating himself
+to such a great and sudden change of condition; in maintaining his self-
+possession; in subjecting himself to no refusals; in being sage and
+measured in his manners; very reserved in speech, with an air as though
+he cared for nothing; and in adapting himself to everything without
+questions, without pretension, without complaining, dissimulating
+everything, and untiringly pretending to regard Morcieu as an
+accompaniment of honour.  He received, then, no sort of civility on the
+part of the Regent, of Dubois, or of anybody; and performed the day's
+journeys, arranged by Morcieu, without stopping, almost without suite,
+until he arrived on the shores of the Mediterranean, where he immediately
+embarked and passed to the Genoa coast.
+
+Alberoni, delivered of his Argus, and arrived in Italy, found himself in
+another trouble by the anger of the Emperor, who would suffer him
+nowhere, and by the indignation of the Court of Rome, which prevailed, on
+this occasion, over respect for the purple.  Alberoni for a long time was
+forced to keep out of the way, hidden and a fugitive, and was not able to
+approach Rome until the death of the Pope.  The remainder of the life of
+this most extraordinary man is not a subject for these memoirs.  But what
+ought not to be forgotten is the last mark of rage, despair, and madness
+that he gave in traversing France.  He wrote to M. le Duc d'Orleans,
+offering to supply him with the means of making a most dangerous war
+against Spain; and at Marseilles, ready to embark, he again wrote to
+reiterate the same offers, and press them on the Regent.
+
+I cannot refrain from commenting here upon the blindness of allowing
+ecclesiastics to meddle with public affairs; above all, cardinals, whose
+special privilege is immunity from everything most infamous and most
+degrading.  Ingratitude, infidelity, revolt, felony, independence, are
+the chief characteristics of these eminent criminals.
+
+Of Alberoni's latter days I will say but a few words.
+
+At the death of Clement XI., legal proceedings that had been taken to
+deprive Alberoni of his cardinalship, came to an end.  Wandering and
+hidden in Italy, he was summoned to attend a conclave for the purpose of
+electing a new Pope.  Alberoni was the opprobrium of the sacred college;
+proceedings, as I have said, were in progress to deprive him of his
+cardinalship.  The King and Queen of Spain evidently stimulated those
+proceedings: the Pope just dead had opposed him; but the cardinals would
+not agree to his disgrace; they would not consent to strip him of his
+dignity.  The example would have been too dangerous.  That a cardinal,
+prince, or great nobleman, should surrender his hat in order to marry,
+the store of his house demands it; well and good; but to see a cardinal
+deprive himself of his hat by way of penitence, is what his brethren will
+not endure.  A cardinal may be poisoned, stabbed, got rid of altogether,
+but lose his dignity he never can.  Rome must be infallible, or she is
+nothing.
+
+It was decided, that if, at the election of the new Pope, Alberoni were
+not admitted to take part in the proceedings, he always might protest
+against them, and declare them irregular.  Therefore he was, as I have
+said, admitted to the conclave.  He arrived in Rome, without display, in
+his own coach, and was received in the conclave with the same honours as
+all the other cardinals, and performed all the duties of his position.
+
+A few days after the election, he absented himself from Rome, as though
+to see whether proceedings would be continued against him.  But they fell
+of themselves.  The new Pope had no interest in them.  The cardinals
+wished only for silence.  Spain felt at last the inutility of her cries.
+Dubois was in favour of throwing a veil over his former crimes, so that,
+after a short absence, Alberoni hired in Rome a magnificent palace, and
+returned there for good, with the attendance, expense, and display his
+Spanish spoils supplied.  He found himself face to face with the Cardinal
+Giudice, and with Madame des Ursins.  The three formed a rare triangle,
+which caused many a singular scene in home.  After seeing them both die,
+Alberoni became legate at Ferrara, continued there a long time, little
+esteemed at Rome, where he is now living, sound in mind and body, and
+eighty-six years of age.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER CIV
+
+The King attended the Royal Council for the first time on Sunday, the
+18th of February, 1720.  He said nothing while there, or on going away,
+excepting that when M. le Duc d'Orleans, who feared he might grow weary
+of the proceedings, proposed to him to leave, he said he would stop to
+the end.  After this he did not come always, but often, invariably
+remaining to the last, without moving or speaking.  His presence changed
+nothing in the order of our arrangements, because his armchair was always
+there, alone, at the end of the table, and M. le Duc d'Orleans, whether
+his Majesty came or not, had but a "stool" similar to those we all sat
+upon.  Step by step this council had been so much increased, that now, by
+the entry of the Duc de Berwick, it numbered sixteen members!  To say
+truth, we were far too many, and we had several among us who would have
+been much better away.  I had tried, but in vain, to make the Regent see
+this.  He did see at last, but it was too late; and meanwhile we were, as
+I have stated, sixteen in the council.  I remember that one day, when the
+King came, a kitten followed him, and some time after jumped upon him,
+and thence upon the table, where it began to walk; the Duc de Noailles
+immediately crying out, because he did not like cats.  M. le Duc
+d'Orleans wished to drive the animal away.  I smiled, and said, "Oh,
+leave the kitten alone, it will make the seventeenth."
+
+M. le Duc d'Orleans burst out laughing at this, and looked at the
+company, who laughed also, the King as well.  His Majesty briefly spoke
+of it to me on the morrow, as though appreciating the joke, which, by the
+way, immediately ran over all Paris.
+
+The Abbe Dubois still maintained his pernicious influence over the
+Regent, and still looked forward to a cardinalship as the reward of his
+scheming, his baseness, and his perfidy.  In the meantime, the
+Archbishopric of Cambrai became vacant (by the death, at Rome, of the
+Cardinal Tremoille).  That is to say, the richest archbishopric, and one
+of the best posts in the Church.  The Abbe Dubois was only tonsured;
+150,000 livres, a year tempted him, and perhaps this position, from which
+he could more easily elevate himself to the cardinalship.  Impudent as he
+might be, powerful as might be the empire he had acquired over his
+master, he was much embarrassed, and masked his effrontery under a trick.
+He said to M. le Duc d'Orleans, he had a pleasant dream; and related to
+him that he had dreamt he was Archbishop of Cambrai!  The Regent, who
+smelt the rat, turned on his heel, and said nothing.  Dubois, more and
+more embarrassed, stammered, and paraphrased his dream; then, re-assuring
+himself by an effort, asked, in an offhand manner, why he should not
+obtain it, His Royal Highness, by his will alone, being able thus to make
+his fortune.
+
+M. le Duc d'Orleans was indignant, even terrified, little scrupulous as
+he might be as to the choice of bishops, and in a tone of contempt
+replied to Dubois, "What, you Archbishop of Cambrai!" making him thus
+feel his low origin, and still more the debauchery and scandal of his
+life.  Dubois was, however, too far advanced to stop on the road, and
+cited examples; unfortunately these were only too many.
+
+M. le Duc d'Orleans, less touched by such bad reasoning than embarrassed
+how to resist the ardor of a man whom for a long time he had not dated to
+contradict, tried to get out of the difficulty, by saying, "But you being
+such a scoundrel, where will you find another to consecrate you?"
+
+"Oh, if it's only that!"  exclaimed Dubois, "the thing is done.  I know
+very well who will consecrate me; he is not far from here."
+
+"And who the devil is he who will dare to do so?" asked the Regent.
+
+"Would you like to know?" replied the Abbe, "and does the matter rest
+only upon that?"
+
+"Well, who?" said the Regent.
+
+"Your chief chaplain," replied Dubois, "who is close at hand.  Nothing
+will please him better; I will run and speak to him."
+
+And thereupon he embraces the knees of M. le Duc d'Orleans (who, caught
+thus in his own trap, had not the strength to refuse), runs to the Bishop
+of Nantes, says that he is to have Cambrai, begs the Bishop to consecrate
+him, and receives his promise to do so, returns, wheels round, tells M.
+le Duc d'Orleans that his chief chaplain has agreed to the consecration;
+thanks, praises, admires the Regent, fixes more and more firmly the
+office by regarding it as settled, and by persuading M. le Duc d'Orleans,
+who dares not say no; and in this manner was Dubois made Archbishop of
+Cambrai!
+
+The extreme scandal of this nomination caused a strange, stir.  Impudent
+as was the Abbe Dubois, he was extremely embarrassed; and M. le Duc
+d'Orleans so much ashamed, that it was soon remarked he was humbled if
+you spoke to him upon the subject.  The next question was, from whom
+Dubois was to receive holy orders?  The Cardinal de Noailles was applied
+to, but he stoutly refused to assist in any way.  It may be imagined what
+an affront this was to Dubois.  He never in his life pardoned the
+Cardinal, who was nevertheless universally applauded for his refusal.
+But the Abbe Dubois was not a man to be daunted by an ordinary obstacle;
+he turned his glances elsewhere, and soon went through all the
+formalities necessary.
+
+The very day he took orders there was a Regency Council at the old
+Louvre, because the measles, which were then very prevalent, even in the
+Palais Royal, hindered us from meeting as usual in the Tuileries.
+A Regency Council without the Abbe Dubois present was a thing to marvel
+at, and yet his arrival to-day caused even more surprise than his absence
+would have caused.  But he was not a man to waste his time in
+thanksgiving for what had just happened to him.  This was a new scandal,
+which revived and aggravated the first.  Everybody had arrived in the
+cabinet of the council, M. le Duc d'Orleans also; we were scattered about
+and standing.  I was in a corner of the lower end, when I saw Dubois
+enter in a stout coat, with his ordinary bearing.  We did not expect him
+on such a day, and naturally enough cried out surprised.  M. le Prince de
+Conti, with his father's sneering manner, spoke to the Abbe Dubois, on
+his appearance among us on the very day of taking orders, and expressed
+his surprise at it with the most pathetic malignity imaginable.
+
+Dubois, who had not had time to reply one word, let him say to the end;
+then coldly observed, that if he had been a little more familiar with
+ancient history, he would not have found what astonished him very
+strange, since he (the Abbe) had only followed the example of Saint-
+Ambrose, whose ordination he began to relate.  I did not wait for his
+recital; at the mere mention of Saint-Ambrose I flew to the other end of
+the cabinet, horror-struck at the comparison Dubois had just made, and
+fearing lest I should be tempted to say to him, that the ordination of
+Saint-Ambrose had been forced upon him in spite of his resistance.  This
+impious citation of Saint-Ambrose ran all over the town with the effect
+that may be imagined.  The nomination and this ordination took place
+towards the end of February.
+
+I will finish at once all that relates to this matter, so as not to
+separate it, or have to return to it.  Dubois had his bulls at the
+commencement of May, and the consecration was fixed for Sunday the 9th
+of June.  All Paris and the Court were invited to it, myself excepted.
+I was on bad terms with Dubois, because I in no way spared him when with
+M. le Duc d'Orleans.  He on his side, fearing the power I had over the
+Regent, the liberty I enjoyed with him, and the freedom with which I
+spoke to him, did as much as he could to injure me, and to weaken the
+confidence of M. le Duc d'Orleans in me.  Dubois and I continued,
+nevertheless, to be on good terms with each other in appearance, but it
+was in appearance only.
+
+This consecration was to be magnificent, and M. le Duc d'Orleans was to
+be present at it.  If the nomination and the ordination of the Abbe
+Dubois had caused much stir, scandal, and horror, the superb preparations
+for the consecration caused even more: Great was the indignation against
+M. le Duc d'Orleans.  I went, therefore, to him the evening before this
+strange ceremony was to take place, to beg him not to attend it.  I
+represented to him that the nomination and ordination of the Abbe Dubois
+had created frightful effect upon the public, and that the consecration
+of a man of such low extraction, and whose manners and mode of life were
+so notorious; would create more.  I added, that if he attended this
+ceremony, people would say it was simply for the purpose of mocking God,
+and insulting His Church; that the effect of this would be terrible,
+and always much to be feared; and that people would say the Abbe Dubois
+abused the mastery he had over him, and that this was evidence of
+dependence would draw down upon him hatred, disdain, and shame, the
+results of which were to be dreaded.  I concluded by saying, that I spoke
+to him as his disinterested servitor; that his absence or his presence at
+this consecration would change in, nothing the fortune of the Abbe
+Dubois, who would be Archbishop of Cambrai all the same without
+prostituting his master in the eyes of all France, and of all Europe,
+by compelling him to be guilty of a measure to which it would be seen he
+had been urged by force.  I conjured him not to go; and to show him on
+what terms I was with the Abbe Dubois, I explained to him I was the sole
+man of rank he had not invited to his consecration; but that,
+notwithstanding this circumstance, if he would give me his word that he
+would not go, I on my side would agree to go, though my horror at doing
+so would be very great.
+
+My discourse, pronounced with warmth and developed with freedom, was
+listened to from beginning to end.  I was surprised to hear the Regent
+say I was right, but I opened my eyes very wide when he embraced me, said
+that I spoke like a true friend, and that he would give me his word, and
+stick to it, he would not go.  We parted upon this, I strengthening him
+in his resolution, promising anew I would go, and he thanking me for this
+effort.  He showed no impatience, no desire that I should go; for I knew
+him well, and I examined him to the very bottom of his soul, and quitted
+him much pleased at having turned him from a measure so disgraceful and
+so extraordinary.  Who could have guessed that he would not keep his
+word?  But so it happened.
+
+Although as I have said I felt sure of him, yet the extreme weakness of
+this prince, and the empire the Abbe Dubois had acquired over him;
+induced me to be quite certain of him before going to the consecration.
+I sent therefore the next morning to the Palais Royal to inquire after M.
+le Duc d'Orleans; keeping my carriage all ready for a start.  But I was
+much confused, accustomed as I might be to his miserable vacillation, to
+hear from the person I had sent, that he had just seen the Regent jump
+into his coach, surrounded by all the pomp usual on grand occasions,
+and set out for the consecration.  I had my horses put up at once, and
+locked myself into my cabinet.
+
+A day or two after I learnt from a friend of Madame de Parabere, then the
+reigning Sultana, but not a faithful one, that M. le Duc d'Orleans had
+been with her the previous night, and had spoken to her in praise of me,
+saying he would not go to the ceremony, and that he was very grateful to
+me for having dissuaded him from going.  La Parabere praised me, admitted
+I was right, but her conclusion was that he would go.
+
+M. le Duc d'Orleans, surprised, said to her she was then mad.
+
+"Be it so," replied she, "but you will go."
+
+"But I tell you I will not go," he rejoined.
+
+"Yes, yes, I tell you," said she; "you will go."
+
+"But," replied he, "this is admirable.  You say M. de Saint-Simon is
+quite right, why then should I go?"
+
+"Because I wish it," said she.
+
+"Very good," replied he, "and why do you wish I should go--what madness
+is this?"
+
+"I wish it because--," said she.
+
+"Oh, because," replied he, "that's no reason; say why you wish it."
+
+(After some dispute) "You obstinately desire then to know?  Are you not
+aware that the Abbe Dubois and I quarreled four days ago, and that we
+have not yet made it up.  He mixes in everything.  He will know that you
+have been with me to-night.  If to-morrow you do not go to his
+consecration, he will not fail to believe it is I who have hindered you;
+nothing will take this idea out of his head; he will never pardon me;
+he will undermine in a hundred ways my credit with you, and finish by
+embroiling us.  But I don't wish such a thing to happen, and for that
+reason you must go to his consecration, although M. de Saint-Simon is
+right."
+
+Thereupon ensued a feeble debate, then resolution and promise to go,
+which was very faithfully kept.
+
+As for me I could only deplore the feebleness of the Regent, to whom I
+never afterwards spoke of this consecration, or he to me; but he was very
+much ashamed of himself, and much embarrassed with me afterwards.  I do
+not know whether he carried his weakness so far as to tell Dubois what I
+had said to hinder him from going to the ceremony or whether the Abbe was
+told by La Parabere, who thought thus to take credit to herself for
+having changed the determination of M. le Duc d'Orleans, and to show her
+credit over him.  But Dubois was perfectly informed of it, and never
+pardoned me.
+
+The Val de Grace was chosen for the consecration as being a royal
+monastery, the most magnificent of Paris, and the most singular church.
+It was superbly decorated; all France was invited, and nobody dared to
+stop away or to be out of sight during the whole ceremony.
+
+There were tribunes with blinds prepared for the ambassadors and
+Protestant ministers.  There was another more magnificent for M. le Duc
+d'Orleans and M. le Duc de Chartres, whom he took there.  There were
+places for the ladies, and as M. le Duc d'Orleans entered by the
+monastery, and his tribune was within, it was open to all comers, so that
+outside and inside were filled with refreshments of all kinds, which
+officers distributed in profusion.  This disorder continued all day, on
+account of the large number of tables that were served without and within
+for the subordinate people of the fete and all who liked to thrust
+themselves in.  The chief gentlemen of the chamber of M. le Duc
+d'Orleans, and his chief officers did the business of the ceremony;
+placed distinguished people in their seats, received them, conducted
+them, and other of his officers paid similar attentions to less
+considerable people, while, all the watch and all the police were
+occupied in looking after the arrival and departure of the carriages
+in proper and regular order.
+
+During the consecration, which was but little decent as far as the
+consecrated and the spectators were concerned, above all when leaving the
+building, M. le Duc d'Orleans evinced his satisfaction at finding so many
+considerable people present, and then went away to Asnieres to dine with
+Madame Parabere--very glad that a ceremony was over upon which he had
+bestowed only indirect attention, from the commencement to the end.  All
+the prelates, the distinguished Abbes, and a considerable number of the
+laity, were invited during the consecration by the chief officers of M.
+le Duc d'Orleans to dine at the Palais Royal.  The same officers did the
+honours of the feast, which was served with the most splendid abundance
+and delicacy.  There were two services of thirty covers each, in a large
+room of the grand suite of apartments, filled with the most considerable
+people of Paris, and several other tables equally well served in
+adjoining rooms for people less distinguished.  M. le Duc d'Orleans gave
+to the new Archbishop a diamond of great price to serve him as ring.
+
+All this day was given up to that sort of triumph which draws down
+neither the approbation of man nor the blessing of God.  I saw nothing of
+it all, however, and M. le Duc d'Orleans and I never spoke of it.
+
+The Comte de Horn had been in Paris for the last two months, leading an
+obscure life of gaming and debauchery.  He was a man of two-and-twenty,
+tall and well made, of that ancient and grand family of Horn, known in
+the eleventh century among the little dynasties of the Low Countries, and
+afterwards by a long series of illustrious generations.  The Comte de
+Horn in question had been made captain in the Austrian army, less on
+account of his youth than because he was such an ill-behaved dog, causing
+vast trouble to his mother and brother.  They heard so much of the
+disorderly life he was leading in Paris, that they sent there a
+confidential gentleman with money to pay his debts, to try and persuade
+him to return, and failing in this, to implore the authority of the
+Regent (to whom, through Madame, the Horns were related), in order to
+compel him to do so.  As ill-luck would have it, this gentleman arrived
+the day after the Comte had committed the crime I am about to relate.
+
+On Friday, the 22nd of March, 1720, he went to the Rue Quincampoix,
+wishing, he said, to buy 100,000 ecus worth of shares, and for that
+purpose made an appointment with a stockbroker in a cabaret.  The stock-
+broker came there with his pocket-book and his shares; the Comte de Horn
+came also, accompanied, as he said, by two of his friends; a moment
+after, they all three threw themselves upon this unfortunate stock-
+broker; the Comte de Horn stabbed him several times with a poniard, and
+seized his pocket-book; one of his pretended friends (a Piedmontese named
+Mille), seeing that the stock-broker was not dead, finished the work.
+At the noise they made the people of the house came, not sufficiently
+quick to prevent the murder, but in time to render themselves masters of
+the assassins, and to arrest them.  In the midst of the scuffle, the
+other cut-throat escaped, but the Comte de Horn and Mille were not so
+fortunate.  The cabaret people sent for the officers of justice, who
+conducted the criminals to the Conciergerie.  This horrible crime,
+committed in broad daylight, immediately made an immense stir, and
+several kinsmen of this illustrious family at once went to M. le Duc
+d'Orleans to beg for mercy; but the Regent avoided speaking to them as
+much as possible, and very rightly ordered full and prompt justice to be
+done.
+
+At last, the relatives of Horn penetrated to the Regent: they tried to
+make the Count pass for mad, saying even that he had an uncle confined in
+an asylum, and begging that he might be confined also.  But the reply
+was, that madmen who carried their madness to fury could not be got rid
+of too quickly.  Repulsed in this manner, they represented what an infamy
+it would be to their illustrious family, related to nearly all the
+sovereigns of Europe, to have one of its members tried and condemned.
+M. le Duc d'Orleans replied that the infamy was in the crime, and not in
+the punishment.  They pressed him upon the honour the family had in being
+related to him.  "Very well, gentlemen," said he, "I will divide the
+shame with you."
+
+The trial was neither long nor difficult.  Law and the Abbe Dubois, so
+interested in the safety of the stock-jobbers (without whom the paper
+must have fallen at once), supported M. le Duc d'Orleans might and main,
+in order to render him inexorable, and he, to avoid the persecutions he
+unceasingly experienced on the other side, left nothing undone in order
+to hurry the Parliament into a decision; the affair, therefore; went full
+speed, and it seemed likely that the Comte de Horn would be broken on the
+wheel.
+
+The relatives, no longer hoping to save the criminal, thought only of
+obtaining a commutation of the sentence.  Some of them came to me, asking
+me to save them: though I was not related to the Horn family, they
+explained to me, that death on the wheel would throw into despair all
+that family, and everybody connected with it in the Low Countries,
+and in Germany, because in those parts there was a great and important
+difference between the punishments of persons of quality who had
+committed crimes; that decapitation in no way influenced the family of
+the decapitated, but that death on the wheel threw such infamy upon it,
+that the uncles, aunts, brothers, and sisters, and the three next
+generations, were excluded from entering into any noble chapter, which,
+in addition to the shame, was a very injurious deprivation, annihilating
+the family's chance of ecclesiastic preferment; this reason touched me,
+and I promised to do my best with M. le Duc d'Orleans to obtain a
+commutation of the sentence.
+
+I was going off to La Ferme to profit by the leisure of Holy Week.
+I went therefore to M. le Duc d'Orleans, and explained to him what I had
+just learnt.  I said that after the detestable crime the Comte de Horn
+had committed, every one must feel that he was worthy of death; but that
+every one could not admit it was necessary to break him on the wheel, in
+order to satisfy the ends of justice.  I showed him how the family would
+suffer if this sentence were carried out, and I concluded by proposing to
+the Regent a 'mezzo termine', such as he was so fond of.
+
+I suggested that the decree ordering death by the wheel should be
+pronounced.  That another decree should at the same time be prepared and
+kept ready signed and sealed, with only a date to fill in, revoking the
+first, and changing the punishment into decapitation.  That at the last
+moment this second decree should be produced, and immediately afterwards
+the head of the Comte de Horn be cut off.  M. le Duc d'Orleans offered no
+objection, but consented at once to my plan.  I said to him, by way of
+conclusion, that I was going to set out the next day, and that I begged
+him not to be shaken in the determination he had just formed, by the
+entreaties of Dubois or Law, both of whom were strongly in favour of
+punishment by the wheel.  He assured me he would keep firm; reiterated
+the assurance; I took leave of him; and the next day went to La Ferme.
+
+He was firm, however, in his usual manner.  Dubois and Law besieged him,
+and led the attack so well that he gave in, and the first thing I learnt
+at La Ferme was that the Comte de Horn had been broken alive on the wheel
+at the Greve, on Holy Friday; the 26th March, 1720, about 4 o'clock in
+the afternoon, and the scoundrel Mille with him on the same scaffold,
+after having both suffered torture.
+
+The result of this was as I anticipated.  The Horn family and all the
+grand nobility of the Low Countries, many of Germany, were outraged, and
+contained themselves neither in words nor in writings.  Some of them even
+talked of strange vengeance, and a long time after the death of M. le Duc
+d'Orleans, I met with certain of the gentlemen upon whose hearts the
+memory of this punishment still weighed heavily.
+
+
+
+
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+A cardinal may be poisoned, stabbed, got rid of altogether
+Enriched one at the expense of the other
+Few would be enriched at the expense of the many
+I abhorred to gain at the expense of others
+Juggle, which put the wealth of Peter into the pockets of Paul
+Not allowing ecclesiastics to meddle with public affairs
+People with difficulty believe what they have seen
+Rome must be infallible, or she is nothing
+
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Memoirs Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, v13
+#13 in our series by The Duc de Saint-Simon
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+
+          MEMOIRS OF LOUIS XIV AND HIS COURT AND OF THE REGENCY
+
+                        BY THE DUKE OF SAINT-SIMON
+
+
+                                VOLUME 13.
+
+CHAPTER XCVII
+
+Anecdote of Madame de Charlus.--The 'Phillippaques'.--La Grange.--
+Pere Tellier.--The Jesuits.--Anecdote----Tellier's Banishment.--Death of
+Madame de Maintenon.--Her Life at Saint-Cyr.
+
+
+CHAPTER XCVIII
+
+Mode of Life of the Duchesse de Berry.--Her Illness.--Her Degrading
+Amours.--Her Danger Increases.--The Sacraments Refused.--The Cure Is
+Supported by the Cardinal de Noailles.--Curious Scene.--The Duchess
+Refuses to Give Way.--She Recovers, and Is Delivered.--Ambition of Rion.
+--He Marries the Duchess.--She Determines to Go to Meudon.--Rion Sent to
+the Army.--Quarrels of Father and Daughter.--Supper on the Terrace of
+Meudon.--The Duchess Again Ill.--Moves to La Muette.--Great Danger.--
+Receives the Sacrament.--Garus and Chirac.--Rival Doctors.--Increased
+Illness.--Death of the Duchess.--Sentiments on the Occasion.--Funeral
+Ceremonies.--Madame de Saint-Simon Fails Ill.--Her Recovery.--We Move to
+Meudon.--Character of the Duchesse de Berry.
+
+
+CHAPTER XCIX
+
+The Mississippi Scheme.--Law Offers Me Shares.--Compensation for Blaye.--
+The Rue Quincampoix.--Excitement of the Public.--Increased Popularity of
+the Scheme.--Conniving of Law.--Plot against His Life--Disagreement with
+Argenson.--Their Quarrel.--Avarice of the Prince de Conti.--His
+Audacity.--Anger of the Regent.--Comparison with the Period of Louis
+XIV.--A Ballet Proposed.--The marechal de Villeroy.--The Young King Is to
+Dance.--Young Law Proposed.--Excitement.--The Young King's Disgust.--
+Extravagant Presents of the Duc d'Orleans.
+
+
+CHAPTER C
+
+System of Law in Danger.--Prodigality of the Duc d'Orleans.--Admissions
+of Law.--Fall of His Notes.--Violent Measures Taken to Support Them.--
+Their Failure.--Increased Extravagance of the Regent.--Reduction of the
+Fervour.--Proposed Colonies.--Forced Emigration.--Decree on the Indian
+Company.--Scheming of Argenson.  Attitude of the Parliament.--Their
+Remonstrance.--Dismissal of Law.--His Coolness--Extraordinary Decree of
+Council of State.--Prohibition of jewellery.--New Schemes.
+
+
+CHAPTER CI
+
+The New Edict.--The Commercial Company.--New Edict.--Rush on the Bank.--
+People Stifled in the Crowd.--Excitement against Law.--Money of the
+Bank.--Exile of the Parliament to Pontoise.--New Operation.--The Place
+Vendome.--The Marechal de Villeroy.--Marseilles.--Flight of Law.--
+Character of Him and His Wife.--Observations on His Schemes.--Decrees of
+the Finance.
+
+
+CHAPTER CII
+
+Council on the Finances.--Departure of Law--A Strange Dialogue.--M. le
+Duc and the Regent.--Crimes Imputed to Law during His Absence.--Schemes
+Proposed.--End, of the Council.
+
+
+CHAPTER CIII
+
+Character of Alberoni.--His Grand Projects.--Plots against Him.--The
+Queen's Nurse.--The Scheme against the Cardinal.--His Fall.--Theft of a
+Will.--Reception in Italy.--His Adventures There.
+
+
+CHAPTER CIV
+
+Meetings of the Council.--A Kitten.--The Archbishopric of Cambrai.--
+Scandalous Conduct of Dubois.--The Consecration.--I Persuade the Regent
+Not to Go.--He Promises Not.--Breaks His Word.--Madame de Parabere.--The
+Ceremony.--Story of the Comte de Horn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCVII
+
+To go back, now, to the remaining events of the year 1719.
+
+The Marquise de Charlus, sister of Mezieres, and mother of the Marquis de
+Levi, who has since become a duke and a peer, died rich and old.  She was
+the exact picture of an "old clothes" woman and was thus subject to many
+insults from those who did not know her, which she by no means relished.
+To relieve a little the seriousness of these memoirs, I will here relate
+an amusing adventure of which she was heroine.
+
+She was very avaricious, and a great gambler.  She would have passed the
+night up to her knees in water in order to play.  Heavy gambling at
+lansquenet was carried on at Paris in the evening, at Madame la Princesse
+de Conti's.  Madame de Charlus supped there one Friday, between the
+games, much company being present.  She was no better clad than at other
+times, and wore a head-dress, in vogue at that day, called commode, not
+fastened, but put on or taken off like a wig or a night-cap.  It was
+fashionable, then, to wear these headdresses very high.
+
+Madame de Charlus was near the Archbishop of Rheims, Le Tellier.  She
+took a boiled egg, that she cracked, and in reaching for some salt, set
+her head dress on fire, at a candle near, without perceiving it. The
+Archbishop, who saw her all in flames, seized the head-dress and flung it
+upon the ground.  Madame de Charlus, in her surprise, and indignant at
+seeing her self thus uncovered, without knowing why, threw her egg in the
+Archbishop's face, and made him a fine mess.
+
+Nothing but laughter was heard; and all the company were in convulsions
+of mirth at the grey, dirty, and hoary head of Madame de Charlus, and the
+Archbishop's omelette; above all, at the fury and abuse of Madame de
+Charlus, who thought she had been affronted, and who was a long time
+before she would understand the cause, irritated at finding herself thus
+treated before everybody.  The head-dress was burnt, Madame la Princesse
+de Conti gave her another, but before it was on her head everybody had
+time to contemplate her charms, and she to grow in fury.  Her, husband
+died three months after her.  M. de Levi expected to find treasures;
+there had been such; but they had taken wing and flown away.
+
+About this time appeared some verses under the title of Philippiques,
+which were distributed with extraordinary promptitude and abundance.  La
+Grange, formerly page of Madame la Princesse de Conti, was the author,
+and did not deny it.  All that hell could vomit forth, true and false,
+was expressed in the most beautiful verses, most poetic in style, and
+with all the art and talent imaginable.  M. le Duc d'Orleans knew it, and
+wished to see the poem, but he could not succeed in getting it, for no
+one dared to show it to him.
+
+He spoke of it several times to me, and at last demanded with such
+earnestness that I should bring it to him, that I could not refuse.  I
+brought it to him accordingly, but read it to him I declared I never
+would.  He took it, therefore, and read it in a low tone, standing in the
+window of his little cabinet, where we were.  He judged it in reading
+much as it was, for he stopped from time to time to speak to me, and
+without appearing much moved.  But all on a sudden I saw him change
+countenance, and turn towards me, tears in his eyes, and himself ready to
+drop.
+
+"Ah," said he, "this is too much, this horrible poem beats me
+completely."
+
+He was at the part where the scoundrel shows M. le Duc d'Orleans having
+the design to poison the King, and quite ready to execute his crime.
+It is the part where the author redoubles his energy, his poetry, his
+invocations, his terrible and startling beauties, his invectives, his
+hideous pictures, his touching portraits of the youth and innocence of
+the King, and of the hopes he has, adjuring the nation to save so dear a
+victim from the barbarity of a murderer; in a word, all that is most
+delicate, most tender, stringent, and blackest, most pompous, and most
+moving, is there.
+
+I wished to profit by the dejected silence into which the reading of this
+poem had thrown M. le Duc d'Orleans, to take from him the execrable
+paper, but I could not succeed; he broke out into just complaints against
+such horrible wickedness, and into tenderness for the King; then finished
+his reading, that he interrupted more than once to speak to me.  I never
+saw a man so penetrated, so deeply touched, so overwhelmed with injustice
+so enormous and sustained.  As for me, I could not contain myself.  To
+see him, the most prejudiced, if of good faith, would have been convinced
+he was innocent of the come imputed to him, by the horror he displayed at
+it.  I have said all, when I state that I recovered myself with
+difficulty, and that I had all the pains in the world to compose him a
+little.
+
+This La Grange, who was of no personal value, yet a good poet--only that,
+and never anything else--had, by his poetry, insinuated himself into
+Sceaux, where he had become one of the great favourites of Madame du
+Maine.  She and her husband knew his life, his habits, and his mercenary
+villainy.  They knew, too, haw to profit by it.  He was arrested shortly
+afterwards, and sent to the Isle de Sainte Marguerite, which he obtained
+permission to leave before the end of the Regency.  He had the audacity
+to show himself everywhere in Paris, and while he was appearing at the
+theatres and in all public places, people had the impudence to spread the
+report that M. le Duc d'Orleans had had him killed!  M. le Duc d'Orleans
+and his enemies have been equally indefatigable; the latter in the
+blackest villainies, the Prince in the most unfruitful clemency, to call
+it by no more expressive name.
+
+Before the Regent was called to the head of public affairs, I recommended
+him to banish Pere Tellier when he had the power to do so.  He did not
+act upon my advice, or only partially; nevertheless, Tellier was
+disgraced, and after wandering hither and thither, a very firebrand
+wherever he went, he was confined by his superiors in La Fleche.
+
+This tyrant of the Church, furious that he could no longer move, which
+had been his sole consolation during the end of his reign and his
+terrible domination, found himself at La Fleche, reduced to a position as
+insupportable as it was new to him.
+
+The Jesuits, spies of each other, and jealous and envious of those who
+have the superior authority, are marvellously ungrateful towards those
+who, having occupied high posts, or served the company with much labour
+and success, become useless to it, by their age or their infirmities.
+They regard them with disdain, and instead of bestowing upon them the
+attention merited by their age, their services, and their merit, leave
+them in the dreariest solitude, and begrudge them even their food!
+
+I have with my own eyes seen three examples of this in these Jesuits, men
+of much piety and honour, who hid filled positions of confidence and of
+talent, and with whom I was very intimate.  The first had been rector of
+their establishment at Paris, was distinguished by excellent works of
+piety, and was for several years assistant of the general at Rome, at the
+death of whom he returned to Paris; because the rule is, that the new
+general has new assistants.  Upon his return to the Paris establishment
+he was put into a garret, at the very top of the house, amid solitude,
+contempt, and want.
+
+The direction of the royal conscience had been the principal occupation
+of the two others, one of whom had even been proposed as confessor to
+Madame la Dauphine.  One was long ill of a malady he died of.  He was not
+properly nourished, and I sent him his dinner every day, for more than
+five months, because I had seen his pittance.  I sent him even remedies,
+for he could not refrain from admitting to me that he suffered from the
+treatment he was subjected to.
+
+The third, very old and very infirm, had not a better fate.  At last,
+being no longer able to hold out, he asked to be allowed to pay a visit
+to my Versailles house (after having explained himself to me), under
+pretext of fresh air.  He remained there several months, and died at the
+noviciate in Paris.  Such is the fate of all the Jesuits, without
+excepting the most famous, putting aside a few who having shone at the
+Court and in the world by their sermons and their merit, and having made
+many friends--as Peres Bordaloue, La Rue, Gaillard--have been guaranteed
+from the general disgrace, because, often visited by the principal
+persons of the Court and the town, policy did not permit them to be
+treated like the rest, for fear of making so many considerable people
+notice what they would not have suffered without disturbance and scandal.
+
+It was, then, in this abandonment and this contempt that Pere Tellier
+remained at La Fleche, although he had from the Regent four thousand
+livres pension.  He had ill-treated everybody.  When he was confessor of
+the King, not one of his brethren approached him without trembling,
+although most of them were the "big-wigs" of the company.  Even the
+general of the company was forced to bend beneath the despotism he
+exercised upon all.  There was not a Jesuit who did not disapprove the
+violence of his conduct, or who did not fear it would injure the society.
+All hated him, as a minister is hated who is coarse, harsh, inaccessible,
+egotistical, and who takes pleasure in showing his power and his disdain.
+
+His exile, and the conduct that drew it upon him, were fresh motives for
+hatred against him, unveiling, as they did, a number of secret intrigues
+he had been concerned in, and which he had great interest in hiding.  All
+these things together did not render agreeable to Tellier his forced
+retirement at La Fleche.  He found there sharp superiors and equals,
+instead of the general terror his presence had formerly caused among the
+Jesuits.  All now showed nothing but contempt for him, and took pleasure
+in making him sensible of it.  This King of the Church, in part of the
+State, and in private of his society, became a common Jesuit like the
+rest, and under superiors; it may be imagined what a hell this was to a
+man so impetuous and so accustomed to a domination without reply, and
+without bounds, and abused in every fashion.  Thus he did not endure it
+long.  Nothing more was heard of him, and he died after having been only
+six months at La Fleche.
+
+There was another death, which I may as well mention here, as it occurred
+about the same time.
+
+On Saturday evening, the 15th of April, 1719, the celebrated and fatal
+Madame de Maintenon died at Saint-Cyr.  What a stir this event would have
+made in Europe, had it happened a few years earlier.  It was scarcely
+mentioned in Paris!
+
+I have already said so much respecting this woman, so unfortunately
+famous, that I will say but little more now.  Her life at Saint-Cyr was
+divided between her spiritual duties, the letters she received, from her
+religious correspondents, and the answers she gave to them.  She took the
+communion twice a-week, ordinarily between seven and eight o'clock in the
+morning; not, as Dangeau says in his Memoires, at midnight or every day.
+She was very rich, having four thousand livres pension per month from the
+Regent, besides other emoluments.  She had, too, her estate at Maintenon,
+and some other property.  With all this wealth, too, she had not a
+farthing of expense at Saint-Cyr.  Everything was provided for herself
+and servants and their horses, even wood, coals, and candles.  She had
+nothing to buy, except dress for herself and for her people.  She kept a
+steward, a valet, people for the horses and the kitchen, a coach, seven
+or eight horses, one or two others for the saddle, besides having the
+young ladies of Saint-Cyr, chambermaids, and Mademoiselle d'Aumale to
+wait upon her.
+
+The fall of the Duc du Maine at the Bed of justice struck the first blow
+at her.  It is not too much to presume that she was well informed of the
+measures and the designs of this darling, and that this hope had
+sustained her; but when she saw him arrested she succumbed; continuous
+fever seized her, and she died at eighty-three years of age, in the full
+possession of all her intellect.
+
+Regret for her loss, which was not even universal in Saint-Cyr, scarcely
+passed the walls of that community.  Aubigny, Archbishop of Rouen, her
+pretended cousin, was the only man I ever heard of, who was fool enough
+to die of grief on account of it.  But he was so afflicted by this loss,
+that he fell ill, and soon followed her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCVII.
+
+Madame la Duchesse de Berry was living as usual, amid the loftiest pride,
+and the vilest servitude; amid penitence the most austere at the
+Carmelite convent of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and suppers the most
+profaned by vile company, filthiness, and impiety; amid the most
+shameless debauchery, and the most horrible fear of the devil and death;
+when lo! she fell ill at the Luxembourg.
+
+I must disguise nothing more, especially as what I am relating belongs to
+history; and never in these memoirs have I introduced details upon
+gallantry except such as were necessary to the proper comprehension of
+important or interesting matters to which they related.  Madame la
+Duchesse de Berry would constrain herself in nothing; she was indignant
+that people would dare to speak of what she did not take the trouble to
+hide from them; and nevertheless she was grieved to death that her
+conduct was known.
+
+She was in the family way by Rion, but hid--it as much as she could.
+Madame de Mouchy was their go-between, although her conduct was as clear
+as day.  Rion and Mouchy, in fact, were in love with each other, and had
+innumerable facilities for indulging their passion.  They laughed at the
+Princess, who was their dupe, and from whom they drew in council all they
+could.  In one word, they were the masters of her and of her household,
+and so insolently, that M. le Duc and Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans, who
+knew them and hated them, feared them also and temporised with them.
+Madame de Saint-Simon, sheltered from all that, extremely loved and
+respected by all the household, and respected even by this couple who
+made themselves so much dreaded and courted, only saw Madame la Duchesse
+de Berry during the moments of presentation at the Luxembourg, whence she
+returned as soon as all was finished, entirely ignorant of what was
+passing, though she might have been perfectly instructed.
+
+The illness of Madame la Duchesse de Berry came on, and this illness, ill
+prepared for by suppers washed down by wine and strong liquors, became
+stormy and dangerous.  Madame de Saint-Simon could not avoid becoming
+assiduous in her attendance as soon as the peril appeared, but she never
+would yield to the instances of M. le Duc and Madame la Duchesse
+d'Orleans, who, with all the household; wished her to sleep in the
+chamber allotted to her, and which she never put foot in, not even during
+the day.  She found Madame la Duchesse de Berry shut up in a little
+chamber, which had private entrances--very useful just then, with no one
+near her but La Mouchy and Rion, and a few trusty waiting-women.  All in
+attendance had free entrance to this room.  M. le Duc and Madame la
+Duchesse d'Orleans were not allowed to enter when they liked; of course
+it was the same with the lady of honour, the other ladies, the chief
+femme de chambre, and the doctors.  All entered from time to time, but
+ringing for an instant.  A bad headache or want of sleep caused them
+often to be asked to stay away, or, if they entered, to leave directly
+afterwards.  They did not press their presence upon the sick woman,
+knowing only too well the nature of her malady; but contented themselves
+by asking after her through Madame de Mouchy, who opened the door to
+reply to them, keeping it scarcely ajar: This ridiculous proceeding
+passed before the crowd of the Luxembourg, of the Palais Royal, and of
+many other people who, for form's sake or for curiosity, came to inquire
+the news, and became common town-talk.
+
+The danger increasing, Languet, a celebrated cure of Saint-Sulpice, who
+had always rendered himself assiduous, spoke of the sacraments to M. le
+Duc d'Orleans.  The difficulty was how to enter and propose them to
+Madame la Duchesse de Berry.  But another and greater difficulty soon
+appeared.  It was this: the cure, like a man knowing his duty, refused to
+administer the sacrament, or to suffer it to be administered, while Rion
+or Madame de Mouchy remained in the chamber, or even in the Luxembourg!
+He declared this aloud before everybody, expressly in presence of M. le
+Duc d'Orleans, who was less shocked than embarrassed.  He took the cure
+aside, and for a long time tried to make him give way.  Seeing him
+inflexible, he proposed reference to the Cardinal de Noailles.  The cure
+immediately agreed, and promised to defer to his orders, Noailles being
+his bishop, provided he was allowed to explain his reasons.  The affair
+passed, and Madame la Duchesse de Berry made confession to a Cordelier,
+her confessor.  M. le Duc d'Orleans flattered himself, no doubt, he would
+find the diocesan more flexible than the cure.  If he hoped so he
+deceived himself.
+
+The Cardinal de Noailles arrived; M. le Duc d'Orleans took him aside with
+the cure, and their conversation lasted more than half an hour.  As the
+declaration of the cure had been public, the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris
+judged it fitting that his should be so also.  As all three approached
+the door of the chamber, filled with company, the Cardinal de Noailles
+said aloud to the cure, that he had very worthily done his duty, that he
+expected nothing less from such a good, experienced, and enlightened man
+as he was; that he praised him for what he had demanded before
+administering the sacrament to Madame la Duchesse de Berry; that he
+exhorted him not to give in, or to suffer himself to be deceived upon so
+important a thing; and that if he wanted further authorisation he, as his
+bishop, diocesan, and superior, prohibited him from administering the
+sacraments, or allowing them to be administered, to Madame la Duchesse de
+Berry while Rion and Madame de Mouchy were in the chamber, or even in the
+Luxembourg.
+
+It may be imagined what a stir such inevitable scandal as this made in a
+room so full of company; what embarrassment it caused M. le Duc
+d'Orleans, and what a noise it immediately made everywhere.  Nobody, even
+the chiefs of the constitution, the mass without, enemies of the Cardinal
+de Noailles, the most fashionable bishops, the most distinguished women,
+the libertines even--not one blamed the cure or his archbishop: some
+because they knew the rules of the Church, and did not dare to impugn
+them; others, the majority, from horror of the conduct of Madame la
+Duchesse de Berry, and hatred drawn upon her by her pride.
+
+Now came the question between the Regent, the Cardinal, and the cure,
+which should announce this determination to Madame la Duchesse de Berry,
+who in no way expected it, and who, having confessed, expected every
+moment to see the Holy Sacrament enter, and to take it.  After a short
+colloquy urged on by the state of the patient, the Cardinal and the cure
+withdrew a little, while M. le Duc d'Orleans slightly opened the door and
+called Madame de Mouchy.  Then, the door ajar, she within, he without, he
+told her what was in debate.  La Mouchy, much astonished, still more
+annoyed, rode the high horse, talked of her merit, and of the affront
+that bigots wished to cast upon her and Madame la Duchesse de Berry, who
+would never suffer it or consent to it, and that she would die--in the
+state she was--if they had the impudence and the cruelty to tell it to
+her.
+
+The conclusion was that La Mouchy undertook to announce to Madame la
+Duchesse de Berry the resolution that had been taken respecting the
+sacraments--what she added of her own may be imagined.  A negative
+response did not fail to be quickly delivered to M. le Duc d'Orleans
+through the half-opened door.  Coming through such a messenger, it was
+just the reply he might have expected.  Immediately after, he repeated it
+to the Cardinal, and to the cure; the cure, being supported by his
+archbishop, contented himself with shrugging his shoulders.  But the
+Cardinal said to M. le Duc d'Orleans that Madame de Mouchy, one of the
+two who ought to be sent away, was not a fit person to bring Madame la
+Duchesse to reason; that it was his duty to carry this message to her,
+and to exhort her to do her duty as a Christian shortly about to appear
+before God; and the Archbishop pressed the Regent to go and say so to
+her.  It will be believed, without difficulty, that his eloquence gained
+nothing.  This Prince feared too much his daughter, and would have been
+but a feeble apostle with her.
+
+Reiterated refusals determined the Cardinal to go and speak to Madame la
+Duchesse de Berry, accompanied by the cure, and as he wished to set about
+it at once, M. le Duc d'Orleans, who did not dare to hinder him, but who
+feared some sudden and dangerous revolution in his daughter at the sight
+and at the discourses of the two pastors, conjured him to wait until
+preparations could be made to receive him.  He went, therefore, and held
+another colloquy through the door with Madame de Mouchy, the success of
+which was equal to the other.  Madame la Duchesse de Berry flew into
+fury, railed in unruly terms against these hypocritical humbugs, who took
+advantage of her state and their calling to dishonour her by an unheard-
+of scandal, not in the least sparing her father for his stupidity and
+feebleness in allowing it.  To have heard her, you would have thought
+that the cure and the Cardinal ought to be kicked downstairs.
+
+M. le Duc d'Orleans returned to the ecclesiastics, looking very small,
+and not knowing what to do between his daughter and them.  However, he
+said to them that she was so weak and suffering that they must put off
+their visit, persuading them as well as he could.  The attention and
+anxiety of the large company which filled the room were extreme:
+everything was known afterwards, bit by bit, during the day.
+
+The Cardinal de Noailles remained more than two hours with M. le Duc
+d'Orleans, round whom people gathered at last.  The Cardinal, seeing that
+he could not enter the chamber without a sort of violence, much opposed
+to persuasion, thought it indecent and useless to wait any longer.  In
+going away, he reiterated his orders to the cure, and begged him to watch
+so as not to be deceived respecting the sacraments, lest attempts were
+made to administer them clandestinely.  He afterwards approached Madame
+de Saint-Simon, took her aside, related to her what had passed, and
+deplored with her a scandal that he had not been able to avoid.  M. le
+Duc d'Orleans hastened to announce to his daughter the departure of the
+Cardinal, at which he himself was much relieved.  But on leaving the
+chamber he was astonished to find the cure glued against the door, and
+still more so to hear he had taken up his post there, and meant to
+remain, happen what might, because he did not wish to be deceived
+respecting the sacraments.  And, indeed, he remained there four days and
+four nights, except during short intervals for food and repose that he
+took at home, quite close to the Luxembourg, and during which his place
+was filled by two priests whom he left there.  At last, the danger being
+passed, he raised the siege.
+
+Madame la Duchesse de Berry, safely delivered of a daughter, had nothing
+to do but to re-establish herself; but she remained firm against the cure
+and the Cardinal de Noailles, neither of whom she ever pardoned.  She
+became more and more bewitched by the two lovers, who laughed at her, and
+who were attached to her only for their fortune and their interest.  She
+remained shut up without seeing M. and Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans,
+except for a few moments; no one, commencing with Madame de Saint-Simon,
+showed any eagerness to see her, for everybody knew what kept the door
+shut.
+
+Madame la Duchesse de Berry, infinitely pained by the manner in which
+everybody, even the people, looked upon her malady, thought to gain a
+little lost ground by throwing open the gardens of the Luxembourg to the
+public, after having long since closed them.  People were glad: they
+profited by the act; that was all.  She made a vow that she would give
+herself up to religion, and dress in white--that is, devote herself to
+the service of the Virgin--for six months.  This vow made people laugh a
+little.
+
+Her illness had begun on the 26th of March, 1719, and Easter-day fell on
+the 9th of April.  She was then quite well, but would not see a soul.  A
+new cause of annoyance had arisen to trouble her.  Rion, who saw himself
+so successful as the lover of Madame la Duchesse de Berry, wished to
+improve his position by becoming her husband.  He was encouraged in this
+desire by his uncle, M. de Lauzun, who had also advised him to treat her
+with the rigour, harshness--nay, brutality, which I have already
+described.  The maxim of M. de Lauzun was, that the Bourbons must be ill-
+used and treated with a high hand in order to maintain empire over them.
+Madame de Mouchy was as strongly in favour of this marriage as Rion.  She
+knew she was sure of her lover, and that when he became the husband of
+Madame la Duchesse de Berry, all the doors which shut intimacy would be
+thrown down.  A secret marriage accordingly took place.
+
+This marriage gave rise to violent quarrels, and much weeping.  In order
+to deliver herself from these annoyances, and at the same time steer
+clear of Easter, the Duchess resolved to go away to Meudon on Easter
+Monday.  It was in vain that the danger was represented to her, of the
+air, of the movement of the coach, and of the change of place at the end
+of a fortnight.  Nothing could make her endure Paris any longer.  She set
+out, therefore, followed by Rion and the majority of her ladies and her
+household.
+
+M. le Duc d'Orleans informed me then of the fixed design of Madame la
+Duchesse de Berry to declare the secret marriage she had just made with
+Rion.  Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans was at Montmartre for a few days, and
+we were walking in the little garden of her apartments.  The marriage did
+not surprise me much, knowing the strength of her passion, her fear of
+the devil, and the scandal which had just happened.  But I was
+astonished, to the last degree, at this furious desire to declare the
+marriage, in a person so superbly proud.
+
+M. le Duc d'Orleans dilated upon his troubles, his anger, that of Madame
+(who wished to proceed to the most violent extremities), and the great
+resolve of Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans.  Fortunately the majority of the
+officers destined to serve against Spain, (war with that country had just
+been declared) were leaving every day, and Rion had remained solely on
+account of the illness of Madame la Duchesse de Berry, M. le Duc
+d'Orleans thought the shortest plan would be to encourage hope by delay,
+in forcing Rion to depart, flattering himself that the declaration would
+be put off much more easily in his absence than in his presence.  I
+strongly approved this idea, and on the morrow, Rion received at Meudon a
+curt and positive order to depart at once and join his regiment in the
+army of the Duc de Berwick.  Madame la Duchesse de Berry was all the more
+outraged, because she knew the cause of this order, and consequently felt
+her inability to hinder its execution.  Rion on his side did not dare to
+disobey it.  He set out, therefore; and M. le Duc d'Orleans, who had not
+yet been to Meudon, remained several days without going there.
+
+Father and daughter feared each other, and this departure had not put
+them on better terms.  She had told him, and repeated it, that she was a
+rich widow, mistress of her own actions, independent of him; had flown
+into a fury, and terribly abused M. le Duc d'Orleans when he tried to
+remonstrate with her.  He had received much rough handling from her at
+the Luxembourg when she was better; it was the same at Meudon during the
+few visits he paid her there.  She wished to declare her marriage; and
+all the art, intellect, gentleness, anger, menace, prayers, and interest
+of M. le Duc d'Orleans barely sufficed to make her consent to a brief
+delay.
+
+If Madame had been listened to, the affair would have been finished
+before the journey to Meudon; for M. le Duc d'Orleans would have thrown
+Rion out of the windows of the Luxembourg!
+
+The premature journey to Meudon, and quarrels so warm, were not
+calculated to re-establish a person just returned from the gates of
+death.  The extreme desire she had to hide her state from the public, and
+to conceal the terms on which she was with her father ( for the rarity of
+his visits to her began to be remarked), induced her to give a supper to
+him on the terrace of Meudon about eight o'clock one evening.  In vain
+the danger was represented to her of the cool evening air so soon after
+an illness such as she had just suffered from, and which had left her
+health still tottering.  It was specially on this account that she stuck
+more obstinately to her supper on the terrace, thinking that it would
+take away all suspicion she had been confined, and induce the belief that
+she was on the same terms as ever with M. le Duc d'Orleans, though the
+uncommon rarity of his visits to her had been remarked.
+
+This supper in the open air did not succeed.  The same night she was
+taken ill.  She was attacked by accidents, caused by the state in which
+she still was, and by an irregular fever, that the opposition she met
+with respecting the declaration of her marriage did not contribute to
+diminish.  She grew disgusted with Meudon, like people ill in body and
+mind, who in their grief attribute everything to the air and the place.
+She was annoyed at the few visits she received from M. le Duc and Madame
+la Duchesse d'Orleans,-her pride, however, suffering more than her
+tenderness.
+
+In despite of all reason, nothing could hinder her from changing her
+abode.  She was transferred from Meudon to the Muette, wrapped up in
+sheets, and in a large coach, on Sunday, the 14th of May, 1719.  Arrived
+so near Paris, she hoped M. le Duc and Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans would
+come and see her more frequently, if only for form's sake.
+
+This journey was painful by the sufferings it caused her, added to those
+she already had, which no remedies could appease, except for short
+intervals, and which became very violent.  Her illness augmented; but
+hopes and fears sustained her until the commencement of July.  During all
+this time her desire to declare her marriage weakened, and M. le Duc and
+Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans, as well as Madame, who passed the summer at
+Saint-Cloud, came more frequently to see her.  The month of July became
+more menacing because of the augmentation of pain and fever.  These ills
+increased so much, in fact, that, by the 14th of July, fears for her life
+began to be felt.
+
+The night of the 14th was so stormy, that M. le Duc d'Orleans was sent to
+at the Palais Royal, and awakened.  At the same time Madame de Pons wrote
+to Madame de Saint-Simon, pressing her to come and establish herself at
+La Muette.  Madame de Saint-Simon, although she made a point of scarcely
+ever sleeping under the same roof as Madame la Duchesse de Berry (for
+reasons which need no further explanation than those already given),
+complied at once with this request, and took up her quarters from this
+time at La Muette.
+
+Upon arriving, she found the danger great.  Madame la Duchesse de Berry
+had been bled in the arm and in the foot on the 10th, and her confessor
+had been sent for.  But the malady still went on increasing.  As the pain
+which had so long afflicted her could not induce her to follow a regimen
+necessary for her condition, or to think of a future state, relations and
+doctors were at last obliged to speak a language to her, not used towards
+princesses, except at the most urgent extremity.  This, at last, had its
+effect.  She submitted to the medical treatment prescribed for her, and
+received the sacrament with open doors, speaking to those present upon
+her life and upon her state, but like a queen in both instances.  After
+this sight was over, alone with her familiars, she applauded herself for
+the firmness she had displayed, asked them if she had not spoken well,
+and if she was not dying with greatness and courage.
+
+A day or two after, she wished to receive Our Lord once more.  She
+received, accordingly, and as it appeared, with much piety, quite
+differently from the first time.
+
+At the extremity to which she had arrived, the doctors knew not what to
+do; everybody was tried.  An elixir was spoken of, discovered by a
+certain Garus, which made much stir just then, and the secret of which
+the King has since bought.  Garus was sent for and soon arrived.  He
+found Madame la Duchesse de Berry so ill that he would answer for
+nothing.  His remedy was given, and succeeded beyond all hopes.  Nothing
+remained but to continue it.  Above all things, Garus had begged that
+nothing should, on any account, be given to Madame la Duchesse de Berry
+except by him, and this had been most expressly commanded by M. le Duc
+and Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans.  Madame la Duchesse de Berry continued
+to be more and more relieved and so restored, that Chirac, her regular
+doctor, began to fear for his reputation, and taking the opportunity when
+Garus was asleep upon a sofa, presented, with impetuosity, a purgative to
+Madame la Duchesse de Berry, and made her swallow it without saying a
+word to anybody, the two nurses standing by, the only persons present,
+not daring to oppose him.
+
+The audacity of this was as complete as its villainy, for M. le Duc and
+Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans were close at hand in the salon.  From this
+moment to that in which the patient fell into a state worse than that
+from which the elixir had drawn her, there was scarcely an interval.
+Garus was awaked and called.  Seeing this disorder, he cried that a
+purgative had been given, and whatever it might be, it was poison in the
+state to which the princess was now reduced.  He wished to depart, he was
+detained, he was taken to Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans.  Then followed a
+great uproar, cries from Garus, impudence and unequalled hardihood of
+Chirac, in defending what he had done.
+
+He could not deny it, for the two nurses had been questioned, and had
+told all.  Madame la Duchesse de Berry drew near her end during this
+debate, and neither Chirac nor Garus could prevent it.  She lasted,
+however, the rest of the day, and did not die until about midnight.
+Chirac, seeing the death-agony advance, traversed the chamber, made an
+insulting reverence at the foot of the bed, which was open, and wished
+her "a pleasant journey" (in equivalent terms), and thereupon went off to
+Paris.  The marvel is that nothing came of this, and that he remained the
+doctor of M. le Duc d'Orleans as before!
+
+While the end was yet approaching, Madame de Saint-Simon, seeing that
+there was no one to bear M. le Duc d'Orleans company, sent for me to
+stand by him in these sad moments.  It appeared to me that my arrival
+pleased him, and that I was not altogether useless to him in relieving
+his grief.  The rest of the day was passed in entering for a moment at a
+time into the sick-chamber.  In the evening I was nearly always alone
+with him.
+
+He wished that I should charge myself with all the funeral arrangements,
+and in case Madame la Duchesse de Berry, when opened, should be found to
+be enceinte, to see that the secret was kept.  I proposed that the
+funeral should be of the simplest, without show or ceremonial.  I
+explained my reasons, he thanked me, and left all the orders in my hands.
+Getting rid of these gloomy matters as quickly as possible, I walked with
+him from time to time in the reception rooms, and in the garden, keeping
+him from the chamber of the dying as much as possible.
+
+The night was well advanced, and Madame la Duchesse de Berry grew worse
+and worse, and without consciousness since Chirac had poisoned her.  M.
+le Duc d'Orleans returned into the chamber, approached the head of the
+bed--all the curtains being pulled back; I allowed him to remain there
+but a few moments, and hurried him into the cabinet, which was deserted
+just then.  The windows were open, he leaned upon the iron balustrade,
+and his tears increased so much that I feared lest they should suffocate
+him.  When this attack had a little subsided, he began to talk of the
+misfortunes of this world, and of the short duration of its most
+agreeable pleasures.  I urged the occasion to say to him everything God
+gave me the power to say, with all the gentleness, emotion, and
+tenderness, I could command.  Not only he received well what I said to
+him, but he replied to it and prolonged the conversation.
+
+After we had been there more than an hour, Madame de Saint-Simon gently
+warned me that it was time to try and lead M. le Duc d'Orleans away,
+especially as there was no exit from the cabinet, except through the
+sick-chamber.  His coach, that Madame de Saint-Simon had sent for, was
+ready.  It was without difficulty that I succeeded in gently moving away
+M. le Duc d'Orleans, plunged as he was in the most bitter grief.  I made
+him traverse the chamber at once, and supplicated him to return to Paris.
+At last he consented.  He wished me to remain and give orders, and
+begged, with much positiveness, Madame de Saint-Simon to be present when
+seals were put upon the effects, after which I led him to his coach, and
+he went away.  I immediately repeated to Madame de Saint-Simon the orders
+he had given me respecting the opening of the body, in order that she
+might have them executed, and I hindered her from remaining in the
+chamber, where there was nothing now but horror to be seen.
+
+At last, about midnight, on the 21st of July, 1819, Madame la Duchesse de
+Berry died, ten days after Chirac had consummated his crime.  M. le Duc
+d'Orleans was the only person touched.  Some people grieved; but not one
+of them who had enough to live upon appeared ever to regret her loss.
+Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans felt her deliverance, but paid every
+attention to decorum.  Madame constrained herself but little.  However
+affected M. le Duc d'Orleans might be, consolation soon came.  The yoke
+to which he had submitted himself, and which he afterwards found heavy,
+was severed.  Above all, he was free from all annoyance on the score of
+Rion's marriage, and its results, annoyance that would have been all the
+greater, inasmuch as at the opening of the poor princess she was found to
+be again enceinte; it was also found that her brain was deranged.  These
+circumstances were for the time carefully hidden.  It may be imagined
+what a state Rion fell into in learning at the army the death of Madame
+la Duchesse de Berry.  All his romantic notions of ambition being
+overturned, he was more than once on the point of killing himself, and
+for a long time was always kept in sight by his friends.  He sold out at
+the end of the campaign.  As he had been gentle and polite to his
+friends, they did not desert him.  But he ever afterwards remained in
+obscurity.
+
+On account of this death the theatres were closed for eight days.
+
+On Saturday, the 22nd of July, the heart of Madame la Duchesse de Berry
+was taken to the Val-de-Grace.
+
+On Sunday, the 23rd of July, her body was carried in an eight-horse coach
+to Saint-Denis.  There was very little display; only about forty torches
+were carried by pages and guards.
+
+The funeral service was performed at Saint-Denis in the early part of
+September.  There was no funeral oration.
+
+Madame de Saint-Simon had been forced, as I have shown, to accept the
+post of lady of honour to Madame la Duchesse de Berry, and had never been
+able to quit it.  She had been treated with all sorts of consideration,
+had been allowed every liberty, but this did not console her for the post
+she occupied; so that she felt all the pleasure, not to say the
+satisfaction, of a deliverance she did not expect, from a princess
+twenty-four years of age.  But the extreme fatigue of the last days of
+the illness, and of those which followed death, caused her a malignant
+fever, which left her at death's portal during six weeks in a house at
+Passy.  She was two months recovering herself.
+
+This accident, which almost turned my head, sequestered me from anything
+for two months, during which I never left the house, scarcely left the
+sick-chamber, attended to nothing, and saw only a few relatives or
+indispensable friends.
+
+When my wife began to be re-established, I asked M. le Duc d'Orleans for
+a lodging at the new chateau at Meudon.  He lent me the whole chateau;
+completely furnished.  We passed there the rest of this summer, and
+several other summers afterwards.  It is a charming place for rides or
+drives.  We counted upon seeing only our friends there, but the proximity
+to Paris overwhelmed us with people, so that all the new chateau was
+sometimes completely filled, without reckoning the people of passage.
+
+I have little need to say anything more of Madame la Duchesse de Berry.
+These pages have already painted her.  She was a strange mixture of pride
+and shamelessness.  Drunkenness, filthy conversation, debauchery of the
+vilest kind, and impiety, were her diversions, varied, as has been seen,
+by occasional religious fits.  Her indecency in everything, language,
+acts, behaviour, passed all bounds; and yet her pride was so sublime that
+she could not endure that people should dare to speak of her amid her
+depravity, so universal and so public; she had the hardihood to declare
+that nobody had the right to speak of persons of her rank, or blame their
+most notorious actions!
+
+Yet she had by nature a superior intellect, and, when she wished, could
+be agreeable and amiable.  Her face was commanding, though somewhat
+spoiled at last by fat.  She had much eloquence, speaking with an ease
+and precision that charmed and overpowered.  What might she not have
+become, with the talents she possessed!  But her pride, her violent
+temper, her irreligion, and her falsehood, spoiled all, and made her what
+we have seen her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCIX
+
+Law had established his Mississippi Company, and now began to do marvels
+with it.  A sort of language had been invented, to talk of this scheme,
+language which, however, I shall no more undertake to explain than the
+other finance operations.  Everybody was mad upon Mississippi Stock.
+Immense fortunes were made, almost in a breath; Law, besieged in his
+house by eager applicants, saw people force open his door, enter by the
+windows from the garden, drop into his cabinet down the chimney!  People
+talked only of millions.
+
+Law, who, as I have said, came to my house every Tuesday, between eleven
+and twelve, often pressed me to receive some shares for nothing, offering
+to manage them without any trouble to me, so that I must gain to the
+amount of several millions!  So many people had already gained enormously
+by their own exertions that it was not doubtful Law could gain for me
+even more rapidly.  But I never would lend myself to it.  Law addressed
+himself to Madame de Saint-Simon, whom he found as inflexible.  He would
+have much preferred to enrich me than many others; so as to attach me to
+him by interest, intimate as he saw me with the Regent.  He spoke to M.
+le Duc d'Orleans, even, so as to vanquish me by his authority.  The
+Regent attacked me more than once, but I always eluded him.
+
+At last, one day when we were together by appointment, at Saint-Cloud,
+seated upon the balustrade of the orangery, which covers the descent into
+the wood of the goulottes, the Regent spoke again to me of the
+Mississippi, and pressed me to receive some shares from Law.
+
+The more I resisted, the more he pressed me, and argued; at last he grew
+angry, and said that I was too conceited, thus to refuse what the King
+wished to give me (for everything was done in the King's name), while so
+many of my equals in rank and dignity were running after these shares.
+I replied that such conduct would be that of a fool, the conduct of
+impertinence, rather than of conceit; that it was not mine, and that
+since he pressed me so much I would tell him my reasons.  They were,
+that since the fable of Midas, I had nowhere read, still less seen,
+that anybody had the faculty of converting into gold all he touched;
+that I did not believe this virtue was given to Law, but thought that all
+his knowledge was a learned trick, a new and skilful juggle, which put
+the wealth of Peter into the pockets of Paul, and which enriched one at
+the expense of the other; that sooner or later the game would be played
+out, that an infinity of people would be ruined; finally, that I abhorred
+to gain at the expense of others, and would in no way mix myself up with
+the Mississippi scheme.
+
+M. le Duc d'Orleans knew only too well how to reply to me, always
+returning to his idea that I was refusing the bounties of the King.
+I said that I was so removed from such madness, that I would make a
+proposition to him, of which assuredly I should never have spoken, but
+for his accusation.
+
+I related to him the expense to which my father had been put in defending
+Blaye against the party of M. le Prince in years gone by.  How he had
+paid the garrison, furnished provisions, cast cannon, stocked the place,
+during a blockade of eighteen months, and kept up, at his own expense,
+within the town, five hundred gentlemen, whom he had collected together.
+How he had been almost ruined by the undertaking, and had never received
+a sou, except in warrants to the amount of five hundred thousand livres,
+of which not one had ever been paid, and that he had been compelled to
+pay yearly the interest of the debts he had contracted, debts that still
+hung like a mill-stone upon me.  My proposition was that M. le Duc
+d'Orleans should indemnify me for this loss, I giving up the warrants, to
+be burnt before him.
+
+This he at once agreed to.  He spoke of it the very next day to Law: my
+warrants were burnt by degrees in the cabinet of M. le Duc d'Orleans, and
+it was by this means I paid for what I had done at La Ferme.
+
+Meanwhile the Mississippi scheme went on more swimmingly than ever.  It
+was established in the Rue Quincampoix, from which horses and coaches
+were banished.  About the end of October of this year, 1817, its business
+so much increased, that the office was thronged all day long, and it was
+found necessary to place clocks and guards with drums at each end of the
+street, to inform people, at seven o'clock in the morning, of the opening
+of business, and of its close at night: fresh announcements were issued,
+too, prohibiting people from going there on Sundays and fete days.
+
+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.
+
+Yet it was not all sunshine with this famous foreigner, for the sky above
+him was heavy with threatening clouds.  In the midst of the flourishing
+success of his Mississippi, it was discovered that there was a plot to
+kill him.  Thereupon sixteen soldiers of the regiment of the Guards were
+given to him as a protection to his house, and eight to his brother, who
+had come to Paris some little time before.
+
+Law had other enemies besides those who were hidden.  He could not get on
+well with Argenson, who, as comptroller of the finances, was continually
+thrown into connection with him.  The disorder of the finances increased
+in consequence every day, as well as the quarrels between Law and
+Argenson, who each laid the blame upon the other.  The Scotchman was the
+best supported, for his manners were pleasing, and his willingness to
+oblige infinite.  He had, as it were, a finance tap in his hand, and he
+turned it on for every one who helped him.  M. le Duc, Madame la
+Duchesse, Tesse, Madame de Verue, had drawn many millions through this
+tap, and drew still.  The Abbe Dubois turned it on as he pleased.  These
+were grand supports, besides that of M. le Duc d'Orleans, who could not
+part with his favourite.
+
+Argenson, on the contrary, was not much liked.  He had been at the head
+of the police so long that he could not shake off the habits he had
+acquired in that position: He had been accustomed to give audiences upon
+all sorts of police matters at dead of night, or at the small hours of
+the morning, and he appeared to see no reason why he should not do the
+same now that he was Keeper of the Seals.  He irritated people beyond all
+bearing, by making appointments with them at these unreasonable hours,
+and threw into despair all who worked under him, or who had business with
+him.  The difficulty of the finances, and his struggles with Law, had
+thrown him into ill-humour, which extended through all his refusals.
+Things, in fact, had come to such a pass, that it was evident one or the
+other must give up an administration which their rivalry threw into
+confusion.
+
+Argenson saw the storm coming, and feeling the insecurity of his
+position, wished to save himself.  He had too much sense and too much
+knowledge of the world not to feel that if he obstinately clung to the
+finances he should not only lose them but the seals also.  He yielded
+therefore to Law, who was at last declared comptroller-general of the
+finances, and who, elevated to this (for him) surprising point, continued
+to visit me as usual every Tuesday morning, always trying to persuade me
+into belief of his past miracles, and of those to come.
+
+Argenson remained Keeper of the Seals, and skilfully turned to account
+the sacrifice he had made by obtaining through it the permission to
+surrender his appointment of Chancellor of the Order of Saint-Louis to
+his eldest son, and the title, effectively, to his younger son.  His
+place of Conseiller d'Etat, that he had retained,--he also gave to his
+eldest son, and made the other lieutenant of police.  The murmur was
+great upon seeing a foreigner comptroller-general, and all abandoned to a
+finance system which already had begun to be mistrusted.  But Frenchmen
+grow accustomed to everything, and the majority were consoled by being no
+longer exposed to the sharp humour of Argenson, or his strange hours of
+business.
+
+But Law's annoyances were not over when this change had been made.  M. le
+Prince de Conti began to be troublesome.  He was more grasping than any
+of his relatives, and that is not saying a little.  He accosted Law now,
+pistol in hand, so to speak, and with a perfect "money or your life"
+manner.  He had already amassed mountains of gold by the easy humour of
+M. le Duc d'Orleans; he had drawn, too, a good deal from Law, in private.
+Not content with this, he wished to draw more.  M. le Duc d'Orleans grew
+tired, and was not over-pleased with him.  The Parliament just then was
+at its tricks again; its plots began to peep out, and the Prince de Conti
+joined in its intrigues in order to try and play a part indecent,
+considering his birth; little fitting his age; shameful, after the
+monstrous favours unceasingly heaped upon him.
+
+Repelled by the Regent, he turned, as I have said, towards Law, hoping
+for more success.  His expectations were deceived; prayers, cringing
+meanness (for he stopped at nothing to get money) being of no effect, he
+tried main strength, and spared Law neither abuse nor menaces.  In fact,
+not knowing what else to do to injure his bank, he sent three waggons
+there, and drove them away full of money, which he made Law give him for
+paper he held.  Law did not dare to refuse, and thus show the poverty of
+his metallic funds, but fearing to accustom so insatiable a prince to
+such tyranny as this, he went, directly the waggons left, to M. le Duc
+d'Orleans, and complained of what had occurred.  The Regent was much
+annoyed; he saw the dangerous results, and the pernicious example of so
+violent a proceeding, directed against an unsupported foreigner, whom
+rather lightly he had just made comptroller-general.  He flew into a
+violent rage, sent for the Prince de Conti, and, contrary to his nature,
+reprimanded him so severely, that he was silenced and cried for mercy.
+But annoyed at having failed, and still more at the sharp scolding he had
+received, the Prince de Conti consoled himself, like a woman, by
+spreading all sorts of reports against Law, which caused him but little
+fear, and did him still less harm, but which did slight honour to M. le
+Prince de Conti, because the cause of these reports, and also the large
+sums he had drawn from the financier, were not unknown to the public;
+blame upon him was general, and all the more heavy, because Law had
+fallen out of public favour, which a mere trifle had changed into spite
+and indignation.
+
+This is the trifle.  The Marechal de Villeroy, incapable of inspiring the
+King with any solid ideas, adoring even to worship the deceased King,
+full of wind, and lightness, and frivolity, and of sweet recollections of
+his early years, his grace at fetes and ballets, his splendid
+gallantries, wished that the King, in imitation of the deceased monarch,
+should dance in a ballet.  It was a little too early to think of this.
+This pleasure seemed a trifle too much of pain to so young a King; his
+timidity should have been vanquished by degrees, in order to accustom him
+to society which he feared, before engaging him to show himself off in
+public, and dance upon a stage.
+
+The deceased King,--educated in a brilliant Court, where rule and
+grandeur were kept up with much distinction, and where continual
+intercourse with ladies, the Queen-mother, and others of the Court, had
+early fashioned and emboldened him, had relished and excelled in these
+sorts of fetes and amusements, amid a crowd of young people of both
+sexes, who all rightfully bore the names of nobility, and amongst whom
+scarcely any of humble birth were mixed, for we cannot call thus some
+three or four of coarser stuff, who were admitted simply for the purpose
+of adding strength and beauty to the ballet, by the grace of their faces
+and the elegance of their movements, with a few dancing-masters to
+regulate and give the tone to the whole.  Between this time and that I am
+now speaking of was an abyss.  The education of those days instructed
+every one in grace, address, exercise, respect for bearing, graduated and
+delicate politeness, polished and decent gallantry.  The difference,
+then, between the two periods is seen at a glance, without time lost in
+pointing it out.
+
+Reflection was not the principal virtue of the Marechal de Villeroy.  He
+thought of no obstacle either on the part of the King or elsewhere, and
+declared that his Majesty would dance in a ballet.  Everything was soon
+ready for the execution.  It was not so with the action.  It became
+necessary to search for young people who could dance: soon, whether they
+danced ill or well, they were gladly received; at last the only question
+was, "Whom can we get?" consequently a sorry lot was obtained.  Several,
+who ought never to have been admitted, were, and so easily, that from one
+to the other Law had the temerity to ask M. le Duc d'Orleans to allow his
+son, who danced very well, to join the ballet company!  The Regent,
+always easy, still enamoured of Law, and, to speak truth, purposely
+contributing as much as possible to confusion of rank, immediately
+accorded the demand, and undertook to say so to the Marechal de Villeroy.
+
+The Marechal, who hated and crossed Law with might and main, reddened
+with anger, and represented to the Regent what, in fact, deserved to be
+said: the Regent, in reply, named several young people, who, although of
+superior rank, were not so well fitted for the ballet as young Law; and
+although the answer to this was close at hand, the Marechal could not
+find it, and exhausted himself in vain exclamations.  He could not,
+therefore, resist the Regent; and having no support from M. le Duc,
+superintendent of the King's education and a great protector of Law and
+of confusion, he gave in, and the financier's son was named for the
+ballet.
+
+It is impossible to express the public revolt excited by this bagatelle,
+at which every one was offended.  Nothing else was spoken of for some
+days; tongues wagged freely, too; and a good deal of dirty water was
+thrown upon other dancers in the ballet.
+
+At last the public was satisfied.  The small-pox seized Law's son, and
+(on account of its keeping him from the ballet) caused universal joy.
+The ballet was danced several times, its success answering in no way to
+the Marechal de Villeroy.  The King was so wearied, so fatigued, with
+learning, with rehearsing, and with dancing this ballet, that he took an
+aversion for these fetes and for everything offering display, which has
+never quitted him since, and which does not fail to leave a void in the
+Court; so that this ballet ceased sooner than was intended, and the
+Marechal de Villeroy never dared to propose another.
+
+M. le Duc d'Orleans, either by his usual facility, or to smooth down the
+new elevation of Law to the post of comptroller-general, bestowed a
+number of pecuniary favours; he gave 600,000 livres to La Fare, captain
+of his guard; 200,000 livres to Castries, chevalier d'honneur to Madame
+la Duchesse d'Orleans; 200,000 livres to the old Prince de Courtenay, who
+much needed them; 20,000 livres pension to the Prince de Talmont; 6000
+livres to the Marquise de Bellefonds, who already had a similar sum; and
+moved by cries on the part of M. le Prince de Conti, 60,000 livres to the
+Comte de la Marche his son, scarcely three years old; he gave, also,
+smaller amounts to various others.  Seeing so much depredation, and no
+recovery to hope for, I asked M. le Duc d'Orleans to attach 12,000
+livres, by way of increase, to my government of Senlis, which was worth
+only 1000 livres, and of which my second son had the reversion.  I
+obtained it at once.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER C
+
+About the commencement of the new year, 1720, the system of Law
+approached its end.  If he had been content with his bank his bank within
+wise and proper limits--the money of the realm might have been doubled,
+and an extreme facility afforded to commerce and to private enterprise,
+because, the establishment always being prepared to meet its liabilities,
+the notes it issued would have been as good as ready money, and sometimes
+even preferable, on account of the facility of transport.  It must be
+admitted, however, as I declared to M. le Duc d'Orleans in his cabinet,
+and as I openly said in the Council of the Regency when the bank passed
+there, that good as this establishment might be in itself, it could only
+be so in a republic, or in a monarchy, like that of England, where the
+finances are absolutely governed by those who furnish them, and who
+simply furnish as much or as little as they please; but in a trivial,
+changing, and more than absolute state like France solidity necessarily
+is wanting, consequently confidence (at least of a discreet and proper
+kind): since a king, and under his name, a mistress, a minister,
+favourites; still more, extreme necessities, such as the deceased King
+experienced in the years 1707-8-9 and 10,--a hundred things, in fact,
+could overthrow the bank, the allurements of which were, at once, too
+great and too easy. But to add to the reality of this bank, the chimera
+of the Mississippi, with its shares, its special jargon, its science (a
+continual juggle for drawing money from one person to give it to
+another), was to almost guarantee that these shares should at last end in
+smoke (since we had neither mines, nor quarries of the philosopher's
+stone), and that the few would be enriched at the expense of the many, as
+in fact happened.
+
+What hastened the fall of the bank, and of the system, was the
+inconceivable prodigality of M. le Duc d'Orleans, who, without bounds,
+and worse still, if it can be, without choice, could not resist the
+importunities even of those whom he knew, beyond all doubt, to have been
+the most opposed to him, and who were completely despicable, but gave
+with open hands; and more frequently allowed money to be drawn from him
+by people who laughed at him, and who were grateful only to their
+effrontery.  People with difficulty believe what they have seen; and
+posterity will consider as a fable what we ourselves look upon as a
+dream.  At last, so much was given to a greedy and prodigal nation,
+always covetous and in want on account of its luxury, its disorder, and
+its confusion of ranks, that paper became scarce, and the mills could not
+furnish enough.
+
+It may be imagined by this, what abuse had been made of a bank,
+established as a resource always ready, but which could not exist as such
+without being always delicately adjusted; and above all, kept in a state
+to meet the obligations it had contracted.  I obtained information on
+this point from Law, when he came to me on Tuesday mornings; for a long
+time he played with me before admitting his embarrassments, and
+complained modestly and timidly, that the Regent was ruining everything
+by his extravagance.  I knew from outsiders more than he thought, and it
+was this that induced me to press him upon his balance-sheet.  In
+admitting to me, at last, although faintly, what he could no longer hide,
+he assured me he should not be wanting in resources provided M. le Duc
+d'Orleans left him free.  That did not persuade me.  Soon after, the
+notes began to lose favour; then to fall into discredit, and the
+discredit to become public.  Then came the necessity to sustain them by
+force, since they could no longer be sustained by industry; and the
+moment force showed itself every one felt that all was over.  Coercive
+authority was resorted to; the use of gold, silver, and jewels was
+suppressed (I speak of coined money); it was pretended that since the
+time of Abraham,--Abraham, who paid ready money for the sepulchre of
+Sarah,--all the civilised nations in the world had been in the greatest
+error and under the grossest delusion, respecting money and the metals it
+is made of; that paper alone was useful and necessary; that we could not
+do greater harm to our neighbours--jealous of our greatness and of our
+advantages--than to send to them all our money and all our jewels; and
+this idea was in no way concealed, for the Indian Company was allowed to
+visit every house, even Royal houses, confiscate all the louis d'or, and
+the coins it could find there; and to leave only pieces of twenty sous
+and under (to the amount of not more than 200 francs), for the odd money
+of bills, and in order to purchase necessary provisions of a minor kind,
+with prohibitions, strengthened by heavy punishment, against keeping
+more; so that everybody was obliged to take all the ready money he
+possessed to the bank, for fear of its being discovered by a valet.  But
+nobody, as may be imagined, was persuaded of the justice of the power
+accorded to the Company, and accordingly authority was more and more
+exerted; all private houses were searched, informations were laid against
+people in order that no money might be kept back, or if it were, that the
+guilty parties might be severely punished.
+
+Never before had sovereign power been so violently exercised, never had
+it attacked in such a manner the temporal interests of the community.
+Therefore was it by a prodigy, rather than by any effort or act of the
+government, that these terribly new ordonnances failed to produce the
+saddest and most complete revolutions; but there was not even talk of
+them; and although there were so many millions of people, either
+absolutely ruined or dying of hunger, and of the direst want, without
+means to procure their daily subsistence, nothing more than complaints
+and groans was heard.
+
+This violence was, however, too excessive, and in every respect too
+indefensible to last long; new paper and new juggling tricks were of
+necessity resorted to; the latter were known to be such--people felt them
+to be such--but they submitted to them rather than not have twenty crowns
+in safety in their houses; and a greater violence made people suffer the
+smaller.  Hence so many projects, so many different faces in finance, and
+all tending to establish one issue of paper upon another; that is to say,
+always causing loss to the holders of the different paper (everybody
+being obliged to hold it), and the universal multitude.  This is what
+occupied all the rest of the government, and of the life of M. le Duc
+d'Orleans; which drove Law out of the realm; which increased six-fold the
+price of all merchandise, all food even the commonest; which ruinously
+augmented every kind of wages, and ruined public and private commerce;
+which gave, at the expense of the public, sudden riches to a few noblemen
+who dissipated it, and were all the poorer in a short time; which enabled
+many financiers' clerks, and the lowest dregs of the people, profiting by
+the general confusion, to take advantage of the Mississippi, and make
+enormous fortunes; which occupied the government several years after the
+death of M. le Duc d'Orleans; and which, to conclude, France never will
+recover from, although it may be true that the value of land is
+considerably augmented.  As a last affliction, the all-powerful,
+especially the princes and princesses of the blood, who had been mixed
+up, in the Mississippi, and who had used all their authority to escape
+from it without loss, re-established it upon what they called the Great
+Western Company, which with the same juggles and exclusive trade with the
+Indies, is completing the annihilation of the trade of the realm,
+sacrificed to the enormous interest of a small number of private
+individuals, whose hatred and vengeance the government has not dared to
+draw upon itself by attacking their delicate privileges.
+
+Several violent executions, and confiscations of considerable sums found
+in the houses searched, took place.  A certain Adine, employed at the
+bank, had 10,000 crowns confiscated, was fined 10,000 francs, and lost
+his appointment.  Many people hid their money with so much secrecy, that,
+dying without being able to say where they had put it, these little
+treasures remained buried and lost to the heirs.
+
+In the midst of the embarrassments of the finances, and in spite of them,
+M. le Duc d'Orleans continued his prodigal gifts.  He attached pensions
+of 6000 livres and 4000 livres to the grades of lieutenant-general and
+camp-marshal.  He gave a pension of 20,000 livres to old Montauban; one
+of 6000 livres to M. de Montauban (younger brother of the Prince de
+Guemene); and one of 6000 livres to the Duchesse de Brissac.  To several
+other people he gave pensions of 4000 livres; to eight or ten others,
+3000 or 2000 livres.  I obtained one of 8000 livres for Madame Marechal
+de Lorges; and one of 6000 livres was given to the Marechal de Chamilly,
+whose affairs were much deranged by the Mississippi.  M. de Soubise and
+the Marquis Noailles had each upwards of 200,000 livres.  Even Saint-
+Genies, just out of the Bastille, and banished to Beauvais, had a pension
+of 1000.  Everybody in truth wanted an augmentation of income, on account
+of the extreme high price to which the commonest, almost necessary things
+had risen, and even all other things; which, although at last diminshed
+by degrees, remain to this day much dearer than they were before the
+Mississippi.
+
+The pensions being given away, M. le Duc d'Orleans began to think how he
+could reduce the public expenditure.  Persuaded by those in whose
+financial knowledge he had most confidence, he resolved to reduce to two
+per cent. the interest upon all the funds.  This much relieved those who
+paid, but terribly cut down the income of those who received, that is to
+say, the creditors of the state, who had lent their money at five per
+cent., according to the loan--and, public faith and usage, and who had
+hitherto peacefully enjoyed that interest.  M. le Duc d'Orleans assembled
+at the Palais Royal several financiers of different rank, and resolved
+with them to pass this edict.  It made much stir among the Parliament
+men, who refused to register it.  But M. le Duc d'Orleans would not
+change his determination, and maintained his decree in spite of them.
+
+By dint of turning and turning around the Mississippi, not to say of
+juggling with it, the desire came to establish, according to the example
+of the English, colonies in the vast countries beyond the seas.  In order
+to people these colonies, persons without means of livelihood, sturdy
+beggars, female and male, and a quantity of public creatures were carried
+off.  If this had been executed with discretion and discernment, with the
+necessary measures and precautions, it would have ensured the object
+proposed, and relieved Paris and the provinces of a heavy, useless, and
+often dangerous burthen; but in Paris and elsewhere so much violence, and
+even more roguery, were mixed up with it, that great murmuring was
+excited.  Not the slightest care had been taken to provide for the
+subsistence of so many unfortunate people, either while in the place they
+were to embark from, or while on the road to reach it; by night they were
+shut up, with nothing to eat, in barns, or in the dry ditches of the
+towns they stopped in, all means of egress being forbidden them.  They
+uttered cries which excited pity and indignation; but the alms collected
+for them not being sufficient, still less the little their conductors
+gave them, they everywhere died in frightful numbers.
+
+This inhumanity, joined to the barbarity of the conductors, to violence
+of a kind unknown until this, and to the rascality of carrying off people
+who were not of the prescribed quality, but whom others thus got rid of
+by whispering a word in the ear of the conductors and greasing their
+palms; all these things, I say, caused so much stir, so much excitement,
+that the system, it was found, could not be kept up.  Some troops had
+been embarked, and during the voyage were not treated much better than
+the others.  The persons already collected were set at liberty, allowed
+to do what they pleased, and no more were seized.  Law, regarded as the
+author of these seizures, became much detested, and M. le Duc d'Orleans
+repented having ever fallen in with the scheme.
+
+The 22nd of May of this year, 1720, became celebrated by the publication
+of a decree of the Council of State, concerning the shares of the Company
+of the Indies (the same as that known under the name of Mississippi) and
+the notes of Law's bank.  This decree diminished by degrees, and from
+month to month, the value of the shares and the notes, so that, by the
+end of the year, that value would have been reduced one-half.
+
+This, in the language of finance and of bankruptcy, was to turn tail with
+a vengeance: and its effect, while remedying nothing, was to make people
+believe that things were in a worse state than was actually the case.
+Argenson, who, as we have seen, had been turned out of the finances to
+make room for Law, was generally accused of suggesting this decree out of
+malice, already foreseeing all the evils that must arise from it.  The
+uproar was general and frightful.  There was not a rich person who did
+not believe himself lost without resource; not a poor one who did not see
+himself reduced to beggary.  The Parliament, so opposed to the new money
+system, did not let slip this fine opportunity.  It rendered itself the
+protector of the public by refusing to register the decree, and by
+promptly uttering the strongest remonstrance against it.  The public even
+believed that to the Parliament was due the sudden revocation of the
+edict, which, however, was simply caused by the universal complaining,
+and the tardy discovery of the fault committed in passing it.  The little
+confidence in Law remaining was now radically extinguished; not an atom
+of it could ever be set afloat again.  Seditious writings and analytical
+and reasonable pamphlets rained on all sides, and the consternation was
+general.
+
+The Parliament assembled on Monday, the 27th of May, in the morning, and
+named certain of its members to go to M. le Duc d'Orleans, with
+remonstrances against the decree.  About noon of the same day, M. le Duc
+d'Orleans sent La Vrilliere to say to the Parliament that he revoked that
+decree, and that the notes would remain as before.  La Vrilliere, finding
+that the Parliament had adjourned, went to the Chief-President, to say
+with what he was charged.  After dinner the Parliamentary deputies came
+to the Palais Royal, where they were well received; M. le Duc d'Orleans
+confirmed what they had already heard from La Vrilliere, and said to them
+that he would re-establish the funds of the Hotel de Ville at two-and-a-
+half percent.  The deputies expected that in justice and in goodness he
+ought to raise them to at least three per cent.  M. le Duc d'Orleans
+answered, that he should like not only to raise them to three, but to
+four, nay, five per cent.; but that the state of affairs would not permit
+him to go beyond two-and-a-half.  On the next day was published the
+counter-decree, which placed the shares and actions as they were before
+the 22nd of May.  The decree of that date was therefore revoked in six
+days, after having caused such a strange effect.
+
+On Wednesday, the 29th, a pretty little comedy was played.  Le Blanc,
+Secretary of State, went to Law, told him that M. le Duc d'Orleans
+discharged him from his office as comptroller-general of the finances,
+thanked him for the attention he had given to it, and announced that as
+many people in Paris did not like him, a meritorious officer should keep
+guard in his house to prevent any accident that might happen to him.  At
+the same time, Benzualde, major of the regiment of Swiss guards, arrived
+with sixteen of his men to remain night and day in Law's house.
+
+The Scotchman did not in the least expect this dismissal or this guard,
+but he appeared very tranquil respecting both, and maintained his usual
+coolness.  The next day he was taken by the Duc de la Force to the Palais
+Royal.  Then comedy number two was played.  M. le Duc d'Orleans refused
+to see the financier, who went away without an interview.  On the day
+after, however, Law was admitted by the back stairs, closeted with the
+Regent, and was treated by him as well as ever.  The comedies were over.
+
+On Sunday, the 2nd of June, Benzualde and his Swiss withdrew from Law's
+house.  Stock-jobbing was banished at the same time from the Rue
+Quincampoix, and established in the Place Vendome.  In this latter place
+there was more room for it.  The passers-by were not incommoded.  Yet
+some people did not find it as convenient as the other.  At this time the
+King gave up to the bank one hundred million of shares he had in it.
+
+On the 5th July, a decree of the Council was issued, prohibiting people
+from possessing jewels, from keeping them locked up, or from selling them
+to foreigners.  It may be imagined what a commotion ensued.  This decree
+was grafted upon a number of others, the object of all, too visibly,
+being to seize upon all coin, in favour of the discredited paper, in
+which nobody could any longer have the slightest confidence.  In vain M.
+le Duc d'Orleans, M. le Duc, and his mother, tried to persuade others, by
+getting rid of their immense stores of jewels, that is to say, by sending
+them abroad on a journey--nothing more: not a person was duped by this
+example; not a person omitted to conceal his jewels very carefully: a
+thing much more easy to accomplish than the concealment of gold or silver
+coin, on account of the smaller value of precious stones.  This jewellery
+eclipse was not of long duration.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER CI
+
+Immediately after the issue of this decree an edict was drawn up for the
+establishment of an Indian commercial company, which was to undertake to
+reimburse in a year six, hundred millions of bank notes, by paying fifty
+thousand dollars per month.  Such was the last resource of Law and his
+system.  For the juggling tricks of the Mississippi, it was found
+necessary to substitute something real; especially since the edict of the
+22nd of May, so celebrated and so disastrous for the paper.  Chimeras
+were replaced by realities--by a true India Company; and it was this name
+and this thing which succeeded, which took the place of the undertaking
+previously known as the Mississippi.  It was in vain that the tobacco
+monopoly and a number of other immense monopolies were given to the new
+company; they could not enable it to meet the proper claims spread among
+the public, no matter what trouble might be taken to diminish them at all
+hazard and at all loss.
+
+It was now necessary to seek other expedients.  None could be found
+except that of rendering this company a commercial one; this was, under a
+gentler name, a name vague and unpretending, to hand over to it the
+entire and exclusive commerce of the country.  It may be imagined how
+such a resolution was received by the public, exasperated by the severe
+decree, prohibiting people, under heavy penalties, from having more than
+five-hundred livres, in coin, in their possession, subjecting them to
+visits of inspection, and leaving them nothing but bank notes to, pay for
+the commonest necessaries of daily life.  Two things resulted; first,
+fury, which day by day was so embittered by the difficulty of obtaining
+money for daily subsistence, that it was a marvel all Paris did not
+revolt at once, and that the emeute was appeased; second, the Parliament,
+taking its stand upon this public emotion, held firm to the end in
+refusing to register the edict instituting the new company.
+
+On the 15th of July, the Chancellor showed in his own house the draught
+of the edict to deputies from the Parliament, who remained with him until
+nine o'clock at night, without being persuaded.  On the morrow, the 16th,
+the edict was brought forward in the Regency Council.  M. le Duc
+d'Orleans, sustained by M. le Duc, spoke well upon it, because he could
+not speak ill, however bad his theme.  Nobody said a word, and all bowed
+their necks.  It was resolved, in this manner, to send the edict to the
+Parliament on the morrow, the 17th of July.
+
+That same 17th of July, there was such a crowd in the morning, at the
+bank and in the neighbouring streets, for the purpose of obtaining enough
+money to go to market with, that ten or twelve people were stifled.
+Three of the bodies were tumultuously carried to the Palais Royal, which
+the people, with loud cries, wished to enter.  A detachment of the King's
+guards at the Tuileries was promptly sent there.  La Vrilliere and Le
+Blanc separately harangued the people.  The lieutenant of police came;
+brigades of the watch were sent for.  The dead bodies were afterwards
+carried away, and by gentleness and cajoleries the people were at length
+dispersed.  The detachment of the King's guards returned to the
+Tuileries.  By about ten o'clock in the morning, all being over, Law took
+it into his head to go to the Palais Royal.  He received many
+imprecations as he passed through the streets.  M. le Duc d'Orleans
+thought it would be well not to let him leave the Palais Royal, and gave
+him a lodging there.  He sent back Law's carriage, however, the windows
+of which were smashed on the way by the stones thrown at them.  Law's
+house, too, was attacked, amid much breaking of windows.  All this was
+known so late in our quarter of the Jacobins of the Saint-Dominique, that
+when I arrived at the Palais Royal there was not a vestige visible of any
+disturbance.  M. le Duc d'Orleans, in the midst of a very small company,
+was very tranquil, and showed that you would not please him unless you
+were so also.  I did not stop long, having nothing to do or say.
+
+This same morning the edict was carried to the Parliament, which refused
+to register it, and sent a deputation to M. le Duc d'Orleans with its
+reasons for this, at which the Regent was much vexed.  The next morning
+an ordonnance of the King was pasted all over the town, prohibiting the
+people, under heavy penalties, to assemble, and announcing that in
+consequence of the disturbances which had taken place the previous day at
+the bank, that establishment would remain closed until further notice,
+and no more money would be paid by it.  Luck supplied the place of
+prudence; for people knew not how they were to live in the meanwhile, yet
+no fresh disturbance occurred fact which shows the goodness and obedience
+of the people, subjected to so many and to such strange trials.  Troops,
+however, were collected at Charenton, who were at work upon the canal of
+Montargis: some regiments of cavalry and of dragoons were stationed at
+Saint-Denis, and the King's regiment was posted upon the heights of
+Chaillot.  Money was sent to Gonesse to induce the bakers to come as
+usual, and for fear they should refuse bank notes, like the Paris workmen
+and shopkeepers, nearly all of whom would no longer receive any paper,
+the regiment of the guards had orders to hold itself ready, and the
+musketeers to keep within their quarters, their horses saddled and
+bridled.
+
+As for the Parliament, M. le Duc d'Orleans determined to punish its
+disobedience by sending it to Blois.  This resolution was carried in full
+council.  The Regent hoped that the Parliamentary men, accustomed to the
+comfort of their Paris homes, and to the society there of their wives;
+children, and friends, would soon grow tired of being separated from
+them, and of the extra expense they would be put to, and would give in.
+I agreed to the project, although I saw, alas! that by this exile the
+Parliament would be punished, but would be neither conciliated nor tamed
+into submission.  To make matters worse, Blois was given up, and Pontoise
+was substituted for it!  This latter town being close to Paris, the
+chastisement became ridiculous, showed the vacillating weakness of the
+Regent, and encouraged the Parliament to laugh at him.  One thing was,
+however, well done.  The resolution taken to banish the Parliament was
+kept so secret that that assembly had not the slightest knowledge of it.
+
+On Sunday, the 21st of July, squadrons of the guards, with officers at
+their head, took possession, at four o'clock in the morning, of all the
+doors of the Palais de justice.  The musketeers seized at the same time
+upon the doors of the Grand Chamber, whilst others invaded the house of
+the Chief-President, who was in much fear during the first hour.  Other
+musketeers went in parties of four to all the officers of the Parliament,
+and served them with the King's order, commanding them to repair to
+Pontoise within twice twenty-four hours.  All passed off very politely on
+both sides, so that there was not the slightest complaint: several
+members obeyed the same day and went to Pontoise.
+
+Rather late in the evening M. le Duc d'Orleans sent to the Attorney-
+General 200,000 livres in coin, and as much in bank notes of 100 livres,
+and of 10 livres to be given to those who should need them for the
+journey, but not as gifts.  The Chief-President was more brazen and more
+fortunate; he made so many promises, showed so much meanness, employed so
+much roguery, that abusing by these means the feebleness and easiness of
+the Regent, whom he laughed at, he obtained more than 100,000 ecus for
+his expenses.  The poor prince gave him the money, under the rose, in two
+or three different payments, and permitted the Duc de Bouillon to lend
+him his house at Pontoise, completely furnished, and the garden of which,
+on the banks of the river, is admirable and immense, a masterpiece of its
+kind, and had been the delight of Cardinal Bouillon, being perhaps the
+only thing in France he regretted.  With such fine assistance the Chief-
+President--on bad terms with his companions, who had openly despised him
+for some time--perfectly made it up with them.  He kept at Pontoise open
+table for the Parliament; all were every day at liberty to use it if they
+liked, so that there were always several tables, all equally, delicately,
+and splendidly served.  He sent, too, to those who asked for them,
+liquors, etc., as they could desire.  Cooling drinks and fruits of all
+kinds were abundantly served every afternoon, and there were a number of
+little one and two-horse vehicles always ready for the ladies and old men
+who liked a drive, besides play-tables in the apartments until supper
+time.  The result of all this magnificence was, as I have said, that the
+Chief-President completely reinstated himself in the good graces of his
+companions; but it was at the expense of the Regent, who was laughed at
+for his pains.  A large number of the members of the Parliament did not
+go to Pontoise at all, but took advantage of the occasion to recreate
+themselves in the country.  Only a few of the younger members mounted
+guard in the assembly, where nothing but the most trivial and make-
+believe business was conducted.  Everything important was deliberately
+neglected.  Woe!  to those, therefore, who had any trial on hand.  The
+Parliament, in a word, did nothing but divert itself, leave all business
+untouched, and laugh at the Regent and the government.  Banishment to
+Pontoise was a fine punishment!
+
+This banishment of the Parliament to Pontoise was followed by various
+financial operations and by several changes in the administrations.  Des
+Forts had the general control of the finances and all authority, but
+without the name.  The disordered state of the exchequer did not hinder
+M. le Duc d'Orleans from indulging in his strange liberalities to people
+without merit and without need, and not one of whom he could possibly
+care a straw for.  He gave to Madame la Grande Duchesse an augmentation
+of her pension of 50,000 livres; one of 8,000 livres to Trudaine: one of
+9,000 livres to Chateauneuf; one of 8,000 livres to Bontems, chief valet
+de chambre of the King; one of 6,000 livres to the Marechal de
+Montesquieu; one of 3,000 livres to Faucault; and one of 9,000 livres to
+the widow of the Duc d'Albemarle, secretly remarried to the son of
+Mahoni.
+
+All this time the public stock-jobbing still continued on the Place
+Vendome.  The Mississippi had tempted everybody.  It was who should fill
+his pockets first with millions, through M. le Duc d'Orleans and Law.
+The crowd was very great.  One day the Marechal de Villars traversed the
+Place Vendome in a fine coach, loaded with pages and lackeys, to make way
+for which the mob of stock-jobbers had some difficulty.  The Marechal
+upon this harangued the people in his braggart manner from the carriage
+window, crying out against the iniquity of stock-jobbing, and the shame
+it cast upon all.  Until this point he had been allowed to say on, but
+when he thought fit to add that his own hands were clean, and that he had
+never dabbled in shares, a voice uttered a cutting sarcasm, and all the
+crowd took up the word, at which the Marechal, ashamed and confounded,
+despite his ordinary authority, buried himself in his carriage and
+finished his journey across the Place Vendome at a gentle trot in the
+midst of a hue and cry, which followed him even beyond, and which
+diverted Paris at his expense for several days, nobody pitying him.
+
+At last it was found that this stock-jobbing too much embarrassed the
+Place Vendome and the public way; it was transferred, therefore, to the
+vast garden of the Hotel de Soissons.  This was, in fact, its proper
+place.  Law, who had remained at the Palais Royal some time, had returned
+to his own house, where he received many visits.  The King several times
+went to see the troops that had been stationed near Paris; after this
+they were sent away again.  Those which had formed a little camp at
+Charenton, returned to Montargis to work at the canal making there.
+
+Law, for commercial reasons, had some time ago caused Marseilles to be
+made a free port.  The consequence of this was that an abundance of
+vessels came there, especially vessels from the Levant, and from want of
+precautions the plague came also, lasted a long while, desolated the
+town, province; and the neighbouring provinces.  The care and precautions
+afterwards taken restrained it as much as possible, but did not hinder it
+from lasting a long time, or from creating frightful disorders.  These
+details are so well known that they can be dispensed with here.
+
+I have a few more words to say of Law and his Mississippi.  The bubble
+finally burst at the end of the year (1720).  Law, who had no more
+resources, being obliged secretly to depart from the realm, was
+sacrificed to the public.  His flight was known only through the eldest
+son of Argenson, intendant at Mainbeuge, who had the stupidity to arrest
+him.  The courier he despatched with the news was immediately sent back,
+with a strong reprimand for not having deferred to the passport with
+which Law had been furnished by the Regent.  The financier was with his
+son, and they both went to Brussels where the Marquis de Prie, Governor
+of the Imperial Low Countries, received them very well, and entertained
+them.  Law did not stop long, gained Liege and Germany, where he offered
+his talents to several princes, who all thanked him; nothing more.  After
+having thus roamed, he passed through the Tyrol, visited several Italian
+courts, not one of which would have him, and at last retired to Venice.
+This republic, however, did not employ him.  His wife and daughter
+followed him some time after.  I don't know what became of them or of the
+son.
+
+Law was a Scotchman; of very doubtful birth; tall and well made; of
+agreeable face and aspect; gallant, and on very good terms with the
+ladies of all the countries he had travelled in.  His wife was not his
+wife; she was of a good English family and well connected; had followed
+Law for love; had had a son and a daughter by him, passed for his wife,
+and bore his name without being married to him.  This was suspected
+towards the end; after his departure it became certain.  She had one eye
+and the top of one cheek covered by an ugly stain as of wine; otherwise
+she was well made, proud, impertinent in her conversation and in her
+manners, receiving compliments, giving next to none, paying but few
+visits, these rare and selected, and exercising authority in her
+household.  I know not whether her credit over her husband was great; but
+he appeared full of regard, of care, and of respect for her; at the time
+of their departure they were each about fifty and fifty-five years old.
+Law had made many acquisitions of all kinds and still more debts, so that
+this tangle is not yet unravelled by the committee of the council
+appointed to arrange his affairs with his creditors.  I have said
+elsewhere, and I repeat it here, that there was neither avarice nor
+roguery in his composition.  He was a gentle, good, respectable man, whom
+excess of credit and fortune had not spoiled, and whose deportment,
+equipages, table, and furniture could not scandalise any one.  He
+suffered with singular patience and constancy all the vexations excited
+by his operations, until towards the last, when, finding himself short of
+means and wishing to meet his difficulty, he became quick and bad-
+tempered, and his replies were often ill-measured.  He was a man of
+system, of calculation, of comparison, well and profoundly instructed in
+these things, and, without ever cheating, had everywhere gained at play
+by dint of understanding--which seems to me incredible--the combinations
+of cards.
+
+His bank, as I have elsewhere said, was an excellent thing for a
+republic, or for a country like England, where finance is as in a
+republic.  His Mississippi he was the dupe of, and believed with good
+faith he should make great and rich establishments in America.  He
+reasoned like an Englishman, and did not know how opposed to commerce and
+to such establishments are the frivolity of the (French) nation, its
+inexperience, its avidity to enrich itself at once, the inconvenience of
+a despotic government, which meddles with everything, which has little or
+no consistency, and in which what one minister does is always destroyed
+by his successor.
+
+Law's proscription of specie, then of jewels, so as to have only paper in
+France, is a system I have never comprehended, nor has anybody, I fancy,
+during all the ages which have elapsed since that in which Abraham, after
+losing Sarah, bought, for ready-money, a sepulchre for her and for her
+children.  But Law was a man of system, and of system so deep, that
+nobody ever could get to the bottom of it, though he spoke easily, well
+and clearly, but with a good deal of English in his French.
+
+He remained several years at Venice, upon very scanty means, and died
+there a Catholic, having lived decently, but very humbly, wisely, and
+modestly, and received with piety the last sacraments of the Church.
+
+Thus terminates all I have to say of Law.  But a painful truth remains.
+I have to speak of the woful disorder in the finances which his system
+led to, disorder which was not fully known until after his departure from
+France.  Then people saw, at last, where all the golden schemes that had
+flooded upon popular credulity had borne us;--not to the smiling and
+fertile shores of Prosperity and Confidence, as may be imagined; but to
+the bleak rocks and dangerous sands of Ruin and Mistrust, where dull
+clouds obscure the sky, and where there is no protection against the
+storm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER CII
+
+Not long after the flight of Law, that is to say, on Sunday, the 24th of
+January, of the new year, 1721, a council was held at the Tuileries, at
+four o'clock in the afternoon, principally for the purpose of examining
+the state of the finances and of Law's Bank and India Company.  It was,
+in fact, high time to do something to diminish the overgrown disorder and
+confusion everywhere reigning.  For some time there had been complete
+stagnation in all financial matters; the credit of the King had step by
+step diminished, private fortune had become more and more uncertain.  The
+bag was at last empty, the cards were cast aside, the last trick was
+played: The administration of the finances had passed into the hands of
+La Houssaye, and his first act was to call the attention of the Regency
+Council to the position of the bank and the company.  We were prepared to
+hear that things were in a very bad state, but we were scarcely prepared
+to find that they so closely resembled utter ruin and bankruptcy.
+
+I need not relate all that passed at this council; the substance of it is
+enough.  From the statement there of M. le Duc d'Orleans, it appeared
+that Law had issued 1,200,000,000 livres of bank notes more than he ought
+to have issued.  The first 600,00,000 livres had not done much harm,
+because they had been kept locked up in the bank; but after the 22nd of
+May, another issue of 600,000,000 had taken place, and been circulated
+among the public, without the knowledge of the Regent, without the
+authorisation of any decree.  "For this," said M. le Duc d'Orleans, "Law
+deserved to be hanged, but under the circumstances of the case, I drew
+him from his embarrassment, by an ante-dated decree, ordering the issue
+of this quantity of notes."
+
+Thereupon M. le Duc said to the Regent, "But, Monsieur, why, knowing
+this, did you allow him to leave the realm?"
+
+"It was you who furnished him with the means to do so," replied M. le Duc
+d'Orleans.
+
+"I never asked you to allow him to quit the country," rejoined M. le Duc.
+
+"But," insisted the Regent, "it was you yourself who sent him his
+passports."
+
+"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.
+
+This manifestation, which so strongly interested the shareholders, and
+the holders of bank notes, especially those who had received shares or
+notes as favours due to their authority, and who could show no other
+title to them, threw every one into despair.  The most important holders,
+such as the Princes of the Blood, and others, whose profits had been
+immense, had by force or industry delayed this manifestation as long as
+possible.  As they knew the real state of affairs, they felt that the
+moment all the world knew it also, their gains would cease, and their
+paper become worthless, that paper from which they had drawn so much, and
+which had not cost them a farthing!  This is what induced M. le Duc
+d'Orleans to hide from them the day of this manifestation, so as to avoid
+being importuned by them; and by a surprise, to take from them the power
+of preparing any opposition to the measures it was proposed to carry out.
+M. le Duc, when he learned this, flew into a fury, and hence the strange
+scene between him and M. le Duc d'Orleans, which scandalised and
+terrified everybody in the Council.
+
+M. le Duc d'Orleans, who, from taste, and afterwards from necessity,
+lived upon schemes and trickery, thought he had done marvels in saddling
+M. le Duc with the passport of Law.  He wished to lay the blame of Law's
+departure upon M. le Duc; but as I have shown, he was defeated by his own
+weapons.  He had to do with a man as sharp as himself.  M. le Duc, who
+knew he had nothing to fear, would not allow it to be supposed that he
+had sanctioned the flight of the financier.  That was why he pressed M.
+le Duc d'Orleans so pitilessly, and forced him to admit that he had never
+asked him to allow Law to leave the country.
+
+The great and terrible fact brought out by this Council was, that Law,
+without the knowledge or authority of the Regent, had issued and
+disseminated among the public 600,000,000 livres of notes; and not only
+without being authorised by any edict, but contrary to express
+prohibition.  But when the Regent announced this, who did he suppose
+would credit it?  Who could believe that Law would have had the hardihood
+to issue notes at this rate without the sanction and approbation of his
+master?
+
+However, to leave once and for all these unpleasant matters, let me say
+what was resolved upon by way of remedy to the embarrassments discovered
+to exist.  The junction of the India Company with the bank, which had
+taken place during the previous February, had led to transactions which
+made the former debtor to the latter to an immense amount.  But the bank
+being a governmental establishment, the King became thus the creditor of
+the Company.  It was decreed, in fact, that the Company should be
+considered as debtor to the King.  It was decided, however, that other
+debtors should receive first attention.  Many private people had invested
+their money in the shares of the Company.  It was not thought just that
+by the debt of the Company to the King, these people should be ruined;
+or, on the other hand, that those who had left the Company in good time,
+who had converted their shares into notes, or who had bought them at a
+low price in the market, should profit by the misfortune of the bona fide
+shareholders.  Accordingly, commissioners, it was decided, were to be
+named, to liquidate all these papers and parchments, and annul those
+which did not proceed from real purchases.
+
+M. le Duc said, upon this, "There are at least eighty thousand families,
+the whole of whose wealth consists of these effects; how are they to live
+during this liquidation?"
+
+La Houssaye replied, that so many commissioners could be named, that the
+work would soon be done.
+
+And so the Council ended.
+
+But I must, perforce, retrace my steps at this point to many other
+matters, which I have left far behind me in going on at once to the end
+of this financial labyrinth.  And first let me tell what happened to that
+monstrous personage, Alberoni, how he fell from the lofty pinnacle of
+dower on which he had placed himself, and lost all consideration and all
+importance in the fall.  The story is mightily curious and instructive.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER CIII
+
+Alberoni had made himself detested by all Europe,--for all Europe, in one
+way or another, was the victim of his crimes.  He was detested as the
+absolute master of Spain, whose guides were perfidy, ambition, personal
+interest, views always oblique, often caprice, sometimes madness; and
+whose selfish desires, varied and diversified according to the fantasy
+of the moment, were hidden under schemes always uncertain and oftentimes
+impossible of execution.  Accustomed to keep the King and Queen of Spain
+in chains, and in the narrowest and obscurest prison, where he allowed
+them to communicate with no one, and made them see, feel, and breathe
+through him, and blindly obey his every wish; he caused all Spain to
+tremble, and had annihilated all power there, except his own, by the most
+violent acts, constraining himself in no way, despising his master and
+his mistress, whose will and whose authority he had utterly absorbed.
+He braved successively all the powers of Europe, and aspired to nothing
+less than to deceive them all, then to govern them, making them serve all
+his ends; and seeing at last his cunning exhausted, tried to execute
+alone, and without allies, the plan he had formed.
+
+This plan was nothing less than to take away from the Emperor all that
+the peace of Utrecht had left him in Italy; all that the Spanish house of
+Austria had possessed there; to dominate the Pope and the King of Sicily;
+to deprive the Emperor of the help of France and England, by exciting the
+first against the Regent through the schemes of the ambassador Cellamare
+and the Duc du Maine; and by sending King James to England, by the aid of
+the North, so as to keep King George occupied with a civil war.  In the
+end he wished to profit by all these disorders, by transporting into
+Italy (which his cardinalship made him regard as a safe asylum against
+all reverses) the immense treasures he had pillaged and collected m
+Spain, under pretext of sending the sums necessary to sustain the war,
+and the conquests he intended to make; and this last project was,
+perhaps, the motive power of all the rest.  The madness of these schemes,
+and his obstinacy in clinging to them, were not discovered until
+afterwards.  The astonishment then was great indeed, upon discovering the
+poverty of the resources with which he thought himself capable of
+carrying out these wild projects.  Yet he had made such prodigious
+preparations for war, that he had entirely exhausted the country without
+rendering it able for a moment to oppose the powers of Europe.
+
+Alberoni, abhorred in Spain as a cruel tyrant, in France, in England, in
+Rome, and by the Emperor as an implacable and personal enemy, did not
+seem to have the slightest uneasiness.  Yet he might have had some, and
+with good cause, at the very moment when he fancied himself most powerful
+and most secure.
+
+The Regent and the Abbe Dubois, who for a long time had only too many
+reasons to regard Alberoni as their personal enemy, were unceasingly
+occupied in silently plotting his fall; they believed the present moment
+favourable, and did not fail to profit by it.  How they did so is a
+curious fact, which, to my great regret, has never reached me.  M. le Duc
+d'Orleans survived Dubois such a few months that many things I should
+have liked to have gained information upon, I had not the time to ask him
+about; and this was one.
+
+All I know is, that what Alberoni always dreaded, at last happened to
+him.  He trembled, at every one, no matter of how little importance, who
+arrived from Parma (the Queen of Spain, it has not been forgotten, was of
+that Duchy); he omitted nothing by the aid of the Duke of Parma, and by
+other means, to hinder the Parmesans from coming to Madrid; and was in
+terror of the few of those whose journey he could not hinder, and whose
+dismissal he could not obtain.
+
+Among these few people there was nobody he feared so much as the Queen's
+nurse, whom he drew up with a round turn occasionally, so to speak, but
+less from policy than ill-temper.  This nurse, who was a rough country-
+woman of Parma, was named Donna Piscatori Laura.  She had arrived in
+Spain some years after the Queen, who had always liked her, and who made
+her, shortly after her arrival, her 'assofeta', that is to say, her chief
+'femme de chambre'; an office more considerable in Spain than with us.
+Laura had brought her husband with her, a peasant in every way, seen and
+known by nobody; but Laura had intelligence, shrewdness, cleverness, and
+ambitious views, in spite of the external vulgarity of her manners, which
+she had preserved either from habit, or from policy, for make herself
+less suspected.  Like all persons of this extraction, she was thoroughly
+selfish.  She was not unaware how impatiently Alberoni endured her
+presence, and feared her favour with the Queen, whom he wished to possess
+alone; and, more sensible to the gentle taps she from time to time
+received from him, than to his ordinary attentions, she looked upon him
+simply as a very formidable enemy, who kept her within very narrow
+limits, who hindered her from profiting by the favour of the Queen, and
+whose design was to send her back to Parma, and to leave nothing undone
+until he had carried it out.
+
+This is all the information I have ever been able to obtain.  The
+probability is, that Donna Laura was gained by the money of the Regent
+and the intrigues gained Dubois; and that she succeeded in convincing the
+Queen of Spain that Alberoni was a minister who had ruined the country,
+who was the sole obstacle in the way of peace, and who had sacrificed
+everything and everybody to his personal views, their Catholic Majesties
+included.  However, as I relate only what I know, I shall be very brief
+upon this interesting event.
+
+Laura succeeded.  Alberoni, at the moment he least expected it, received
+a note from the King of Spain ordering him to withdraw at once, without
+attempting to see him or the Queen, or to write to them; and to leave
+Spain in twice twenty-four hours!  An officer of the guards was to
+accompany him until his departure: How this overruling order was
+received, and what the Cardinal did, I know not; I only know that he
+obeyed it, and took the road for Arragon.  So few precautions had been
+taken, that he carried off an immense number of papers, money, and
+jewels; and it was not until a few days had elapsed, that the King of
+Spain was informed that the original will of Charles the Second could not
+be found.  It was at once supposed that Alberoni had carried away this
+precious document (by which Charles the Second named Philippe V. King of
+Spain), in order to offer it, perhaps, to the Emperor, so as to gain his
+favour and good graces.  Alberoni was stopped.  It was not without
+trouble, the most terrible menaces, and loud cries from him, that he
+surrendered the testament, and some other important papers which it was
+perceived were missing.  The terror he had inspired was so profound,
+that, until this moment, no one had dared to show his joy, or to speak,
+though the tyrant was gone.  But this event reassured every one against
+his return, and the result was an unexampled overflow of delight, of
+imprecations, and of reports against him, to the King and Queen, of the
+most public occurrences (which they alone were ignorant of) and of.
+private misdeeds, which it was no longer thought necessary to hide.
+
+M. le Duc d'Orleans did not restrain his joy, still less the Abbe Dubois;
+it was their work which had overthrown their personal enemy; with him
+fell the wall of separation, so firmly erected by Alberoni between the
+Regent and the King of Spain; and (at the same time) the sole obstacle
+against peace.  This last reason caused joy to burst out in Italy, in
+Vienna, in London; and peace between France, and Spain soon resulted.
+
+The allied princes felicitated themselves on what had happened; even the
+Dutch were ravished to be delivered of a minister so double-dealing, so
+impetuous, so powerful.  M. le Duc d'Orleans dispatched the Chevalier de
+Morcieu, a very skilful and intelligent man, and certainly in the hands
+of the Abbe Dubois, to the extreme confines of the frontiers to wait for
+Alberoni, accompanying him until the moment of his embarkation in
+Provence for Italy; with orders never to lose sight of him, to make him
+avoid the large towns and principal places as much as possible; suffer no
+honours to be rendered to him; above all, to hinder him from
+communicating with anybody, or anybody with him; in a word, to conduct
+him civilly, like a prisoner under guard.
+
+Morcieu executed to the letter this disagreeable commission; all the more
+necessary, because, entirely disgraced as was Alberoni, everything was to
+be forced from him while traversing a great part of France, where all who
+were adverse to the Regent might have recourse to him.  Therefore it was
+not without good reason that every kind of liberty was denied him.
+
+It may be imagined what was suffered by a man so impetuous, and so
+accustomed to unlimited power; but he succeeded in accommodating himself
+to such a great and sudden change of condition; in maintaining his self-
+possession; in subjecting himself to no refusals; in being sage and
+measured in his manners; very reserved in speech, with an air as though
+he cared for nothing; and in adapting himself to everything without
+questions, without pretension, without complaining, dissimulating
+everything, and untiringly pretending to regard Morcieu as an
+accompaniment of honour.  He received, then, no sort of civility on the
+part of the Regent, of Dubois, or of anybody; and performed the day's
+journeys, arranged by Morcieu, without stopping, almost without suite,
+until he arrived on the shores of the Mediterranean, where he immediately
+embarked and passed to the Genoa coast.
+
+Alberoni, delivered of his Argus, and arrived in Italy, found himself in
+another trouble by the anger of the Emperor, who would suffer him
+nowhere, and by the indignation of the Court of Rome, which prevailed, on
+this occasion, over respect for the purple.  Alberoni for a long time was
+forced to keep out of the way, hidden and a fugitive, and was not able to
+approach Rome until the death of the Pope.  The remainder of the life of
+this most extraordinary man is not a subject for these memoirs.  But what
+ought not to be forgotten is the last mark of rage, despair, and madness
+that he gave in traversing France.  He wrote to M. le Duc d'Orleans,
+offering to supply him with the means of making a most dangerous war
+against Spain; and at Marseilles, ready to embark, he again wrote to
+reiterate the same offers, and press them on the Regent.
+
+I cannot refrain from commenting here upon the blindness of allowing
+ecclesiastics to meddle with public affairs; above all, cardinals, whose
+special privilege is immunity from everything most infamous and most
+degrading.  Ingratitude, infidelity, revolt, felony, independence, are
+the chief characteristics of these eminent criminals.
+
+Of Alberoni's latter days I will say but a few words.
+
+At the death of Clement XI., legal proceedings that had been taken to
+deprive Alberoni of his cardinalship, came to an end.  Wandering and
+hidden in Italy, he was summoned to attend a conclave for the purpose of
+electing a new Pope.  Alberoni was the opprobrium of the sacred college;
+proceedings, as I have said, were in progress to deprive him of his
+cardinalship.  The King and Queen of Spain evidently stimulated those
+proceedings: the Pope just dead had opposed him; but the cardinals would
+not agree to his disgrace; they would not consent to strip him of his
+dignity.  The example would have been too dangerous.  That a cardinal,
+prince, or great nobleman, should surrender his hat in order to marry,
+the store of his house demands it; well and good; but to see a cardinal
+deprive himself of his hat by way of penitence, is what his brethren will
+not endure.  A cardinal may be poisoned, stabbed, got rid of altogether,
+but lose his dignity he never can.  Rome must be infallible, or she is
+nothing.
+
+It was decided, that if, at the election of the new Pope, Alberoni were
+not admitted to take part in the proceedings, he always might protest
+against them, and declare them irregular.  Therefore he was, as I have
+said, admitted to the conclave.  He arrived in Rome, without display, in
+his own coach, and was received in the conclave with the same honours as
+all the other cardinals, and performed all the duties of his position.
+
+A few days after the election, he absented himself from Rome, as though
+to see whether proceedings would be continued against him.  But they fell
+of themselves.  The new Pope had no interest in them.  The cardinals
+wished only for silence.  Spain felt at last the inutility of her cries.
+Dubois was in favour of throwing a veil over his former crimes, so that,
+after a short absence, Alberoni hired in Rome a magnificent palace, and
+returned there for good, with the attendance, expense, and display his
+Spanish spoils supplied.  He found himself face to face with the Cardinal
+Giudice, and with Madame des Ursins.  The three formed a rare triangle,
+which caused many a singular scene in home.  After seeing them both die,
+Alberoni became legate at Ferrara, continued there a long time, little
+esteemed at Rome, where he is now living, sound in mind and body, and
+eighty-six years of age.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER CIV
+
+The King attended the Royal Council for the first time on Sunday, the
+18th of February, 1720.  He said nothing while there, or on going away,
+excepting that when M. le Duc d'Orleans, who feared he might grow weary
+of the proceedings, proposed to him to leave, he said he would stop to
+the end.  After this he did not come always, but often, invariably
+remaining to the last, without moving or speaking.  His presence changed
+nothing in the order of our arrangements, because his armchair was always
+there, alone, at the end of the table, and M. le Duc d'Orleans, whether
+his Majesty came or not, had but a "stool" similar to those we all sat
+upon.  Step by step this council had been so much increased, that now, by
+the entry of the Duc de Berwick, it numbered sixteen members!  To say
+truth, we were far too many, and we had several among us who would have
+been much better away.  I had tried, but in vain, to make the Regent see
+this.  He did see at last, but it was too late; and meanwhile we were, as
+I have stated, sixteen in the council.  I remember that one day, when the
+King came, a kitten followed him, and some time after jumped upon him,
+and thence upon the table, where it began to walk; the Duc de Noailles
+immediately crying out, because he did not like cats.  M. le Duc
+d'Orleans wished to drive the animal away.  I smiled, and said, "Oh,
+leave the kitten alone, it will make the seventeenth."
+
+M. le Duc d'Orleans burst out laughing at this, and looked at the
+company, who laughed also, the King as well.  His Majesty briefly spoke
+of it to me on the morrow, as though appreciating the joke, which, by the
+way, immediately ran over all Paris.
+
+The Abbe Dubois still maintained his pernicious influence over the
+Regent, and still looked forward to a cardinalship as the reward of his
+scheming, his baseness, and his perfidy.  In the meantime, the
+Archbishopric of Cambrai became vacant (by the death, at Rome, of the
+Cardinal Tremoille).  That is to say, the richest archbishopric, and one
+of the best posts in the Church.  The Abbe Dubois was only tonsured;
+150,000 livres, a year tempted him, and perhaps this position, from which
+he could more easily elevate himself to the cardinalship.  Impudent as he
+might be, powerful as might be the empire he had acquired over his
+master, he was much embarrassed, and masked his effrontery under a trick.
+He said to M. le Duc d'Orleans, he had a pleasant dream; and related to
+him that he had dreamt he was Archbishop of Cambrai!  The Regent, who
+smelt the rat, turned on his heel, and said nothing.  Dubois, more and
+more embarrassed, stammered, and paraphrased his dream; then, re-assuring
+himself by an effort, asked, in an offhand manner, why he should not
+obtain it, His Royal Highness, by his will alone, being able thus to make
+his fortune.
+
+M. le Duc d'Orleans was indignant, even terrified, little scrupulous as
+he might be as to the choice of bishops, and in a tone of contempt
+replied to Dubois, "What, you Archbishop of Cambrai!" making him thus
+feel his low origin, and still more the debauchery and scandal of his
+life.  Dubois was, however, too far advanced to stop on the road, and
+cited examples; unfortunately these were only too many.
+
+M. le Duc d'Orleans, less touched by such bad reasoning than embarrassed
+how to resist the ardor of a man whom for a long time he had not dated to
+contradict, tried to get out of the difficulty, by saying, "But you being
+such a scoundrel, where will you find another to consecrate you?"
+
+"Oh, if it's only that!"  exclaimed Dubois, "the thing is done.  I know
+very well who will consecrate me; he is not far from here."
+
+"And who the devil is he who will dare to do so?" asked the Regent.
+
+"Would you like to know?" replied the Abbe, "and does the matter rest
+only upon that?"
+
+"Well, who?" said the Regent.
+
+"Your chief chaplain," replied Dubois, "who is close at hand.  Nothing
+will please him better; I will run and speak to him."
+
+And thereupon he embraces the knees of M. le Duc d'Orleans (who, caught
+thus in his own trap, had not the strength to refuse), runs to the Bishop
+of Nantes, says that he is to have Cambrai, begs the Bishop to consecrate
+him, and receives his promise to do so, returns, wheels round, tells M.
+le Duc d'Orleans that his chief chaplain has agreed to the consecration;
+thanks, praises, admires the Regent, fixes more and more firmly the
+office by regarding it as settled, and by persuading M. le Duc d'Orleans,
+who dares not say no; and in this manner was Dubois made Archbishop of
+Cambrai!
+
+The extreme scandal of this nomination caused a strange, stir.  Impudent
+as was the Abbe Dubois, he was extremely embarrassed; and M. le Duc
+d'Orleans so much ashamed, that it was soon remarked he was humbled if
+you spoke to him upon the subject.  The next question was, from whom
+Dubois was to receive holy orders?  The Cardinal de Noailles was applied
+to, but he stoutly refused to assist in any way.  It may be imagined what
+an affront this was to Dubois.  He never in his life pardoned the
+Cardinal, who was nevertheless universally applauded for his refusal.
+But the Abbe Dubois was not a man to be daunted by an ordinary obstacle;
+he turned his glances elsewhere, and soon went through all the
+formalities necessary.
+
+The very day he took orders there was a Regency Council at the old
+Louvre, because the measles, which were then very prevalent, even in the
+Palais Royal, hindered us from meeting as usual in the Tuileries.
+A Regency Council without the Abbe Dubois present was a thing to marvel
+at, and yet his arrival to-day caused even more surprise than his absence
+would have caused.  But he was not a man to waste his time in
+thanksgiving for what had just happened to him.  This was a new scandal,
+which revived and aggravated the first.  Everybody had arrived in the
+cabinet of the council, M. le Duc d'Orleans also; we were scattered about
+and standing.  I was in a corner of the lower end, when I saw Dubois
+enter in a stout coat, with his ordinary bearing.  We did not expect him
+on such a day, and naturally enough cried out surprised.  M. le Prince de
+Conti, with his father's sneering manner, spoke to the Abbe Dubois, on
+his appearance among us on the very day of taking orders, and expressed
+his surprise at it with the most pathetic malignity imaginable.
+
+Dubois, who had not had time to reply one word, let him say to the end;
+then coldly observed, that if he had been a little more familiar with
+ancient history, he would not have found what astonished him very
+strange, since he (the Abbe) had only followed the example of Saint-
+Ambrose, whose ordination he began to relate.  I did not wait for his
+recital; at the mere mention of Saint-Ambrose I flew to the other end of
+the cabinet, horror-struck at the comparison Dubois had just made, and
+fearing lest I should be tempted to say to him, that the ordination of
+Saint-Ambrose had been forced upon him in spite of his resistance.  This
+impious citation of Saint-Ambrose ran all over the town with the effect
+that may be imagined.  The nomination and this ordination took place
+towards the end of February.
+
+I will finish at once all that relates to this matter, so as not to
+separate it, or have to return to it.  Dubois had his bulls at the
+commencement of May, and the consecration was fixed for Sunday the 9th
+of June.  All Paris and the Court were invited to it, myself excepted.
+I was on bad terms with Dubois, because I in no way spared him when with
+M. le Duc d'Orleans.  He on his side, fearing the power I had over the
+Regent, the liberty I enjoyed with him, and the freedom with which I
+spoke to him, did as much as he could to injure me, and to weaken the
+confidence of M. le Duc d'Orleans in me.  Dubois and I continued,
+nevertheless, to be on good terms with each other in appearance, but it
+was in appearance only.
+
+This consecration was to be magnificent, and M. le Duc d'Orleans was to
+be present at it.  If the nomination and the ordination of the Abbe
+Dubois had caused much stir, scandal, and horror, the superb preparations
+for the consecration caused even more: Great was the indignation against
+M. le Duc d'Orleans.  I went, therefore, to him the evening before this
+strange ceremony was to take place, to beg him not to attend it.  I
+represented to him that the nomination and ordination of the Abbe Dubois
+had created frightful effect upon the public, and that the consecration
+of a man of such low extraction, and whose manners and mode of life were
+so notorious; would create more.  I added, that if he attended this
+ceremony, people would say it was simply for the purpose of mocking God,
+and insulting His Church; that the effect of this would be terrible,
+and always much to be feared; and that people would say the Abbe Dubois
+abused the mastery he had over him, and that this was evidence of
+dependence would draw down upon him hatred, disdain, and shame, the
+results of which were to be dreaded.  I concluded by saying, that I spoke
+to him as his disinterested servitor; that his absence or his presence at
+this consecration would change in, nothing the fortune of the Abbe
+Dubois, who would be Archbishop of Cambrai all the same without
+prostituting his master in the eyes of all France, and of all Europe,
+by compelling him to be guilty of a measure to which it would be seen he
+had been urged by force.  I conjured him not to go; and to show him on
+what terms I was with the Abbe Dubois, I explained to him I was the sole
+man of rank he had not invited to his consecration; but that,
+notwithstanding this circumstance, if he would give me his word that he
+would not go, I on my side would agree to go, though my horror at doing
+so would be very great.
+
+My discourse, pronounced with warmth and developed with freedom, was
+listened to from beginning to end.  I was surprised to hear the Regent
+say I was right, but I opened my eyes very wide when he embraced me, said
+that I spoke like a true friend, and that he would give me his word, and
+stick to it, he would not go.  We parted upon this, I strengthening him
+in his resolution, promising anew I would go, and he thanking me for this
+effort.  He showed no impatience, no desire that I should go; for I knew
+him well, and I examined him to the very bottom of his soul, and quitted
+him much pleased at having turned him from a measure so disgraceful arid
+so extraordinary.  Who could have guessed that he would not keep his
+word?  But so it happened.
+
+Although as I have said I felt sure of him, yet the extreme weakness of
+this prince, and the empire the Abbe Dubois had acquired over him;
+induced me to be quite certain of him before going to the consecration.
+I sent therefore the next morning to the Palais Royal to inquire after M.
+le Duc d'Orleans; keeping my carriage all ready for a start.  But I was
+much confused, accustomed as I might be to his miserable vacillation, to
+hear from the person I had sent, that he had just seen the Regent jump
+into his coach, surrounded by all the pomp usual on grand occasions,
+and set out for the consecration.  I had my horses put up at once, and
+locked myself into my cabinet.
+
+A day or two after I learnt from a friend of Madame de Parabere, then the
+reigning Sultana, but not a faithful one, that M. le Duc d'Orleans had
+been with her the previous night, and had spoken to her in praise of me,
+saying he would not go to the ceremony, and that he was very grateful to
+me for having dissuaded him from going.  La Parabere praised me, admitted
+I was right, but her conclusion was that he would go.
+
+M. le Duc d'Orleans, surprised, said to her she was then mad.
+
+"Be it so," replied she, "but you will go."
+
+"But I tell you I will not go," he rejoined.
+
+"Yes, yes, I tell you," said she; "you will go."
+
+"But," replied he, "this is admirable.  You say M. de Saint-Simon is
+quite right, why then should I go?"
+
+"Because I wish it," said she.
+
+"Very good," replied he, "and why do you wish I should go--what madness
+is this?"
+
+"I wish it because--," said she.
+
+"Oh, because," replied he, "that's no reason; say why you wish it."
+
+(After some dispute) "You obstinately desire then to know?  Are you not
+aware that the Abbe Dubois and I quarreled four days ago, and that we
+have not yet made it up.  He mixes in everything.  He will know that you
+have been with me to-night.  If to-morrow you do not go to his
+consecration, he will not fail to believe it is I who have hindered you;
+nothing will take this idea out of his head; he will never pardon me;
+he will undermine in a hundred ways my credit with you, and finish by
+embroiling us.  But I don't wish such a thing to happen, and for that
+reason you must go to his consecration, although M. de Saint-Simon is
+right."
+
+Thereupon ensued a feeble debate, then resolution and promise to go,
+which was very faithfully kept.
+
+As for me I could only deplore the feebleness of the Regent, to whom I
+never afterwards spoke of this consecration, or he to me; but he was very
+much ashamed of himself, and much embarrassed with me afterwards.  I do
+not know whether he carried his weakness so far as to tell Dubois what I
+had said to hinder him from going to the ceremony or whether the Abbe was
+told by La Parabere, who thought thus to take credit to herself for
+having changed the determination of M. le Duc d'Orleans, and to show her
+credit over him.  But Dubois was perfectly informed of it, and never
+pardoned me.
+
+The Val de Grace was chosen for the consecration as being a royal
+monastery, the most magnificent of Paris, and the most singular church.
+It was superbly decorated; all France was invited, and nobody dared to
+stop away or to be out of sight during the whole ceremony.
+
+There were tribunes with blinds prepared for the ambassadors and
+Protestant ministers.  There was another more magnificent for M. le Duc
+d'Orleans and M. le Duc de Chartres, whom he took there.  There were
+places for the ladies, and as M. le Duc d'Orleans entered by the
+monastery, and his tribune was within, it was open to all comers, so that
+outside and inside were filled with refreshments of all kinds, which
+officers distributed in profusion.  This disorder continued all day, on
+account of the large number of tables that were served without and within
+for the subordinate people of the fete and all who liked to thrust
+themselves in.  The chief gentlemen of the chamber of M. le Duc
+d'Orleans, and his chief officers did the business of the ceremony;
+placed distinguished people in their seats, received them, conducted
+them, and other of his officers paid similar attentions to less
+considerable people, while, all the watch and all the police were
+occupied in looking after the arrival and departure of the carriages
+in proper and regular order.
+
+During the consecration, which was but little decent as far as the
+consecrated and the spectators were concerned, above all when leaving the
+building, M. le Duc d'Orleans evinced his satisfaction at finding so many
+considerable people present, and then went away to Asnieres to dine with
+Madame Parabere--very glad that a ceremony was over upon which he had
+bestowed only indirect attention, from the commencement to the end.  All
+the prelates, the distinguished Abbes, and a considerable number of the
+laity, were invited during the consecration by the chief officers of M.
+le Duc d'Orleans to dine at the Palais Royal.  The same officers did the
+honours of the feast, which was served with the most splendid abundance
+and delicacy.  There were two services of thirty covers each, in a large
+room of the grand suite of apartments, filled with the most considerable
+people of Paris, and several other tables equally well served in
+adjoining rooms for people less distinguished.  M. le Duc d'Orleans gave
+to the new Archbishop a diamond of great price to serve him as ring.
+
+All this day was given up to that sort of triumph which draws down
+neither the approbation of man nor the blessing of God.  I saw nothing of
+it all, however, and M. le Duc d'Orleans and I never spoke of it.
+
+The Comte de Horn had been in Paris for the last two months, leading an
+obscure life of gaming and debauchery.  He was a man of two-and-twenty,
+tall and well made, of that ancient and grand family of Horn, known in
+the eleventh century among the little dynasties of the Low Countries, and
+afterwards by a long series of illustrious generations.  The Comte de
+Horn in question had been made captain in the Austrian army, less on
+account of his youth than because he was such an ill-behaved dog, causing
+vast trouble to his mother and brother.  They heard so much of the
+disorderly life he was leading in Paris, that they sent there a
+confidential gentleman with money to pay his debts, to try and persuade
+him to return, and failing in this, to implore the authority of the
+Regent (to whom, through Madame, the Horns were related), in order to
+compel him to do so.  As ill-luck would have it, this gentleman arrived
+the day after the Comte had committed the crime I am about to relate.
+
+On Friday, the 22nd of March, 1720, he went to the Rue Quincampoix,
+wishing, he said, to buy 100,000 ecus worth of shares, and for that
+purpose made an appointment with a stockbroker in a cabaret.  The stock-
+broker came there with his pocket-book and his shares; the Comte de Horn
+came also, accompanied, as he said, by two of his friends; a moment
+after, they all three threw themselves upon this unfortunate stock-
+broker; the Comte de Horn stabbed him several times with a poniard, and
+seized his pocket-book; one of his pretended friends (a Piedmontese named
+Mille), seeing that the stock-broker was not dead, finished the work.
+At the noise they made the people of the house came, not sufficiently
+quick to prevent the murder, but in time to render themselves masters of
+the assassins, and to arrest them.  In the midst of the scuffle, the
+other cut-throat escaped, but the Comte de Horn and Mille were not so
+fortunate.  The cabaret people sent for the officers of justice, who
+conducted the criminals to the Conciergerie.  This horrible crime,
+committed in broad daylight, immediately made an immense stir, and
+several kinsmen of this illustrious family at once went to M. le Duc
+d'Orleans to beg for mercy; but the Regent avoided speaking to them as
+much as possible, and very rightly ordered full and prompt justice to be
+done.
+
+At last, the relatives of Horn penetrated to the Regent: they tried to
+make the Count pass for mad, saying even that he had an uncle confined in
+an asylum, and begging that he might be confined also.  But the reply
+was, that madmen who carried their madness to fury could not be got rid
+of too quickly.  Repulsed in this manner, they represented what an infamy
+it would be to their illustrious family, related to nearly all the
+sovereigns of Europe, to have one of its members tried and condemned.
+M. le Duc d'Orleans replied that the infamy was in the crime, and not in
+the punishment.  They pressed him upon the honour the family had in being
+related to him.  "Very well, gentlemen," said he, "I will divide the
+shame with you."
+
+The trial was neither long nor difficult.  Law and the Abbe Dubois, so
+interested in the safety of the stock-jobbers (without whom the paper
+must have fallen at once), supported M. le Duc d'Orleans might and main,
+in order to render him inexorable, and he, to avoid the persecutions he
+unceasingly experienced on the other side, left nothing undone in order
+to hurry the Parliament into a decision; the affair, therefore; went full
+speed, and it seemed likely that the Comte de Horn would be broken on the
+wheel.
+
+The relatives, no longer hoping to save the criminal, thought only of
+obtaining a commutation of the sentence.  Some of them came to me, asking
+me to save them: though I was not related to the Horn family, they
+explained to me, that death on the wheel would throw into despair all
+that family, and everybody connected with it in the Low Countries,
+and in Germany, because in those parts there was a great and important
+difference between the punishments of persons of quality who had
+committed crimes; that decapitation in no way influenced the family of
+the decapitated, but that death on the wheel threw such infamy upon it,
+that the uncles, aunts, brothers, and sisters, and the three next
+generations, were excluded from entering into any noble chapter, which,
+in addition to the shame, was a very injurious deprivation, annihilating
+the family's chance of ecclesiastic preferment; this reason touched me,
+and I promised to do my best with M. le Duc d'Orleans to obtain a
+commutation of the sentence.
+
+I was going off to La Ferme to profit by the leisure of Holy Week.
+I went therefore to M. le Duc d'Orleans, and explained to him what I had
+just learnt.  I said that after the detestable crime the Comte de Horn
+had committed, every one must feel that he was worthy of death; but that
+every one could not admit it was necessary to break him on the wheel, in
+order to satisfy the ends of justice.  I showed him how the family would
+suffer if this sentence were carried out, and I concluded by proposing to
+the Regent a 'mezzo termine', such as he was so fond of.
+
+I suggested that the decree ordering death by the wheel should be
+pronounced.  That another decree should at the same time be prepared and
+kept ready signed and sealed, with only a date to fill in, revoking the
+first, and changing the punishment into decapitation.  That at the last
+moment this second decree should be produced, and immediately afterwards
+the head of the Comte de Horn be cut off.  M. le Duc d'Orleans offered no
+objection, but consented at once to my plan.  I said to him, by way of
+conclusion, that I was going to set out the next day, and that I begged
+him not to be shaken in the determination he had just formed, by the
+entreaties of Dubois or Law, both of whom were strongly in favour of
+punishment by the wheel.  He assured me he would keep firm; reiterated
+the assurance; I took leave of him; and the next day went to La Ferme.
+
+He was firm, however, in his usual manner.  Dubois and Law besieged him,
+and led the attack so well that he gave in, and the first thing I learnt
+at La Ferme was that the Comte de Horn had been broken alive on the wheel
+at the Greve, on Holy Friday; the 26th March, 1720, about 4 o'clock in
+the afternoon, and the scoundrel Mille with him on the same scaffold,
+after having both suffered torture.
+
+The result of this was as I anticipated.  The Horn family and all the
+grand nobility of the Low Countries, many of Germany, were outraged, and
+contained themselves neither in words nor in writings.  Some of them even
+talked of strange vengeance, and a long time after the death of M. le Duc
+d'Orleans, I met with certain of the gentlemen upon whose hearts the
+memory of this punishment still weighed heavily.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+A cardinal may be poisoned, stabbed, got rid of altogether
+Enriched one at the expense of the other
+Few would be enriched at the expense of the many
+I abhorred to gain at the expense of others
+Juggle, which put the wealth of Peter into the pockets of Paul
+Not allowing ecclesiastics to meddle with public affairs
+People with difficulty believe what they have seen
+Rome must be infallible, or she is nothing
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext Memoirs of Louis XIV. and The Regency,
+v13, by the Duc de Saint-Simon
+
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