d find almost as
great a temporary success, and blaze, like Law's, the comet of a season.
While the season lasted the comet blazed with a light that filled the
social sky.

Law was for the time the most powerful man in France. A momentary
whisper that he was out of health sent the funds down, and eclipsed the
gayety of nations. He was admitted into the Regent's privy council, and
made Controller-general of the finances of France. The result was
inevitable; there was as yet nothing behind the promises and the shares
of the Mississippi Company. If finance could have gone on forever
promise-crammed, things would have been all right. But you cannot feed
capons so, as Hamlet tells us; and you cannot long feed {186}
shareholders so. Law's scheme suddenly collapsed one day, and brought
ruin on hundreds of thousands in France. While, however, it was still
afloat in air, its gaudy colors dazzled the eyes of the South Sea Company
in England.

[Sidenote: 1710-1720--The bubble swells]

At the north-west end of Threadneedle Street, within view of the remains
of Richard the Third's Palace of Crosby, stands a solid red-brick
building, substantial, respectable, business-like, dignified with the
dignity of some century and a half of existence. Time has softened and
deepened its ruddy hue to a mellow, rich tone, contrasting pleasantly
with the white copings and facings of its windows, and suggesting
agreeably something of the smooth brown cloth and neat white linen of a
well-to-do city gentleman of the last century. Yet that solemn, massive,
prosperous-looking building is the enduring monument of one of the most
gigantic shams on record--a sham and swindle that was the prolific parent
of a whole brood of shams and swindles; for that building, with honesty
and credit and mercantile honor written in its every line and angle, is
all that remains of the South Sea House. It is a melancholy place--the
Hall of the Kings at Karnak is hardly more melancholy or more
ghost-haunted. Not that the house has now that "desolation something
like Balclutha's" which Charles Lamb attributed to it more than half a
century ago. The place has changed greatly since Elia the Italian and
Elia the Englishman were fellow-clerks at the South Sea House. Those
dusty maps of Mexico, "dim as dreams," have long been taken away. The
company itself, having outlived alike its fame and its infamy, lingering
inappropriately like some guest that "hath outstaye