vels
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 wou