of a fair. Booths and tents were erected
for the transaction of business and the sale of refreshments, and gamblers
with their roulette tables stationed themselves in the very middle of the
place, and reaped a golden, or rather a paper, harvest from the throng.
The boulevards and public gardens were forsaken; parties of pleasure took
their walks in preference in the Place Vendome, which became the
fashionable lounge of the idle, as well as the general rendezvous of the
busy. The noise was so great all day, that the chancellor, whose court was
situated in the square, complained to the regent and the municipality,
that he could not hear the advocates. Law, when applied to, expressed his
willingness to aid in the removal of the nuisance, and for this purpose
entered into a treaty with the Prince de Carignan for the Hotel de
Soissons, which had a garden of several acres in the rear. A bargain was
concluded, by which Law became the purchaser of the hotel at an enormous
price, the prince reserving to himself the magnificent gardens as a new
source of profit. They contained some fine statues and several fountains,
and were altogether laid out with much taste. As soon as Law was installed
in his new abode, an edict was published, forbidding all persons to buy or
sell stock any where but in the gardens of the Hotel de Soissons. In the
midst, among the trees, about five hundred small tents and pavilions were
erected, for the convenience of the stock-jobbers. Their various colours,
the gay ribands and banners which floated from them, the busy crowds which
passed continually in and out--the incessant hum of voices, the noise, the
music, and the strange mixture of business and pleasure on the
countenances of the throng, all combined to give the place an air of
enchantment that quite enraptured the Parisians. The Prince de Carignan
made enormous profits while the delusion lasted. Each tent was let at the
rate of five hundred livres a month; and, as there were at least five
hundred of them, his monthly revenue from this source alone must have
amounted to 250,000 livres, or upwards of 10,000l. sterling.

[Illustration: HOTEL DE SOISSONS.]

The honest old soldier, Marshal Villars, was so vexed to see the folly
which had smitten his countrymen, that he never could speak with temper on
the subject. Passing one day through the Place Vendome in his carriage,
the choleric gentleman was so annoyed at the infatuation of the people,
that he ab