ench ladies to retain Law in their company, which will
make him blush or smile according as he happens to be very
modest or the reverse. It is related in the _Letters of Madame
Charlotte Elizabeth de Baviere, Duchess of Orleans_, vol. ii.
p. 274.

M. de Chirac, a celebrated physician, had bought stock at an unlucky
period, and was very anxious to sell out. Stock, however, continued to
fall for two or three days, much to his alarm. His mind was filled with
the subject, when he was suddenly called upon to attend a lady who
imagined herself unwell. He arrived, was shewn up stairs, and felt the
lady's pulse. "It falls! it falls! good God! it falls continually!" said
he musingly, while the lady looked up in his face all anxiety for his
opinion. "Oh, M. de Chirac," said she, starting to her feet and ringing
the bell for assistance; "I am dying! I am dying! it falls! it falls! it
falls!" "What falls?" inquired the doctor in amazement. "My pulse! my
pulse!" said the lady; "I must be dying." "Calm your apprehensions, my
dear madam," said M. de Chirac; "I was speaking of the stocks. The truth
is, I have been a great loser, and my mind is so disturbed, I hardly know
what I have been saying."

The price of shares sometimes rose ten or twenty per cent in the course of
a few hours, and many persons in the humbler walks of life, who had risen
poor in the morning, went to bed in affluence. An extensive holder of
stock, being taken ill, sent his servant to sell two hundred and fifty
shares, at eight thousand livres each, the price at which they were then
quoted. The servant went, and, on his arrival in the Jardin de Soissons,
found that in the interval the price had risen to ten thousand livres. The
difference of two thousand livres on the two hundred and fifty shares,
amounting to 500,000 livres, or 20,000l. sterling, he very coolly
transferred to his own use, and giving the remainder to his master, set
out the same evening for another country. Law's coachman in a very short
time made money enough to set up a carriage of his own, and requested
permission to leave his service. Law, who esteemed the man, begged of him
as a favour, that he would endeavour, before he went, to find a substitute
as good as himself. The coachman consented, and in the evening brought two
of his former comrades, telling Mr. Law to choose between them, and he
would take the other. Cookmaids and footmen were now and then as lucky,