worse than bankrupt! Then,
indeed, you have worse than repudiated the debts of France."

"Ah bah! _mon drole_! You are ill to-day. You have a _migraine_,
perhaps? What folly for you to speak thus. France hath swiftly grown so
strong that she can never again be ruined. What ails my magician, my
Prince of Golconda, this morning? France bankrupt! Even were it so, does
that relieve me of this begging of De Prie, of Parabere, and all the
others? My God, Monsieur L'as, they are like leeches! They think me made
of money."

"And your Grace thinks France made of money."

"Nay; I only think my director-general is made of money, or can make it
as he likes."

And this was ever the end of Law's reproaches and his expostulations.
This, then, was to be the end of his glorious enterprises, thought he,
as he sat one morning, staring out of the window when left alone. This
sordid love for money for its own sake--this was to be the limit of an
ambition which dealt in theories, in men, in nations, and not in livres
and louis d'or! Law smiled bitterly. For an instant he was not the
confident man of action and of affairs, not the man claiming with
assurance the perpetual protection of good fortune. He sat there, alone,
feeling nothing but the great human craving for sympathy and trust. A
line of carriages swept back across the street at his window, and
streams of nobles besought entrance at his door. And the man who had
called out all these, the man for whose friendship all Europe
clamored--that man sat with aching heart, longing, craving, begging now
of fortune only the one thing--a friend!

At last he arose, his face showing lean and haggard. He passed into
another room.

"Will," said he, "I am at a place where I am dizzy and need a hand. You
know what hand it means for me. Can you go--will you take her, as you
did once before for me, a message? I can not go. I can not venture into
her presence. Will you go? Tell her it is the last time! Tell her it is
the last!"

CHAPTER VII

THE MIRACLE UNWROUGHT

"You do not know my brother, Lady Catharine."

Thus spoke Will Law, who had been admitted but a half hour since at the
great door of the private hotel where dwelt the Lady Catharine Knollys.

"'Twould seem, then, 'tis by no fault of his," replied Lady Catharine,
hotly.

"And is that not well? There are many in Paris who would fain change
places with you, Lady Catharine."

"Would heaven they might!" exclaimed she. "Wou