Chapter 4 The Gamester by Rafael Sabatini
MR LAW'S BANK
In the months that followed, months of waiting in the hope of being yet served by opportunity, Mr Law did little more than cultivate relations that might, if he were fortunate, be of ultimate service.
Knowledge of his great favour with the Regent opened wide the doors of that fastidious beau monde for himself and Catherine. She, taking full advantage of this, was soon launched upon amiable distractions. In addition to her husband's fame she enjoyed the patronage of the British ambassador and his lady, and in herself she commanded attention by a beauty and vivacity typically and delicately English that still seemed to preserve the freshness of girlhood. All this came timely to reconcile her to her Parisian sojourn.
As for her husband, his closest associates in those days were the Marquis d'Argenson, who had stood his friend before the Council; the Duke of Antin, who enjoyed the distinction of being Madame de Montespan's only legitimate child; the Count of Horn, that engaging libertine who was a member of one of the noblest houses in Europe; and the Abbé Dubois, between whom and himself the link was purely one of mutual ambition.
Dubois, of whom the Duke of Saint-Simon has left us in his encyclopaedic mémoirs a repulsive portrait, was of a very different stamp from the other three. Of the lowest extraction--the son of a poor apothecary of Brive la Gaillarde--but of great talent, exceptional parasitical instincts, and an unparalleled audacity, he had known how to profit by a succession of happy chances.
Appointed reader to the Duke of Orléans whilst his Grace was still Duke of Chartres, he had found his foot on the first rung of a ladder from which nothing could thereafter shake him. It was said that he had won the good graces of the young duke by a servility so base as not even to have scrupled to become his pander, guiding his first essays in those arts of debauchery which in the public eye had obscured the great and varied ability of his pupil.
Be that as it may, now that Philippe of Orléans was Regent of France and--having flung the bastards from the right of succession--heir presumptive to the throne, Dubois was become, under the Duke, the greatest man in the State.
His clerical title was a mere usurpation. For any man who could boast no birth, the title of Abbé served in some small degree to supply the lack, conferring a vague social distinction which had been of advantage to Dubois in his early days. His claim to it rested upon no more than that like many a seminarist who never ripened into priesthood, he had taken minor orders at a time when he was still destined for the Church. That he was no priest did not deter him from seeking further ecclesiastical honours.
Hoping to become a second Mazarin--who also was no priest--he aspired to wear like Mazarin the red hat of a cardinal. For the ultimate gratification of this ambition two things were necessary; political eminence and wealth.
The first he had acquired and was rapidly increasing; for the second, with the vision that made him what he was, he recognized in John Law a manipulator of the philosopher's stone, whom it might repay him to support.
It was to him that Mr Law, whose vision was no less acute, turned at last for assistance in creating opportunity when weary of waiting for opportunity to manifest itself.
The Abbé was lodged in the Palais Royal, in the very quarters which he had tenanted as a modest tutor to the young Duke. But he had very materially embellished them, and he was known to keep an excellent table. A wizened little man in black cassock and skull-cap, his lean sharp face was deeply lined and sunken of cheeks as if most of his molars were missing. His hair was red and his pink-rimmed eyes were uncannily piercing. He was accounted by many to resemble the satirist Arouet, whom the Duchess of Maine was patronizing and who later was to call himself Monsieur de Voltaire.
He received Mr Law with effusive purrings, gave him the best chair and called for wine to refresh him, and then anticipated his purpose by an admonition.
"It is not by sitting patiently at home, my dear Monsieur Lass, that one conquers the world. The world does not offer itself like a slut to be possessed. It is necessary to go forth and subdue it."
"I perceive it," said Mr Law. "That is why I come to ask you if you can find me a pretext for reawakening the Regent's slumbering interest in me."
"A pretext! One doesn't find pretexts. One invents them. Inveniam viam aut faciam." He glanced at the ormolu timepiece on the mantelshelf. "I will accord you ten minutes in which to invent one now. Then I shall take you to His Highness, and I shall expect a man of your wit plausibly to justify the intrusion."
Casting about him for this justification, Mr Law opportunely recalled not so much the Earl of Stair's neglected request for political assistance, as the information gleaned from his lordship on the events at Sceaux; and by the time the Abbé had introduced him to the Regent's presence he had cynically discovered that in this lay all the pretext he required.
A prince who was glad to dispense with etiquette on every occasion received him without ceremony in his laboratory, perhaps the oddest of the many settings with which the Regent of France provided himself. It was a chamber plainly furnished, with bench and furnace, fantastic retorts, cabinets of phials, and mysterious utensils.
His Highness, in a coarse smock, to protect his finery, was amusing himself with the chemical research which added an addiction to occult practices and even to the distillation of poisons to the scandalous reputation he enjoyed.
"My dear baron, I have to reproach you with neglecting me."
This was encouraging. "I have been hoping for monseigneur's commands. If I intrude without them now, it is because that has come to my knowledge with which I account it my duty to acquaint Your Highness."
"Why speak of intrusion? You find me at work upon a mere decoction of herbs. If I am not," he laughed, "at the alchemist's more serious business of making gold, it is because for that I prefer to put my faith in such arts as yours. But sit, baron. Sit." He indicated a three-legged stool, and found a perch for himself on the edge of a table. "So you bring me news, do you?"
Mr Law, in some inward shame of his own disingenuousness, disclosed what he had learnt of the plotting at Sceaux, without, however, revealing the source of his information.
To Mr Law's surprise, and perhaps to his relief, the Regent was content to laugh. "Is that all? My faith, let them conspire by all means if it amuses them. I am aware of it, and I prefer that the cripple and his dwarf should plot rather than employ their poetasters to write scandalous doggerel about me. There's one of them, a disgustingly witty fellow named Arouet--an ordure--thinking things over in the Bastille at this moment. It is sad to punish men for the offences of that little cabotine of a duchess. But what would you?"
Thus, in amused contempt, he would dismiss the matter, alluding to the Duke and Duchess of Maine in the terms commonly applied to them by His Highness' outspoken Bavarian mother--as the cripple and the dwarf--because the duke was lame and the duchess had never outgrown the inches of a child.
Even when Mr Law found it expedient to add that the Spanish ambassador was taking a hand in the present activities, the Regent was merely moved to further scornful amusement. "Cellamare! Bah! The old rake is probably an aspirant for her grace's favours, exiguous though they be and he plays comedy to humour her. I esteem your solicitude, my dear Baron; but it's all not worth a thought. You disappoint me. The sight of you brought the hope that you might be seeking me with some irresistible argument for the Council. And speaking of money, I hear that a few nights ago you eased the Count of Horn of five thousand louis. A handsome, round sum. Has he paid you?"
"I have his note of hand."
The Regent laughed. "To be sure you believe in paper. I wish you could persuade my Council to do the same."
This, thought Mr Law, was his cue. He might wait in vain for a better.
"Persuasion is vain against obstinacy. But I might possibly prevail by demonstration."
"Demonstration?" The Regent looked at him with keener interest. "Have you a demonstration in mind?"
Mr Law had. "Grant me a charter, monseigneur, to found a private bank at my own risk, and by it I will undertake to prove my case.''
"A private bank, eh?" The Regent, chin in hand, took thought. "It will need money, my friend."
"Six millions should suffice as a beginning."
"Do you possess six millions?"
"I possess two. I can create another two by an issue of banknotes for that amount, to which the original two in gold would serve as a fund of guarantee. This would give me four millions. The remainder I could coax into existence."
"In God's name tell me how."
"By an issue of shares--of, say, five thousand livres each."
"And who will buy them?"
"Those who are wise enough to have faith in me."
"It is possible that there may not be much wisdom in France."
Mr Law revealed that he had an inducement to offer. He would make his shares payable in four instalments, one quarter in gold and three quarters in State Bonds, which he would accept at their face value although at the moment they were worth not more than one half of it. He would count upon this to render his shares attractive at least to the bondholders, whilst to render his plan attractive to the Regent there was the prospect of absorbing some of the bonds and to that extent relieving the State of some part of the burden it carried. Nor was that all: in order to create an actual demand for his bank-notes he would make them payable in specie of the weight and value which it enjoyed at the time of its issue. Thus, being guaranteed against any fresh debasement of the coinage, this novel paper currency would possess the allurement of a stability with which gold was no longer credited.
The Regent was impressed. He consented to discuss it further and at great length, until filled with increasing wonder of this wizardry, as he accounted it, he ended by promising Mr Law his charter for a private establishment in which, after all, the State would be nowise compromised.
Mr Law departed well content, summoned his brother to Paris, and without waiting for his arrival set about seeking a house for his purposes.
He found it in the Rue Quincampoix, a moderately wide street, some four hundred yards long, situated between the Rue Saint-Martin and the Rue Saint-Denis. It did not enjoy the best of reputations, being tenanted chiefly by money-changers, usurers, and men describing themselves as bankers, who were no better than pawnbrokers. The house he found, however, was large and roomy, and there in early May of that year 1716, when he received his charter, he set up his establishment, under the designation of the Banque Générale and the patronage of the Regent.
It became at once the object of the hostility of Noailles and his following, who feared that this Banque Générale might be no more than a stepping stone to that financial ascendancy which Mr Law's exposition to the Council of Finance and his favour with the Regent seemed to foreshadow. Under the Duke's inspiration, the pamphleteers went to work to shape public opinion. They poured scorn upon the undertaking. The Gazette de la Régence in terms of raillery invited the world to laugh at a folly doomed to failure.
Nevertheless the Bank made headway. Mr Law knew what he was doing. His money-changing and his discounting of bills offered rates so advantageous that very soon the usurers of the Rue Quincampoix were in danger of being put out of business. Easy too were the rates at which he advanced money on reasonable security, whilst his paper issue, mistrusted at first, came gradually to commend itself to traders, as he had reckoned, on the score of its convenience, particularly as a means of making remittances.
In establishing the credit of this paper the government itself took a hand. It made use of the banknotes for its payments, and once the public discovered with what promptitude these were cashed confidence awoke. Lastly, when it came to be fully appreciated that the notes were immune from any of those devaluations of specie which had been so disorganizing to commerce, Mr Law's paper was so far preferred that men actually brought gold to the bank to be exchanged for it. Soon it was being sought so eagerly that by the end of the year it actually stood at a premium of one-tenth above specie.
The pamphleteers were at last silenced, and the Gazette, no longer pointing the finger of derision, ate its words and confessed that the bank was growing in favour.
Commerce, which had been languishing, began to derive a stimulus from the liberal assistance which Mr Law supplied. Merchants were encouraged to increase their productivity by advances enabling them to extend their acquisition of raw materials and to increase the number of hands employed. This was the triumph of the gamester who, depending upon the astuteness of his calculations and his ready estimation of a merchant's prospects, was ready to balance the risk of loss in one quarter with the certainty of gain in another.
When at the end of the year he announced a dividend of eight per centum, confidence rose to enthusiasm. The premium on the Bank's paper went higher still, and with a capital of six millions now in gold, Mr Law discovered no inconvenience in increasing to sixty millions his issue of banknotes. With this capital he spread the financing of traders in an ever-widening circle, extending his operations into the provinces, where he set up branches of the bank.
The demonstration of the value of his revolutionary banking system was complete, and he could now laugh at the financiers of the school of Samuel Bernard, who had denounced it as an application of the methods of the gaming table, which if lucky today might well crash tomorrow.
Because the Regent was displaying in the success of the Banque Générale something akin to the pride of a parent, Noailles perceived in it an ever increasing menace to his ambitions. He regarded his presidency of the Council of Finance merely as a stage towards the coveted office of first minister, and if he should be deposed from the former, his chances of the latter would be gravely diminished. So he seized upon the argument of the financiers and used it secretly but diligently to sap the foundations of the bank. He persuaded Rouillé de Coudray and even d'Aguesseau to work with him to the same end.
"Duty and honour alike," was his text, "demand that we put down this foreign adventurer, this gamester who has the effrontery to bring the morals of faro into French banking."
With that same specious argument he was able also to stir the Parliament into hostility of the foreigner.
In the matter of intrigue, however, Mr Law, on his side, did not stand idle. Well aware of how Noailles was working against him, he gave attention to a little countermining.
He began with Dubois, whom he had already bribed with a substantial present of shares in the Bank, and who, in order to frustrate the aims of Noailles which were a menace to his own, was concerned to promote the banker's interests.
The wide mouth of this Richelieu in embryo was stretched in a grin. "Count on me, my dear Baron. With a little patience we shall dispose of Monsieur de Noailles. Meanwhile there are two men who would be glad to lend a hand. The first is d'Argenson, with whom I know that you stand well. To him let your complaint be chiefly of d'Aguesseau, who is Noailles' chief collaborator. Destroy d'Aguesseau and you leave Noailles drained of half his blood; and to destroy d'Aguesseau I know of no one more eager than d'Argenson. The Marquis covets the Chancellorship. So enlist him. Then there is Saint-Simon. He bears Noailles a Satanic malice, and will be glad to lend a hand. We'll think of others. Meanwhile, go to work upon those two."
Mr Law saw d'Argenson that very day and complained of the Chancellor's hostility.
"Ah! d'Aguesseau!" There was scornful laughter in the great voice. "An able man, but he goes in awe of dukes. That is the heel of this Achilles. Noailles does as he pleases with him. Decidedly, my dear Lass, the Regent must be put on his guard against their slanders. That comes within my province as Lieutenant-General."
To make a friend of Saint-Simon, the sometime apostle of bankruptcy, it sufficed to announce that Noailles was proving himself an enemy.
"I confess to you frankly, Monsieur Lass, that I am ignorant of all that concerns finance. After all, it is a confession which a French noble need not blush to make. But I am assured by those who understand these matters that you give proof of uncommon ability with your Bank, and I am sure that you need not allow the jealous hostility of Monsieur de Noailles to trouble you. I shall certainly say so to His Highness."
"Honoured by your support, Monsieur le Duc," Mr Law flattered him, "I may certainly dismiss all uneasiness."
And so when, presently, the Regent issued an edict authorizing the collectors of taxes to receive payment in notes of the Banque Générale, and the Parliament, suddenly mutinous, refused to register it, Dubois, the secret Mentor and confidential agent of the Regent, accounted it his duty to inform his indignant master that Noailles had been the chief promoter of the Parliament's presumption. At the same time it was no less the duty of the Marquis d'Argenson, as the King's Lieutenant-General, regretfully to make known to His Highness that the Chancellor, in rendering himself the catspaw of Monsieur de Noailles in the attempted resistance of the Royal Edict had been guilty of nothing less than a betrayal of his trust. Finally Monsieur de Saint-Simon, his dark face primly set, offered His Highness the opinion that if the Duke of Noailles took a greater interest in finance than became a gentleman, it was clear, at least, that he knew no more about it than a gentleman should.
Each was gratified, and perhaps surprised, that his comments should be received by His Highness without levity. Confirmed in his intentions by the advice of men so trustworthy as these three, the Regent peremptorily ordered the Parliament in the King's name to register the edict without further discussion or delay. Against this haughty insistence it was idle for Noailles and his friends to argue that in such a matter the Parliament should bow only to an order from the Council. The Parliament intimidated by the Regent's firm tone, indeed, shocked now by its own temerity, but deeply resentful of Law, whom it held responsible for the rebuke, supinely yielded.
Well pleased, Mr Law bore the news to his brother, who was now at work in that busy hive of the Rue Quincampoix, and presiding over its activities.
William Law glowed with satisfaction. "I am thinking that is fine. It'll make your work complete."
"Complete?" Mr Law tossed his head in derision. "We've no more than cleared the table for the game I hope to play when I am dealt the cards."
His brother's enthusiasm diminished. He was by nature cautious. "Will we not rest content with what we have? So far all is soundly planned. We've a superb system of credit, so strong that you command a capital of over sixty millions, which cannot but increase. Man, is not that enough for you?"
"God save us, Will, am I just a peddling merchant, scheming to earn a living? Faith, it seems you don't know me yet. What do I care for the money? It's the game that counts. And there was never a game for such stakes as the one you shall see me play."
Will, who had none of the gamester's temperament, considered him soberly. "I think, John, that I should love you even if you were not my brother. Yet I'll not be concealing from you that there are times when I think you're very near detestable."