Chapter 9 The Gamester by Rafael Sabatini
THE GAMBIE STOCK
Mr Law came on a Monday morning of July into the room above stairs, which he had made his own in the Rue Quincampoix. It was the best room in the house, spacious and furnished so as to provide a characteristic setting for its fastidious tenant. A heavy Aubusson carpet covered the floor. Two tall Venetian mirrors in rococo bronze frames rose above swag-bellied consoles in marquetry and ormolu, and between them on the sage-green panelling there was a replica from the master's hand of the triple portrait of the First Charles, which Van Dyke had painted for the purposes of Bernini.
An affection for the Stuarts was natural in a well-bred Scot even when a kinsman of Argyle's. A rustic scene by Watteau, gay with colour and sunshine, and a couple of mezzotints by Carpi decorated the opposite wall. A great writing table of rosewood, on cabriole legs with massive ormolu incrustations, stood in the middle of the floor. The windows--there were two of them, opening on to a narrow balcony--stood wide to the warmth of the morning and the sounds of the street below.
The establishment there of Law's Banque Générale had already created in the Rue Quincampoix an activity very different from that which it had formerly known. It had been increased by the foundation of the Mississippi Company and the traffic in its shares, and this increase had steadily grown and was being further swollen of late by the confident rumours that Monsieur Lass would shortly be assuming the control of other named colonial monopolies, in the depreciated stocks of which men were already dealing freely.
Mr Law seated himself at his writing table, which was quite bare, save for an inkstand in black onyx and silver, a silver pounce box and a tray of cut quills. In a moment, by the door which he had left open, his brother followed him into the room.
"Good morning, John."
"Good morning, Will. You have your notebook, I see."
"As you requested. And what of Catherine? Have you no word from Sceaux?"
"No direct word, since she went in spite of my wishes. It was not to be expected." He spoke without heat. "But I receive my reports. By these Catherine is a great success with the wits of Sceaux."
"Is that so? Yet, greatly as I esteem her, I should hardly be describing Catherine as witty."
"Would you not? My dear Will, in a woman a fair face and a white breast are a form of wit that's most esteemed by men. She does not appear to be quite such a success with the women. Her conduct with Monsieur de Horn, I hear, lacks reticence, though why that should fail to commend her to the beau monde is not readily to be understood. Perhaps her sisters, made censorious because suffering from neglect, are virtuous in spite of themselves."
William, something of a puritan, considered him with grave disapproval. "Will you really be as patient as you pretend?"
"I have no cause to be other."
"Whilst the Count of Horn..."
"Makes love to my wife. But so far, I am credibly informed, he suffers frustration. Madame de Horn, whose presence there made it possible that Catherine should go to Sceaux, appears to be seeing to it that her husband shall have no undue grounds for satisfaction therein."
Will's face was dark, his mouth scornful. "Do you really care so little? If that were my only warranty of my wife's virtue, I'd as lief have none."
"But then, you're not married, Will. No matter." A wave of his fine hand dismissed the subject. "Let us come to business. I asked you to bring your notebook so that you might tell me how much stock in the Compagnie de Gambie has been bought by Horn."
Will drew a chair to the other side of the writing table, sat down and opened his book. "I know that he originally purchased seven thousand shares at a cost of seven hundred thousand livres, because he hypothecated them here for half their value in order to buy another thousand at four hundred and fifty livres. His total holding today is of eight thousand shares for which he has paid rather more than a million and a quarter."
"And of this, then, he owes three hundred and fifty thousand to the bank. The balance probably represents all that he possesses in the world; indeed, rather more, for he'll have no lack of debts. Tell me, what is the value of his holding today?"
"The stock will be standing at five hundred. He could sell his shares for two millions. A braw profit." Then Will laughed unpleasantly, "You go beyond my understanding. It is not every day that a man'll be making the fortune of his wife's gallant. Will it be your notion of how to protect her?"
"You think that humorous? Maybe it is. But as a prophecy I have no opinion of it. Tell me what is the issued capital of the Compagnie de Gambie."
Will referred to his book. "It is of six millions in shares of a thousand livres."
"And of these Horn now holds two-thirds."
"Ay. Such is his faith in you."
"Where is the balance of two thousand shares?"
"We, ourselves, hold nearly half. The remainder is with the general public."
"And the present price is five hundred livres?"
"Thereabouts; that is, if you can find sellers. But they're none so easy to discover at present in view of the expectations. Before the rumour started that we are to take control, you could have bought your fill at a hundred livres."
"We must scotch that rumour," said Mr Law quietly, to Will's surprise, and went on to astonish him further. "You'll offer a hundred of our shares today at four hundred and fifty, and another hundred tomorrow at four hundred. After that, we'll see."
"But, man," protested Will, "if you want to sell our stock, there's no need to lower the price."
Mr Law smiled. "Say it's a caprice of mine. Let McWhirter attend to it."
"McWhirter!" For a moment Will was speechless. "But that's to tell the world that you're the seller. You see the inference?"
"Ay, I see it fine." Mr Law took snuff delicately, and proffered the open box to his brother. "Didn't you hear me say I am wanting to scotch that rumour. This should do it."
"But you'll be throwing away a fortune," cried Will in pain.
Mr Law snapped down the lid of his snuffbox. He dusted some fragments from the lace at his throat. "What's a fortune more or less? A few millions are of no great account."
What sharply followed does not need many words. By Wednesday morning Angus McWhirter, known to be Mr Law's man, was offering the stock of the Compagnie de Gambie at three hundred, and by Wednesday evening word ran in the Rue Quincampoix that there could be no foundation for the rumour that Mr Law was interested in that Company. Upon learning this, Mr Law's instruction were that McWhirter should offer five hundred shares at two hundred.
"But we don't possess them," his brother protested. "We've scarcely a share left."
Mr Law smiled. "Yet we may sell in the confident expectation of a further fall."
His brother's eyes were round. It was a novel notion for him that a speculation may be as profitable on a falling as on a rising market. It was something new in the art of gambling, and if it did not now succeed, that was only because the last buyer vanished when McWhirter made his offer.
By that evening the clerks of the money-changers in the Rue Quincampoix were vainly offering the stock of the Compagnie de Gamble at prices which had successively fallen to fifty livres. When the market opened on the following day there were one or two speculative buyers at ten livres. The stock had become practically worthless.
"I hope you're satisfied," said Will indignantly. "Judiciously handled this stock might have produced four or five millions for us."
"I am quite satisfied. Indeed, I would not sell my satisfaction for twice that sum."
On the Saturday of that fateful week Catherine returned to Paris, as airy and as much at her ease with her husband, as if there had been no difference between them on the subject of her absence. It may have surprised her that Mr Law accepted without comment or allusion to her defiance the act of oblivion which she passed over it. For the rest she came back a little intoxicated by her success in the rarefied atmosphere of Sceaux. She boasted of the attentions shown her by the Duke of Maine, and of the court paid her by so many of the gallants among her fellow guests. She had been made a Companion of the Mouche-à-miel, the order of chivalry founded by the Duchess of Maine, and she displayed with pride the gold medal of the order with the bee on one side and the head of the Duchess on the other, and with scarcely less pride she announced that the famous Malézieu had written some verses in her honour.
Upon this Mr Law's comment was bittersweet. "I rejoice that he still discovered in you sufficient honour upon which to hang his rhymes."
"Honour?"
"Say virtue, if you prefer it."
"Must you always be churlish?"
"Is it churlish to rejoice in the unlikely?"
"The unlikely!" Her exclamation combined indignation with alarm.
"You would give Malézieu and his ineffable kind every reason to believe it so, and no doubt Monsieur de Horn would be at pains to afford them added cause."
"You believe that!" Her eyes were black pools in the sudden whiteness of her face.
"I believe that you have something for which to thank the Countess of Horn, although you may not yet perceive it."
"I will not pretend to misunderstand you. I wonder, John, is there any insult your mind will spare me." Then abruptly, casting off all defiant mockery, she surprised him by pleading. "John! If I were to say that I am sorry for not heeding you, sorry that I went to Sceaux..."
"You would leave me wondering what was the experience that chastened you."
She drew nearer, under the strong urge of a conciliatory impulse. "I did not know when I went that he had quarrelled with you, that he had struck you and then refused to meet you in terms of further insult."
"It should not surprise you. It is what you foretold. But I see that he informed you of it. Expecting your applause."
"Can you suppose that he received it?"
"Can you assure me that he did not?"
"Does it need that I assure you?"
"Your memory is short. You'll have forgot, it seems, the terms you used with me when I desired you not to go to Sceaux."
Her face puckered. She twisted one hand in the other. "If you knew, John, how bitterly I regret it all."
Matter and manner filled him with increasing wonder by their unusualness.
After a moment she added: "At least I have signified it plainly to Monsieur de Horn, and I hope that I shall never see him again."
"Ah! It is likely, then, that you will not." He moved towards the door. With his hand upon the knob, he turned to add with a grim smile: "Do not be troubled about me as concerns Monsieur de Horn. He is paid."
"Paid?" she questioned. But he went out without explaining.
Of that payment Monsieur le Comte was made aware on the following Monday, when he, too, came back from Sceaux. He found a note awaiting him from the Banque Générale, requesting him to give himself the trouble of calling upon the director on a matter of the utmost urgency.
Considering, however, the state of his relations with Mr Law it was not his intention ever again to set foot within the Bank. Nor, he might and did congratulate himself, was there the need. His operations in the stock of the Compagnie de Gambie, for which it amused him to think that he had to thank Mr Law, were already showing him a rich profit. Already he had virtually doubled the money he had received from Bernard, that other fool of a financier.
For the moment, and in order to spare himself embarrassments, all that was necessary was that he should give a broker of his choice an order on the Banque Générale for the stock it held in his name. The man he chose was one Hoquet, a money-changer, whose counting house was actually in the Rue Quincampoix, a man with whom he had had some dealings in the past.
Before his airy announcement that he proposed to transfer to the care of the Sieur Hoquet all his effects with the Banque Générale, a matter of a million and a half, the banker abased himself and was voluble in assurances of how well the interests of so exalted a client would be served. But when he had cast an eye over the Count's order on the Banque Générale, the pursy little man's expression changed. Knowing his place, he addressed his noble client in the third person.
"Is this the total of Monsieur le Comte's effects?"
"The total." Horn was complacent. "It should represent today a good round sum. At what do you now quote the Compagnie de Gamble?"
Hoquet blew out fat lips in deprecation. "Monsieur le Comte will have been out of Paris lately, I suppose. Actually the last sales made were at thirty. That was two days ago. On Saturday."
"At thirty?" Horn's brows darkened in bewilderment. Then they cleared. "Oh! At thirty louis."
There was a hollow laugh from the banker. "Livres, monsieur. Thirty livres."
This made Horn stare in speechless amazement. Slowly the colour mounted to his face. "What the devil are you saying? Are you drunk by any chance?"
Monsieur Hoquet drew himself up as stiffly as his podgy figure permitted, whilst Horn raged on.
"When I left Paris, ten days ago, the stock stood at five hundred and was rising daily. How can it possibly be at thirty today? What ails you, my man?"
"Ah! I was right in supposing that monsieur had been out of Paris, not to know what has happened. There has been a collapse in this stock during the past week." He cast an eye over the figures on the sheet. "Faith, monsieur would be fortunate today if he could realize a thousand crowns on this."
"A thousand crowns! Six thousand livres!" Horn's face was grey.
"I doubt if monsieur could get even so much. The stock is virtually worthless."
"Worthless! My God!" However much his rank might urge a dignified impassivity, the Count found it impossible to contemplate impassively the incredible melting away in a few days of a fortune of a million and a half. "Oh, but that is impossible." He jerked himself to his feet. "Impossible, name of God! How can such a thing happen?"
"Oh, as to that, this stock has been unreasonably inflated by an assumption that Monsieur Lass would take over the monopoly of Gambie and add it to the Mississippi."
"That was no assumption," roared Horn. "I know it to have been his intention."
"Monsieur is no doubt right. But clearly it is his intention no longer, for he has been selling what stock he already possessed. That is what has caused this dégringolade."
"Give me that paper." The order upon the Banque Générale was almost snatched from Hoquet's hands. "You shall hear from me again when I have seen Monsieur Lass."
He stamped out, violently swinging his long cane, and went down the street, to storm into the Banque Générale, breathlessly clamouring for Monsieur Lass.
An elderly clerk conducted him upstairs to Mr Law's handsome room. It was not, however, Mr Law who presently came to him there, but a gentleman almost as tall and dark, of the same courtly fastidiousness in his dress and placid urbanity in his manner. Announcing himself the servant of Monsieur le Comte, he professed himself grateful for this prompt response to the note in which he had prayed for the honour of a visit.
Horn cut him short. "It is Monsieur Lass I have come to see. Be good enough to call him."
"But Monsieur le Baron is not here. Permit me to present myself. I am his brother and his deputy in the direction of the Bank."
"So there are two of you in this thieves' kitchen?"
"Monsieur says?"
Horn spoke of his stock in the Compagnie de Gamble, indignantly repeating what Hoquet had told him, and still more indignantly demanding to know if it were true, and, if so, how it came to be true that a fortune of a million and a half had vanished in a week.
William Law was grave. "I am afraid that it is rather less than the truth. For not only has your million and a half vanished, as you say, but it has swept with it a matter of three hundred and fifty thousand livres which the Bank lent you on the stock of your original purchase. That is the present extent of your debt to us, which," added William Law pleasantly, "we shall be glad to have you settle at your early convenience."
Limp, white-faced, chap-fallen, Horn stared at the smiling banker, who so urbanely announced to him his utter ruin. At last, "Have you the courage," he cried, "to add mockery to your tricks? Have you the effrontery to say that I am in your debt?"
"You would surely not have the Bank be at the loss of the advance it has made you?"
"To the devil with your Bank and its loss. What of my loss?" There was foam at the corners of his lips, his eyes had become blood-injected. "What of the swindle that has been practised on me? My God! you villains, do you imagine I will submit? I bought this stock in Gambie on your brother's recommendation, on his assurance that he would be taking control of the company and that its stock would rise, as rise it did at first."
"At best," he was answered, "that could be no more than an opinion. In such matters no man can be infallible."
"That he was to assume direction of the Compagnie de Gambie was no matter of opinion. Was it a lie?"
"I cannot tell you what was in my brother's mind. But if he told you that, he must so have intended at the time. In finance a change of intention is always possible and may result from a variety of causes."
"So that is how you explain this...this cursed swindle."
"I do not think," said William with frosty dignity, "that it can profit us to continue this discussion."
"Do you not?" The Count stared at him for a speechless moment out of a grey face from which the normal beauty had been distorted. Then, abruptly, he broke into laughter, made horrible by rage. "My dear sir, I begin to find you an amusing scoundrel. Not only am I to be at the loss of a million and a half, but I am to pay your rascally Bank a further three hundred and fifty thousand livres for the privilege of being robbed by you. I'll see you and your damned brother broken on the wheel before you have another liard of mine. And broken on the wheel I'll see you in any case. Do you dream that I'll suffer myself to be robbed in this impudent manner?"
William had risen, and was crossing the room. He opened the door.
"Your servant, Monsieur le Comte!"
From the manner in which Horn gripped his cane, the banker thought him about to strike with it. But perhaps he remembered in time what the last blow of that kind was costing him.
"You shall hear from me soon again, you scoundrels," he bellowed. "The Regent shall hear of it. He shall have the whole story. His Highness is my kinsman. Perhaps you rascals had forgotten that. But as God lives I'll make you remember it to your cost."
He flung out still raging, to find a hackney coach in which he had himself carried at once to the Palais Royal.
He arrived there, as it appeared to him, at a fortunate moment. But the appearance was to prove deceptive. The Regent, newly risen from the council table, was able and willing to see him at once, and he was ushered into the Duke's study, the light and rather gay room in which his versatile Highness sometimes painted, sometimes wrote music and sometimes gave himself to the study of the works of others in a variety of fields. The Abbé Dubois, lately promoted to be Secretary of State for foreign affairs, was with him when Horn was introduced.
"Ah, Joseph! What is there for your service?" Thus the Regent, familiarly, with a lift of the hand.
Horn's patronymics were Antoine-Joseph, and to all his intimates he was Antoine. It was characteristic of His Highness that he should find ironical amusement in the use of the second name, so much at variance were its chaste associations with Horn's proclivities.
Still quivering with an indignation which reflection had merely deepened, indifferent to the presence of Dubois, caring, indeed, nothing who might hear of Law's infamy, he poured out his tale of the shameful swindle of which he was the victim.
The Regent, seated at his ease, heard him at the outset with a gravity which diminished as the account proceeded. When it was done, to Horn's horror, His Highness actually laughed. "Corbleu! Do you seriously tell me, Joseph, that you disposed of a million livres?"
"I do not think that even Lass will deny that."
"I wish you would give me the secret of where you find your millions. How did you come by it?"
There was a splutter of laughter from Dubois, who permitted himself every liberty.
"You hear. Even my good Abbé finds it amusing."
"But not so amusing," chuckled Dubois, "as might be the answer."
"Ah! You seem to know something of this, Abbé. What is the mystery, my dear Joseph?"
Horn glared venomously at Dubois, whose malice put him momentarily out of countenance. "There is no mystery, monseigneur. That I have been subjected to a foul swindle is plain enough."
His Highness' arched brows were further arched. "But unless I know how you became possessed of a million, how can I believe that you were swindled of it?"
The Count took refuge in dignity. "Is not my word sufficient, monseigneur?"
Still the Regent playfully rallied him. "For a million? That's a deal with which to load your word, my friend."
"Your Highness is amused at my expense."
"But no, but no. It is your tales that are amusing: one, that you possessed a million; the other, that my friend Lass has robbed you of it. Faith, I don't know which is more unlikely."
The Count breathed hard. "I see that Your Highness refuses to take me seriously." He was quivering with anger. "I beg leave to withdraw."
"Eh?" The Regent's plump, smooth face became suddenly sober. "What the devil's this, monsieur? You do not happen to be hiding something so as to abuse my faith? To be dealing in half truths?" Surprising a sly grin on Dubois' lips, he asked him bluntly, "What do you know of this, Abbé?"
The Abbé was rubbing his hands, his back arched like a cat's; the wide, almost lipless, mouth became further extended. "Very little. Nothing of what Monsieur Lass may have done. But enough to assure Your Highness that Monsieur de Horn is not exaggerating when he says that he possessed a million. There's a whisper that he had it from Samuel Bernard."
The Count bit his lip, perhaps to stifle the curse that rose to it.
"From Bernard? From that scoundrel?" His Highness was now entirely serious. "And for what, if you please?"
With all the air of hastening to Horn's assistance, Dubois calculatedly made matters worse. "Oh, but just one of those little presents with which financiers seek to win favour at Court."
The Regent scowled. "Is it possible that you accept such presents, Comte? I refuse to believe that you are without the prejudices with which a gentleman is born."
The Count quivered as if struck. Inwardly sick with rage and no longer master of his wits, he was shamed into the blunder of a lie. "It should scarcely be necessary. It is surely inconceivable that I should accept presents from any Samuel Bernard. This was a loan, Highness."
"A loan?" His Highness' short laugh suggested incredulity. "I should have thought that even more inconceivable. But no doubt you were able to give him good security."
"Naturally, monseigneur."
"Naturally, of course." The Regent waited. "Well? You do not choose to tell me what it is?"
"I did not realize that Your Highness was demanding to know."
"Demanding? Of course I don't demand. How could I? But there is an oddness here which I thought you would be anxious to explain. Bernard is in gaol. He has been squeezed in the press of justice until he could drip no more ill-gotten gold. In the circumstances I should expect him to be eager to collect all his resources."
But Horn was not to be pinned. "I have no doubt that he is, and that is now my danger, thanks to this cold-blooded swindle by Lass."
"You mean the danger that Bernard will realize on the security he holds." As if in kindly interest, he added: "Would that be so disadvantageous to you? I cannot judge without knowing the nature of it."
"Its nature?" Horn contrived another wriggle. "If you must know, monseigneur, it is a security supplied by my wife."
"You are fortunate in your lady. Not her jewels, I hope."
"Not her jewels. No." He was recovering his self-possession, and feeling reassured. "What matters is that she should not be at the loss of it, which is why I have been so bold as to ask Your Highness for justice against this man, Lass."
"Ah, yes. Against my friend Lass," the Duke corrected. "He told you, you say, that the Compagnie de Gambie would be passing into his control?"
"It was on this assurance that I bought the stock."
"Borrowing for the purpose from Samuel Bernard?"
"Precisely, monseigneur."
"And, of course, you possess the stock?"
Horn laughed unpleasantly. "I hypothecated it to the Banque Générale for a loan to lay out on further stock, and repayment of this is now claimed from me. It is all part of the swindle."
There was a clucking sound from Dubois.
"What is it, Abbé?"
"The folly of some noblemen when they adventure into the kingdom of finance. They are as naked children exposed to the blasts of a cold, calculating world."
"You mean of cold, calculating swindlers," cried Horn.
"But--mon Dieu!--who has swindled you, monsieur? The stock is there which Monsieur Lass advised you to acquire."
"Haven't I said that it is worthless?" Horn was impatient. "For a week past Lass' own agents have been selling the stock. Does that look as if he were to acquire control of the company?"
"Neither the Abbé nor I can answer that at present," said the Regent. "So that when all is weighed I see no help that I can render you. But what I can do, my dear Horn, I will. The security which you tell me is held by Bernard actually, like all his property, now belongs to the State, and to the State Bernard shall be required to surrender it.
"The State, as you know, my dear Count, is far from affluent in these days; but it can still, in exceptional cases, afford some generosity, and I shall see to it that the State restores your property, or, rather, your lady's property. I could not suffer the Countess of Horn to be at such a loss."
The resolve was characteristic of this generous, extravagant, improvident prince, who not only had never learnt to refuse, but who could bestow with prodigality without even waiting to be asked.
Horn, however, was in no case to savour this generosity. Nothing could more profoundly embarrass him. He perceived how, blinded by anger, he had rushed into a trap.
He should have foreseen that the Regent, so fully aware of straitened circumstances which his bounty had more than once relieved, should wonder how he had come by a million, and inevitably ask him. He should have foreseen that the question was one that could not be met, save by plunging into this morass of falsehood, from which there was no escape without disgrace.
Willingly, indeed, almost gladly, would he now have abandoned his million as the price of extricating himself and effacing all his misrepresentations.
Speechless, pale and with beads of sweat along the line where wig met brow, he stood before the Regent, who smiled as he waited, and before Dubois, who also smiled, but in sheer derision.
"I hope," said His Highness, "that this will content you without the need to trouble Monsieur Lass." Over his shoulder to Dubois he added: "You will make a note, Abbé, to have Bernard questioned tomorrow in this matter."
Desperately, under the stress of fresh necessity, Horn floundered further. "Surely that will be idle. Bernard will deny it, of course."
The Abbé looked shocked. "Deny it?" he cried. "Deny that you had a million from him? How could he deny it? How do you suppose that I happened already to know it?"
A grin tightened the skin of that lean face as he paused before answering his own question. "You see, Monsieur le Comte, we have seized Bernard's papers. That is where I found the record of it. Perhaps it had not occurred to you."
"Did you find..." impulsively Horn was beginning, when he stopped. "No matter. I..."
"You were about to ask, I think, did we find a record of the consideration he received. There was a note in cipher. It did not suggest a security."
The Regent looked at the Abbé with sudden sharpness. "How can you say that, unless you can also say what it did suggest?"
Dubois was softly rubbing his hands again, a gesture that Horn found hateful. "But I am quite prepared to say so, Highness, although the notion may seem absurd, and Monsieur le Comte will no doubt deny it. It suggested--how shall I say it?--it suggested that Bernard made this payment for services rendered, or to be rendered."
"Impossible," said the Regent. "What services could be in question?" He looked from the Abbé to the Count.
"Several instances were discovered," the Abbé slyly answered him, "of large sums paid by these maltôtiers to persons of influence at Court for--ah--protection."
"I suppose you mean bribes," said the Regent, scandalized. "But you are not implying that Monsieur le Comte..." He broke off to look keenly at Horn. "You say nothing! Is it possible that you don't deny it?"
The Count was at the end of denials, whose ultimate futility had become all too plain, serving only to deepen his defilement. He stood with bowed shoulders, a scowl of defeat on his white face. "To what end?" he asked, with sullen defiance, and shrugged as he spoke.
It was a moment before the Regent appeared to interpret the man's attitude. At last, "My God!" he said, and emotion brought him to his feet. "Is this really possible?"
Avoiding the Regent's glance, Horn partly raised his arms, and let them fall heavily to his sides. It was a gesture of despair. "I...I was hard pressed," he growled.
"So hard pressed that you, a gentleman, took a bribe from this thieving Jew. And did you even earn it? I do not remember that you interceded for him."
"I...I had not so much effrontery."
"Not so much effrontery? Really! But you had effrontery enough to come here complaining that you had been defrauded of this million which you obtained by fraud. You had effrontery enough to stoop to falsehood..."
"Monseigneur!" It was a cry at once of pain and of anger.
But the easy-going Regent was for once implacable. "Is that too much to say? How do you suppose that men of honour will describe it?"
He went on without waiting for an answer, "I have known you guilty of irregularities in the past, monsieur. More than once for the sake of your blood I have helped you to extricate yourself from situations that imperilled your honour. But that you should lie to me like a lackey! That is something that I will not condone. I am ashamed for you. But there!"
He sighed, and let fall some of the sternness that was so foreign to him and in which his indolent nature was uncomfortable. "It is useless to say more. I will do you the justice to suppose that I could say nothing that you will not already have said to yourself. You are permitted to go."
Almost sorrowfully he added: "And, of course, you will understand that you cannot again be received here."
The Count bowed low in silence, his face twitching. He moved backwards towards the door and in silence went out.
The Regent sat down on the clavichord stool, with his back to the instrument. He took snuff to soothe himself. "Poor devil!" he sighed.
"Your Highness wastes pity," said Dubois. "A mauvais sujet."
"Ah! And what are you, Abbé? Have you never taken a bribe? How much does Lord Stanhope pay you to keep me well disposed towards England?"
Dubois swelled indignantly. "I have never taken a louis that was not to further your interests."
"Oh, to further our interests, of course. And, anyway, you were not born a gentleman. So it's no great matter. You may perceive that the condition has its disadvantages."
"A scoundrel," said the Abbé sententiously, "is a scoundrel however he may be born."
"That is what madame my mother says when she speaks of you. Like you, she lacks charity, which may be pardonable in a woman but is abominable in a priest--even a nominal one. That poor devil was hard driven by temptation, which is something you have never known."
"Oho! Have I not, monseigneur?"
"I do not mean that it is temptation you have never known. What you have never known, is to be hard driven by it. You have always yielded readily. But no matter. It is not you who gives me concern. It is this unfortunate fellow of whom necessity has made a rascal. I hope that he will have the good sense to leave Paris for a while."
Monsieur de Horn, however, had no such notion. If the shame in which he left the Palais Royal was deep, deeper still was the rage at having been so trapped, and the object of this rage was, of course, the Laird of Lauriston. He took the view, not only that Mr Law had cruelly defrauded him, but that it was Mr Law's credit with the Regent which had denied him redress and turned the tables upon him by uncovering his questionable transaction with Samuel Bernard. Utter disgrace must follow upon the disclosure of this as the reason for his expulsion from Court, as if there were not already enough to bear in the complete financial ruin which, in an excess of irony, had overtaken him at the very moment when financial redemption had seemed firmly within his grasp.
In his desperately vindictive mood and in casting about him for means to gratify it, he thought of his friend de Mille, and sought him out in his mean lodging opposite Saint Philippe du Roule.
A large man of a rather raffish exterior, mitigated by an air of command, acquired in the course of his military career, it was one of the Colonel's delusions, based upon a couple of easy victories over fledgelings, that he was something of a swordsman. Therefore the Count's commission flattered him. Ignorant of that sinister side of Mr Law's past history, it did not occur to de Mille that a money-changer might be an awkward opponent on the field of honour. But he wondered why Horn's deadly animosity should not fire him to act for himself, and he said so.
"Don't you understand that I am in disgrace with the Regent on this man's account?" Horn asked, by way of explanation. "If I were to defy the edicts I should not be forgiven."
"Whilst I may defy them and go hang."
"Arrange it so that the provocation comes from Lass, and since there is no prejudice against you, that will be a sufficient answer. I can contrive a hundred louis at once when it is done, and in the future, when I am in funds, you can count upon me as in the past."
De Mille's resources in those days permitted him neither to refuse a hundred louis nor to decline to oblige a man to whom he owed so much and to whom in the future he hoped to owe so much more.
He sought his opportunity, and was some days in finding it. It was provided at last by merest chance when he happened to be one of a party at the Duke of Antin's, which included also Mr Law. After supper a half-dozen of them sat down to dice for easy stakes. De Mille, himself, was not of the players, but hovering about the table as an onlooker he presently perceived his chance. Mr Law had made a cast, called the main, doubled the stakes, thrown again and won.
"Uncanny!" said the Colonel with an unpleasant laugh. "Permit me." He leaned over, picked up one of the dice, and indifferent to the stares of amazement, balanced it by its corners between finger and thumb. "In effect, it does not turn," he said in tones of surprise, and tossed it back on to the table.
On the deadly silence there was the sharp clap with which Mr Law set down the dice box. "What does that mean, Colonel de Mille?"
"A habit of mine," said the Colonel with his impudent laugh. "It's prudent to test the tools of a professional gamester."
D'Antin heaved himself up in anger. "Are you crazy, Colonel, or merely more drunk than usual?"
But Mr Law had lost none of his placidity. "He is neither, my dear Duke. He is merely provocative, the bully swordsman hired to a job."
"Do you say that of me?" roared de Mille. Nor was his anger simulated. The cold contempt of Mr Law's quiet voice had cut him to the soul.
"It's no more than you deserve," d'Antin condemned him.
The Colonel wrapped himself in dignity. "I'll venture to remind you, monseigneur, that I am your guest, and that my affair is with your foreign friend."
Mr Law smiled. "You admit to an affair, then?"
De Mille was cautious. It was for him to take and not to give offence. "Quite enough has been said."
"Too much in fact," cried d'Antin, whilst the others looked on in forbidding silence.
"As you say, Monsieur le Duc; too much. My friends shall wait on you, Mr Law, so that we resume the discussion on another plane. I take my leave, monseigneur." He bowed, first to the Duke and then to the company, and stalked out with airs of righteous indignation.
D'Antin was distressed. "My dear Lass! That this should happen in my house!" And he added: "You are under no necessity to meet that fellow."
"Could I deny myself the pleasure?" laughed Mr Law.
The meeting took place in the Bois de Boulogne two days later, with d'Antin as Mr Law's second. As a spectacle, the onlookers--most of whom had been at the Duke's party--found it disappointingly brief. At the end of not more than a half-dozen disengages, Mr Law, putting aside a high thrust, stepped inside his opponent's guard, and drove his blade through the Colonel's sword-arm.
Whilst the surgeon in attendance was bandaging the wound, Mr Law stood close to the wincing de Mille. "It would have taken me even less time to run you through the body, my Colonel. Let me advise you not to recommence; for you cannot expect me again to be at so much trouble."
That was humiliation enough for a swordsman who accounted himself a ferrailleur to be feared. But there was worse in store for him that evening when Horn came to see him. The Count stared in disgust at the sling in which the arm was carried.
"What the devil is the meaning of this?"
"It means," he was sourly answered, "that you were wise to employ a deputy. I suppose you knew that the fellow is a damned fencing master."
"Bah!" snapped the Count. "I thought you were a swordsman."
And that was all the comfort the Colonel had from an employer who was far too much in need of comfort for himself. In his almost despairing quest for it Horn bethought him of Noailles and of Noailles' implacable hatred of Law, who had so mortally wounded him in his vanity and his ambition. For it was, of course, to Law that his Grace attributed his dismissal from the Council of Finance, his loss of influence with the Regent, and the frustration of his hopes of becoming the First Minister of the Crown.
If any man in France would help the Count of Horn to the vengeance for which his wrongs cried out to heaven, that man was surely Noailles, who out of his own rancour might not trouble to look too closely into Horn's grounds of quarrel with the financier.