Chapter 23 The Gamester by Rafael Sabatini
THE ZENITH
It required a shock to snatch him out of his somnambulism, and it was McWhirter who supplied it a week later.
This henchman of his came to the Hôtel de Nevers one morning of mid-September in a fever of jocund excitement.
"Man," he declared, "ye bade me be ready for a siege, and the devil's own siege it is. D'ye not know what's toward in the Rue Quincampoix? The issue of shares is going fast. There was never such a garboil. It's just Bedlam yonder, so it is. The street is agog with agioteurs, and the price this morning stands at three thousand livres. Six times the original value, no less. It's fair cluttered out of my senses I am, with all the world clamouring to buy."
"All the world?" echoed Mr Law, his quick instinct, suddenly aroused, already scenting in McWhirter's exultation something that was amiss.
"Ay. All the world. I'm thinking we'll scarce need the extra printing of notes. Though, to be sure, there's an awkward side to it. A mob of annuitants who've cashed their receipts at the bank are bleating and protesting for shares at the price of issue as their right, and at this rate we shall soon have none to sell them."
"God's death!" thundered Mr Law, now thoroughly awake. "When were the lists opened?"
"A week since, of course."
"Upon whose authority?"
McWhirter stared open-mouthed, amazed at so much vehemence in a man whose imperturbability had passed into a byword. "Why, upon whose authority but your own?"
"Mine!" Mr Law looked at him in horror. "When did I give it?"
"Wasn't it in the note of terms Mr William and I laid before you?"
Elbow on the table, Mr Law took his head in his hands.
"And where's the great harm, after all?" wondered the crestfallen subordinate.
"The harm! And the shares stand already at three thousand livres. If this rage of speculation continues where is it going to land us? Damn the agioteurs!"
McWhirter, accounting the explosion merely rhetorical, stood silent, wondering and waiting.
Mr Law groaned. He struck the table with his fist. "However did I come to overlook it?"
He perceived, of course, that what he had foreseen--the factor, indeed, upon which he had built--that the State creditors for the fifteen hundred millions must avail themselves of the only available channel of reinvestment in the India Company--had been equally foreseen by every speculator of ordinary astuteness. Foreseeing it, they had made haste to buy the shares in order to make the State creditors pay dearly for them when they came to reinvest. And the operation was made easy for them by the fact that a comparatively small cash deposit sufficed to give them possession of a share. It was not that he had overlooked the inevitability of this. He had seen it as clearly as the mischief that might follow out of it, and he had intended to provide before the lists were opened. The omission was due to the obfuscation of his mind, coming from his scene with Catherine, at the moment of considering the note of terms.
He commanded himself now, so that he might grapple with this complication. "Measures must be taken at once, Angus. The State creditors have every reason to complain. It is a scandal that they should be mulcted in this fashion so as to make fortunes for men who are gambling on a certainty. In one way or another the mischief must be checked before it goes further. Meanwhile, let the Bank hold what shares remain. Announce that the subscriptions are complete. Ask Mr William to come to me this afternoon."
The decision he took was to open at once a new subscription list for the second half-milliard, which he had not intended to offer for some months to come, whilst establishing by edict now, as he should have done earlier, that these shares could be acquired only against Treasury receipts for bonds surrendered. In this way, by eliminating the intermediary stage of converting the receipts into currency, he ensured that the bond-holders must have the first call.
As a remedial measure it was sound enough, but it was belated. The harm had been done and an impetus given to unbridled speculation the end of which it was impossible to foresee.
In the meantime the price of the India Company shares continued upwards, and even the State bonds, which had been at a depreciation of sixty per centum, were now above par and virtually unprocurable in view of the further impending conversion.
Considering what had happened to the first issue and the sharp rise that had taken place, the announcement of the second lists resulted in a no less feverish activity in the Rue Quincampoix. The price racing upwards from the three thousand livres which had startled Law, was soon standing at six thousand.
The neighbouring streets of Saint Denis and Saint Martin were encumbered with waiting coaches, and in the Rue Quincampoix itself pandemonium reigned about the Bank, not only by day but throughout the night, so that in the end the dwellers in the neighbourhood complained of it. Barricades had to be set up at both ends of the street, guarded by troops when closed, which was from nine o'clock at night until nine o'clock on the following morning, and opening and closing to the sound of a bell.
At the Treasury Offices from morning to night there were long queues of bond-holders, in a frenzied scrimmage to surrender their bonds and obtain their receipts, so as to convert them into the soaring shares at the earliest moment.
Outside the Hôtel de Nevers the Street was blocked by the carriages of persons of quality, who, taking advantage of their social rank or personal relations with Mr Law came directly to him to procure the part of this Golconda to which their holdings of State bonds entitled them.
Because into the edict constituting the Company Mr Law had astutely prevailed upon the Regent to introduce an article providing that no derogation should attend the possession of its shares, a nobility, impoverished like the King by the prodigality and wars of Louis XIV, besieged the mansion of this worker of financial miracles. All that was proudest in France made antechamber to him, suing for admission to his august presence, so that it might court his favour.
At his hands the Duke of Bourbon exchanged his Treasury receipts for a block of shares of a value already so enhanced that he was enabled to pay his debts and begin to rebuild his magnificent Château of Chantilly. He was sought by the hump-backed, irascible, young Prince de Conti, fiercely complaining that having obtained at the time of the first issue his receipts for an exceptionally heavy holding of depreciated bonds, he had been too late to convert them into shares even at treble their original value. He had fortunately abstained--fortunately, that is, if Monsieur Lass would now do him right and grant him out of the second issue those shares at their face value.
His was, of course, the case of many an annuitant, lacking, however, the Prince's exalted rank to embolden him to carry his case into the holy of holies of that Temple of Mammon.
Mr Law obliged him, and de Conti departed from the Hôtel de Nevers vowing himself for ever Mr Law's devoted servant and bearing away shares which he could already sell in the Rue Quincampoix for eight times their value, and thus realize at once a fortune.
Similarly, and with greater willingness, Mr Law favoured his friend the Duke of Antin, who had also been left by the first issue with his receipts unconverted, and there were many others of the best and proudest blood of France, such as the Prince of Rohan, the Prince of Guémenée, the Duke of La Force, and the Duke of La Vrillière, who left the Hôtel de Nevers pledged by gratitude eternally to his service.
Whilst these noble clients besieged him in his Sybaritic study, their ladies crowded Catherine's salon, bearing gifts and invitations whereby to swell the adulatory court that was being paid the House of Law.
As an expression of the great social consequence she had now attained Catherine was presently moved to give a white ball for their daughter, then in her thirteenth year. It was eagerly attended by the most brilliant gathering the Court could furnish, actually graced by the Duchess of Berri, the foreign embassies, and even the Papal Nuncio, who publicly embraced the winsome little heroine of the fête.
The child's hand was being sought in marriage for the sons of some of the noblest houses in France, whilst her little brother, of the same age as the King, was commanded to Versailles to become His Majesty's playmate.
These intoxicating triumphs, through which Catherine moved with splendours almost royal, attended ever by a turbaned black boy from Sénégal--a gift from the Duke of Antin--to carry her purse or fan, were not without their effect upon her and even aroused in her a sense of gratitude for the husband whose greatness had procured her them. Her attitude towards him became more conciliatory than it had been for years, and this came the more readily to her since learning that the Countess of Horn's visit to Paris had been of the briefest.
Knowing that the Countess had left almost as soon as she had arrived, Catherine had reached the conclusion that there might, after all, be no grounds for at least some of the charges she had flung at her husband in such unmeasured and offensive terms. Penitent, she sought by submissiveness to offer amends.
He did not make it easy. Sardonic of lip and eye, he observed her timid advances, and once, when she pressed them to the point of wearying him, he let her know that he was not deceived, that he attached no false value to them. In his impatience he became almost brutally bitter.
"Do not you, too, dear Catherine, be at the trouble of wooing the mighty Baron Lass, the patron of princes, the hierophant of Mammon, the director of empire, who tomorrow may be His Majesty's Comptroller-General. Do not be dazzled, my dear, by the greatness of which you share the effulgence. To you I am just John Law of Lauriston, Jessamy John, as they used to call me."
Her eyes were piteously reproachful. "I would to God you were. Why will you be so unkind? Why hold such mean suspicions of my motives?"
"Is the right to harbour mean suspicions yours alone?"
This was a home thrust. It gave her pause. She even went so far--and it was far to go for a woman of her pride--as to confess some fault and to sue frankly for his forgiveness.
Aware of how much this must cost her, and at the same time uneasy in his conscience, the end of it was that he was so far moved as to comfort her with an assurance which in other circumstances he would have disdained to offer.
"It is a suspicion," he said, "with which you need not again torment yourself. Whatever Margaret Ogilvy may have been to me in the past, before I became your husband, let me tell you again that she was never my mistress. Since I am under no necessity to say what is not true and seek no profit from it, you need not hesitate to believe me. And I can add, if it will make an end of all this, that I am never likely to see Margaret Ogilvy again."
The flush that mounted to her cheek, the sudden quickening of her glance and its wistful gentleness went through him like a sword.
"There was no greatness about you, John," she plaintively reminded him, "when I came to you in Amsterdam. You were a broken man in those days. You should remember that. It will teach you how false are your reproaches now."
But although he humbled himself by admitting that he remembered it, the persuasion abode with him that the departure from her habitual frowardness was due to satisfaction in the social eminence to which he had raised her with himself.
It was an eminence that had not yet reached its zenith, though fast approaching it.
The absorption of the India Company's second issue of shares was so rapid and left so many still unsatisfied that he could perceive no reason to delay opening the third and final list. Accordingly he did so in October, and witnessed the same avidity to subscribe.
Once more there was a clamant mob of nobles in his antechambers, and amongst them came again the Prince de Conti. The little hunchback proved of those to whom appetite comes with eating. Not content with having amassed a fortune by the favour Law had shown him at the time of the second issue he came now demanding participation in the third on the same terms.
Urbanely Mr Law denied him. "On the last occasion, monseigneur, there was reason why I should oblige you. Today I must first think of all those who have not yet realized their conversions. You will see that I should be blameworthy if I neglected their just claims."
The grasping Prince, however, cared nothing about that. No plea of justice was likely to put him off. He urged his rank, spoke forcibly of the value of his favour, as a gross hint of the harm that might be wrought by his disfavour.
Mr Law remained unmoved, unless it be by a contempt which he scarcely dissembled. "It was my hope that I had won that favour on the last occasion. Do me right, monseigneur."
Baffled, the Prince took at last a sullen leave, forgetting on this occasion to profess himself Mr Law's servant.
With that third issue, the operation which Mr Law had originally intended to spread over a year was completed in little more than two months, and the national debt of fifteen hundred millions was liquidated, to the inexpressible and marvelling satisfaction of the Regent.
More than ever enthralled by Law's genius, His Highness now at last invited him to assume the exalted office of His Majesty's Comptroller-General, and since it was not permissible for any man who was not a Catholic to hold an office of State, Mr Law duly qualified by changing his religion and going to Mass, to the great scandal of McWhirter as well as of Catherine. Thus he became de jure what already he had been de facto, and d'Argenson was further incensed and embittered by removal from that office and the need to content himself with the retention of the Seals as Chancellor.
The Laird of Lauriston perceived clearly enough, and not without uneasiness, that for this swift achievement of his aims following out of the liquidation of the national debt, he had to thank his initial false step, which alone had permitted the agioteurs to take advantage of the situation and steal a march upon the legitimate State creditors.
Meanwhile the avalanche of speculation which they had started rolled on so irresistibly that by Christmas the shares of the India Company were changing hands at the staggering figure of fifteen thousand livres, which was thirty times their face value. A frenzy of gambling ensued, the like of which had never been witnessed, and this was by no means confined to the stock of the Company. From the remotest provinces of France, and even from abroad, there was so steady an invasion of Paris by fortune-seekers, that soon the city with a quarter of a million more than its ordinary inhabitants could scarcely house them. Here were further chances for the speculators. They snatched up all available lodgings in anticipation of the vast demand for them, which must raise the rents to fantastic heights. They bought up the necessities of life, perceiving that the cost of living must inevitably increase for the same reason. The Dukes of La Force, d'Antin and d'Estrées, forgetting the obligations of their birth, embarked through nominees in the wholesale purchase of cloth, candles, chocolate, coffee and sugar, whence a scandal followed. Similarly, seats on the coaches from the country were bought up in advance by speculators, and legitimate travellers were compelled to wait weeks before they could be accommodated.
In the Rue Quincampoix grotesquely exaggerated rents were paid for any booths wherein business might be transacted; a cobbler who owned a stall there, found himself growing rich by letting it to agioteurs; the hunchback Bombario, trading upon the superstition that accounted it lucky to rub against his hump, hired out his misshapen body and the hump itself as a writing pulpit upon which transactions might be recorded in the street, and was reputed by this means to have earned a hundred and fifty thousand livres in a few days.
Trade flourished as never before. Reckless expenditure followed inevitably upon the easy amassing of fortunes, and the merchants of Paris, especially those who dealt in precious wares, in gold and silver plate, in jewels which were being extensively imported from England, and in costly fabrics, were enriching themselves by dealings on a scale and at fabulous prices that had never existed even in their dreams.
Coachbuilders and horse dealers could scarcely meet the demand that assailed them, often from men who yesterday would have been glad enough of shoe leather with which to go on foot.
Those with land to sell could obtain three and four times the prices in which six months earlier they would have rejoiced. Routs and balls, fêtes and junketings, fireworks and gaming engrossed this jubilant and suddenly enriched people, noble and simple alike.
Theatres, dance halls, restaurants and gaming houses were thronged by folk with money to burn. The Opera was packed every night from floor to ceiling and never had displayed such brilliance of costumes and such glitter of jewels, whilst the enormous increase of carriages in the streets rendered life perilous for those who still went on foot.
The demand for labour had grown with this surge of affluence, and because of the great influx from the provinces and from abroad, which had increased by one-third the population of Paris, with a consequent insufficiency of essentials to meet the swollen demand, a rise in wages had followed.
The artisan who had been content with fifteen sous a day was now earning sixty, and was, therefore, a jubilant supporter of Mr Law, slow to perceive that since bread which had cost a sou for two pounds was costing now four sous a pound, with other commodities similarly augmented, his increased prosperity was no better than an illusion.
For the purveyor of all this phenomenal opulence, the magician whose genius had, by an avalanche of paper currency, lifted France out of the slough of bankruptcy and want into this unprecedented prosperity, there was almost deification. Whenever he rolled through Paris in his superb coach, with its magnificent bays in silver harness and a couple of footmen behind in his livery of claret and silver, if men stopped short of genuflecting to him, at least hats were swept off and cheers for him resounded such as had seldom resounded for anyone under the rank of a king. If he showed himself in the Rue Quincampoix a guard was necessary to hold off the mob that might have crushed him to death out of sheer worship.
Yet whilst outwardly imperturbable, urbane and splendidly liberal to all, in his mind he was not quite easy. Himself a gamester by careful calculation, he looked askance upon all these inexpert gamesters who, without reckoning the odds or possessing the ability to do so, plunged blindly and recklessly into speculations for which that momentary inattention on his part had supplied the impulse.
When presently the labouring classes came to understand that their swollen wages no longer kept pace with the price of necessities, swollen in their turn by the increase in wages, they clamoured for still higher pay, which, being granted, was followed again by still higher prices.
Observing this, the Laird of Lauriston realized the elusive natural law--unperceived or else ignored by those who for their own ends have sought the favour of the masses by inspiring claims to higher pay--that the value of an individual in any community is a relative value which no power on earth can change, and that attempts to change it violently must be attended by direst consequences.
He understood that to pay the individual more than that subtly determined relative worth was merely to lower the purchasing power of money, for it led inevitably to a readjustment of all other values, so as to conform with the one that had been altered.
Realizing this, Mr Law perceived that he was now confronted with a new and disquieting phenomenon, the phenomenon of inflation, for which there was as yet no name. He perceived here the first sweeps of a vicious spiral which he possessed no means of checking, and the end of which was not to be foreseen in the artificial circumstances which his system had created.
Then, too, the news from Louisiana, upon which his main hopes were founded, continued to be anything but good, and so far but little of its potential wealth had crossed the ocean. It was a subject upon which the steady, sober William Law was being brought to despair.
"Will you tell me, John, how and where we are to find a dividend that will bear any relation to the price at which the stock is standing?" His tone was irritable. "What will be happening when the holders realize it?"
Mr Law preserved a wooden countenance. "You start at shadows."
"Shadows is the very word, and devil a substance to cast them."
"The men who buy at these inflated prices are expressing their faith in the future. They perceive what you overlook: that whilst the wealth of the Mississippi may be inexhaustible, time must be allowed for the development of this young colony. Time must be allowed between sowing and reaping. Let that be our motto. It should enhearten the sober and perhaps restrain the reckless."
"You speak glibly of the reaping. Have you seen the last reports from Duchamp?"
"I have. They were best put in the fire before others see them. They're not for general consumption. We don't want a panic."
"You hope to postpone it?"
"I count upon averting it. All I need is time. Let me have that, and the harvest will follow."
"Time!" William was moved to impatience. "Time! That is the cry of every bankrupt, always praying desperately for the unexpected to come to his rescue."
"Damn you for a pessimist," said Mr Law, but he smiled indulgently. "Come, Will. Courage! A little faith!"
But William Law was out of faith that morning. "I seem to hear King Philip II crying, 'Time and I are one.' But if you put your trust in time, at least contrive that it be better employed by the colonists than is now the case."
"Ay, there's something in that," Mr Law agreed. "I'll take thought."