th a crash, involving thousands of
families in ruin and despair. Law, after bravely trying to save the
situation and narrowly escaping being torn in pieces, fled to poverty
and death at Venice, and the financial state of France was worse than
before. Law was not, however, absolutely a quack; there was a seed of
good in his famous system of mobilising credit, and the temporary
stimulus it gave to trade permanently influenced mercantile practice
in Europe.

In 1723, Louis XV. reached his legal majority. The regent became chief
minister, and soon paid the penalty of his career of debauchery,
leaving as his successor the Duke of Bourbon, degenerate scion of the
great Conde and one of the chief speculators in the Mississippi
bubble. A perilous lesson had two years before been instilled into the
mind of the young Louis. After his recovery from an illness, an
immense concourse of people had assembled at a _fete_ given in the
gardens of the Tuileries palace; enormous crowds filled every inch of
the Place du Carrousel and the gardens; the windows and even the roofs
of the houses were alive with people crying "_Vive le roi!_" Marshal
Villeroi led the little lad of eleven to a window, showed him the sea
of exultant faces turned towards him, and exclaimed, "Sire, all this
people is yours; all belongs to you. Show yourself to them, and
satisfy them; you are the master of all."

The Infanta of Spain, at four years of age, had been betrothed to the
young king, and in 1723 was sent to Paris to be educated for her
exalted future. She was lodged in the Petite Galerie of the Louvre,
over the garden still known as the Garden of the Infanta,[151] and
after three years of exile the homesick little maid was returned to
Madrid; for Louis' weak health made it imperative that a speedy
marriage should be contracted if the succession to the throne were to
be assured. The choice finally fell on the daughter of Stanislaus
Leczynski, a deposed king of Poland and a pensioner of France.
Voltaire relates that the poor discrowned queen was sitting with her
daughter Marie in their little room at Wissembourg when the father,
bursting in, fell on his knees, crying, "Let us thank God, my child!"
"Are you then recalled to Poland?" asked Marie. "Nay, daughter, far
better," answered Stanislaus, "you are the queen of France." A
magnificent wedding at Fontainebleau exalted gentle, pious Marie from
poverty to the richest queendom in Europe; to a life of cruel ne