sband says."

"And what says he?" asked Lady Catharine, her own voice sounding to her
unfamiliar and far away.

"Why, that the city is mad, and that this soon must end--this
Mississippi bubble, as my Lord Stair calls it at the embassy."

"Yet I have heard all France is prosperous."

"Oh, yes indeed. 'Tis said that but yesterday the kingdom paid four
millions of its debt to Bavaria, three millions of its debt to
Sweden--yet these are not the most pressing debts of France."

"Meaning--"

"Why, the debts of the regent to his friends--those are the important
things. But the other day he gave eighty thousand livres to Madame
Chateauthiers, as a little present. He gave two hundred thousand livres
to the Abbe Something-or-other, who asked for it, and another thousand
livres to that rat Dubois. The thief D'Argenson ever counsels him to
give in abundance now that he hath abundance, and the regent is ready
with a vengeance with his compliance. Saint Simon, that priggish duke,
has had a million given him to repay a debt his father took on for the
king a generation ago. To the captain of the guard the regent gives six
hundred thousand livres, for carrying the fan of the regent's forgotten
wife; to the Prince Courtenay, two hundred thousand, most like because
the prince said he had need of it; a pension of two hundred thousand
annually to the Marquise de Bellefonte, the second such sum, because
perhaps she once made eyes at him; a pension of sixty thousand livres to
a three-year-old relative to the Prince de Conti, because Conti cried
for it; one hundred thousand livres to Mademoiselle Haidee, because she
has a consumption; and as much more to the Duchesse de Falari, because
she has not a consumption. Bah! The credit of France might indeed, as my
husband says, be called leaking through the slats of fans."

"But, look you!" she went on, "how Mr. Law feathers his own nest. He
bought lately, for a half million livres, the house of the Comte de
Tesse; and on the same day, as you know, the Hotel Mazarin. There is no
limit to his buying of estates. This, so says my husband, is the great
proof of his honesty. He puts his money here in France, and does not
send it over seas. He seems to have no doubt, and indeed no fear, of
anything."

Lady Warrington paused, half for want of breath. Silence fell in the
great room. A big and busy fly, deep down in the crystal _cylindre_
which sheltered a taper on a near-by table, buzzed out a droni