r are not so good as your bank notes; that no one must
have gold or silver; that no one must send his gold and silver out of
France, but that all must bring it to the king and take for it in
exchange these notes of yours. Try that. It ought to succeed, ought it
not, your Grace?" His bantering tone sank into one of half plausibility.

"Why, surely. That would be the solution."

"Oh, think you so? Your Grace is wondrous keen as a financier! Now take
the counsel of Dubois, of D'Argenson, my very good friends. This is what
they will counsel you to do. And I will counsel you at the same time to
avail yourself of their advice. Tell all France to bring in its gold, to
enable you to put something essential under the value of all this paper
money which you have been sending out so lavishly, so unthinkingly, so
without stint or measure."

"Yes. And then?"

"Why, then, your Grace," said Law, "then we shall see what we shall
see!"

The regent again choked with anger. Law continued. "Go on. Smooth down
the back of this animal. Continue to reduce these taxes. The specie of
the realm of France, as I am banker enough to know, is not more than
thirteen hundred millions of livres, allowing sixty-five livres to the
marc. Yet long before this your Grace has crowded the issue of our
_actions_ until there are out not less than twenty-six hundred millions
of livres in the stock of our Company. Your Brothers Paris, your
D'Argenson, your Dubois will tell you how you can make the people of
France continue to believe that twice two is not four, that twice
thirteen is not twenty-six!"

"But this they are doing," broke in the regent, with a ray of hope in
his face. "This they are doing. We have provided for that. In the
council not an hour ago the Abbe Dubois and Monsieur d'Argenson decided
that the time had come to make some fixed proportion between the specie
and these notes. We have to-day framed an edict, which the Parliament
will register, stating that the interests of the subjects of the king
require that the price of these bank notes should be lessened, so that
there may be some sort of accommodation between them and the coin of the
realm. We have ordered that the shares shall, within thirty days, drop
to seventy-five hundred livres, in another thirty days to seven thousand
livres, and so on, at five hundred livres a month, until at last they
shall have a value of one-half what they were to-day. Then, tell me, my
wise Monsieur L'as, w