Millionaire - Janet Gleeson [59]
For all the carefully calculated bravado and insults bandied over the dinner table, success had not turned Law into an egomaniac. Nor had it silenced his driving demon: his need for acceptance and his desire for political advancement. He might relish behaving high-handedly toward the English establishment and his role of bad-boy-made-good, but part of him craved acknowledgment of his achievement and wanted to be recognized for his honorable intentions, as well as respected for the money he could bestow. Success offered the chance to anchor himself to the country he had served so well by seeking a position within its government. The regent welcomed the idea, but there was a constitutional dilemma: Law still followed the Protestant faith of his forebears, and in Catholic France a Protestant could have no legal role in government. For Law to hold public office he would have to convert.
Oddly for the descendant of a family whose livelihood had once depended on and been doomed by its faith, religion seems to have been of little significance to John Law. His choice of English friends bears this out: among them were several leading Jacobites, although he was also close to the Duke of Argyll and Earl of Ilay, who were staunch anti-Jacobites. If he felt any qualms about his conversion there are no records of it. There are, however, signs that Katherine did not share his feelings: she refused to follow suit, and was said to be “very much upset about it,” according to the regent’s mother, especially when Law insisted that both children should adopt the Catholic faith. But Law, at the zenith of his career, blinkered by ambition, ignored Katherine’s opposition. The ceremony of his acceptance into the Roman Catholic Church took place in Melun in December 1719, presided over by the Abbé de Tencin, the brother of the infamous nun turned courtesan Claudine de Tencin, whose numerous lovers were said to include Law. The association must have been a double blow for Katherine. Like his sister, Tencin was renowned for his venality and corruption and agreed to Law’s conversion largely because he knew he would profit from it. Later he received shares worth 200,000 livres. A few days later, on Christmas Day, Law participated in his first Mass at his local church of St. Roche and marked the occasion with a sumptuous ball and dinner.
Uplifted by his conversion and anxious to secure public affection, Law donated vast sums to good causes. “He gives away lots of alms that are never talked about . . . and helps many poor people,” wrote the Princess Palatine. “It is impossible to express the bounty and munificence of Mr. Law; and what a world of money he gives away on charitable and generous occasions.” Daniel Defoe agreed: “The other day he gave 100,000 livres to the rebuilding of the church of St. Roche in Paris, being the parish church in which he lives and where he received his first communion. After the renunciation of his religion, he gave the same day a hundred thousand crowns to the relief of his country men at St. Germain . . . He had given very considerable sums to the Hospital la Charité.”
Law’s critics were unmoved by his generosity. They were forced to pay him lip service, but many secretly regarded him as a parvenu, whose reforms had seriously