Millionaire - Janet Gleeson [91]
Katherine’s preparations to leave must have been under way when the investigators swooped and she, unwittingly, became a pawn in their lust to hurt Law. Her request for passports was refused. All Law’s assets, including the Hôtel de Langlée, where Katherine was living at the time, and a dozen or so other properties belonging to him, were confiscated. She was reduced to taking lodgings in a modest inn in St. Germain, with only a valet and chambermaid to attend her. Then, on May 8, William Law, suspected of planning an escape, was arrested and incarcerated in the Fort l’Évèque. Perhaps to spare him further worry, Katherine failed to tell Law what had happened, and he was still unaware of the situation—a letter from Paris to Venice could take weeks to arrive—when he wrote disappointedly to her, “I find you have no inclination to come to Italy, I agree that England or Holland would be better. . . . You may go to Holland.”
When news of the situation in Paris eventually filtered through, he was outraged, even though she still had not told him the full truth of her own reduced circumstances. “Mme. Law writes that they find me a debtor of 7 million to the bank, and of five or six million to the company, and that the King has seized my effects, that my brother is in prison, and his effects seized, without being told the reason. You know that I paid no attention to my own interests, that I didn’t know the exact state of my affairs; my time was entirely taken up with public service.” He was paying an unimaginable price for his idealism and failure to attend to his own affairs. Plainly if he were to exact justice, he realized, he had only two choices left: to return to France, or to move to England and put pressure on Bourbon and Orléans through his connections at the English court.
He pursued both avenues: he dispatched new reports for ways to improve French finances to Paris in the hope that they would clear the way for his return, and made overtures to friends in London. According to the English diplomat Crawford, the schemes were warmly received in Paris. “Mr. Law . . .has sent a new project for the re-establishment of finances to the Regent, which was very well liked, they infer from hence that gentleman will soon return into France.” But the regent, though quietly keen to bring him back, was fearful of a public outcry if he did so. Still in the grip of Law’s enemies, he refused to intervene. The stalemate persisted.
In London, Law’s approaches to Lord Ilay and Lord Londonderry were greeted with only marginally less ambivalence. Four years earlier, through Londonderry’s intervention, Law had been granted a pardon by George I and a discharge from the Wilsons. As a pledge of loyalty to France, he had given the royal pardon to the regent—another impetuous gesture of steadfastness that was now a cause of regret—and had left the Wilsons’ discharge in Paris. Now, realizing that the developments of the past year had changed the way in which Britain viewed him, Law hoped uneasily that “His Majesty will have no scruple to order a second expedition of it [the pardon].” But he was worried enough about his reception to flex his political muscle and stress menacingly how damaging a refusal to let him return might be. “It would be very much contrary to the interest of my country to refuse me the retreat I desire there. . . . I have received offers from very powerful Princes, which would tempt one that had either the passion of ambition or revenge. England may retrieve her credit, if no other state pretend to rival her in it; but if I should fail to work with a prince that has means, authority, and resolution, I can change the face of the affairs of Europe.”
Since leaving France, Law had certainly received offers of employment from Denmark and Russia, which so far he had turned down. But his threat was far from idle: if England refused him entry and Orléans continued to deny him funds to settle his debts, he would have no choice but to “look for a protector to avoid a prison