Millionaire - Janet Gleeson [95]
The pace of progress was excruciatingly slow. Eventually, in October 1723, almost two years after his arrival in London, Law’s departure for Paris, accompanied by Walpole’s brother, seemed imminent. “I have so ordered my brother’s journey to Paris with him that he thinks Horace goes with his advice,” wrote Walpole. But it was not to be. Preparations were under way and Law was awaiting final instructions from Paris when, on December 2, inauspicious news reached London. Orléans, worn out by debauchery and the pressures of government, had suffered a massive heart attack at the age of forty-nine and collapsed and died in the arms of one of his mistresses, the Duchesse Marie Thérèse de Falaris.
Law’s hopes of return to France died with him. Bourbon took over the reins of power, but his ambitious and scheming mistress, Madame de Prie, who had lent Law her coach when he escaped from France, had grown hostile to him. The recall for which he had hoped never came, and payment of his pension was suspended. The charity of friends and wins at the tables were again his only means of support. Profound humiliation shines through his letter to the Countess of Suffolk: “Can you not prevail on the Duke to help me something more than the half year? Or is there nobody that could have the good nature enough to lend me one thousand pounds? I beg that, if nothing of this can be done, that it may only be betwixt us two, as I take you as my great friend.”
A poignant letter to Bourbon from the following summer of 1724 resounds with turmoil at his circumstances: “There is scarcely an example, perhaps not one instance, of a foreigner like him [Law], who acquired in so high a degree the confidence of the Prince, who made so large a fortune in so upright a manner, and who, on leaving France, reserved nothing for himself and his family, not even what he had brought into the kingdom with him.” As time passed, rancor at this injustice yielded to a sense of remorse at the opportunities he had let slip:
I have sacrificed everything, even my property and my credit, being now bankrupt not only in France but also in all other countries. For them I have sacrificed the interests of my children, whom I tenderly love, and who are deserving of all my affection; these children, once courted by the most considerable families in France, are now destitute of fortune and of assets. I had it in my power to have settled my daughter in marriage in the first houses of Italy, Germany, and England; but I refused all offers of that nature, thinking it inconsistent with my duty.
Desperate for money, worried that he might be thrown into debtor’s prison at any moment, and hopeful that if he were employed by the English authorities they might take up his case with France, Law now turned to Walpole for a diplomatic post. Although as a Catholic he was barred from holding an official diplomatic position, Walpole agreed. Law was delighted: “I will do all I can so that his majesty and his ministers are satisfied with my services,” he wrote a few days before leaving.
Having received his first payment from the government, presumably with much relief, John Law crossed the channel on August 9, 1725, accompanied by his nephew. He had been instructed to head for the spa of Aix-la-Chapelle, and take the waters while awaiting further orders. His role was to be far from orthodox: he was to journey through Europe, pretending to be a traveler but in reality acting as an undercover agent, reporting anything of interest he noticed. France’s “meteor” was poised at the age of fifty-four to embark on a new career as a spy.
18
VENETIAN SUNSET
I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
A palace and a prison on each hand:
I saw from out the waves her structures rise
As from