People vaunted the fertility of the soil, the facility offered for trade
by the extensive and rapid stream of the Mississippi; it was by the name
of that river that the new company was called at first, though it soon
took the title of _Compagnie d' Occident,_ when it had obtained the
privilege of trading in Senegal and in Guinea; it became the _Compagnie
des Indes,_ on forming a fusion with the old enterprises which worked the
trade of the East. For the generality, and in the current phraseology,
it remained the Mississippi; and that is the name it has left in history.
New Orleans was beginning to arise at the mouth of that river. Law had
bought Belle-Isle-en-Mer and was constructing the port of Lorient.

The Regent's councillors were scared and disquieted; the chancellor
proclaimed himself loudly against the deception or illusion which made of
Louisiana a land of promise; he called to mind that Crozat had been
ruined in searching for mines of the precious metals there. "The worst
of him was his virtue," said Duclos. The Regent made a last effort to
convert him, as well as the Duke of Noailles, to the projects of Law.
It was at a small house in the faubourg St. Antoine, called La Roquette,
belonging to the last named, that the four interlocutors discussed the
new system thoroughly. "With the use of very sensible language Law had
the gift of explaining himself so clearly and intelligibly that he left
nothing to desire as concerned making himself comprehended. The Duke of
Orleans liked him and relished him. He regarded him and all he did as
work of his own creation. He liked, moreover, extraordinary and
out-of-the-way methods, and he embraced them the more readily in that he
saw the resources which had become so necessary for the state and all the
ordinary operations of finance vanishing away. This liking of the
Regent's wounded Noailles, as being adopted at his expense. He wanted to
be sole master in the matter of finance, and all the eloquence of Law
could not succeed in convincing him." The chancellor stood firm; the