Regent that the count's house had the honor of being connected with his.
"Very, well, gentlemen," said he, "then I will share the shame with you,"
and he remained inflexible.

The public wrath and indignation fastened henceforth upon Law, the author
and director of a system which had given rise to so many hopes, and had
been the cause of so many woes. His carriage was knocked to pieces in
the streets. President de Mesmes entered the Grand Chamber, singing with
quite a solemn air,--

"Sirs, sirs, great news! What is it?
It's--They've smashed Law's carriage all to bits."

The whole body jumped up, more regardful of their hatred than of their
dignity; and "Is Law torn in pieces?" was the cry. Law had taken refuge
at the Palais Royal. One day he appeared at the theatre in the Regent's
box; low murmurs recalled to the Regent's mind the necessity for
prudence; in the end he got Law away secretly in a carriage lent him by
the Duke of Bourbon.

Law had brought with him to France a considerable fortune; he had
scarcely enough to live upon when he retired to Venice, where he died
some years later (1729), convinced to the last of the utility of his
system, at the same time that he acknowledged the errors he had committed
in its application. "I do not pretend that I did not make mistakes," he
wrote from his retreat; "I know I did, and that if I had to begin again I
should do differently. I should go more slowly but more surely, and I
should not expose the state and my own person to the dangers which may
attend the derangement of a general system." "There was neither avarice
nor rascality in what he did," says St. Simon; "he was a gentle, kind,