The price of shares sometimes rose ten or twenty per cent. in the
course of a few hours, and many persons in the humbler walks of life,
who had risen poor in the morning, went to bed in affluence. An
extensive holder of stock, being taken ill, sent his servant to sell
two hundred and fifty shares, at eight thousand livres each, the price
at which they were then quoted. The servant went, and, on his arrival
in the Jardin de Soissons, found that in the interval the price had
risen to ten thousand livres. The difference of two thousand livres on
the two hundred and fifty shares, amounting to 500,000 livres, or
20,000 pounds sterling, he very coolly transferred to his own use,
and, giving the remainder to his master, set out the same evening for
another country. Law's coachman in a very short time made money enough
to set up a carriage of his own, and requested permission to leave his
service. Law, who esteemed the man, begged of him as a favour, that he
would endeavour, before he went, to find a substitute as good as
himself. The coachman consented, and in the evening brought two of his
former comrades, telling Mr. Law to choose between them, and he would
take the other. Cookmaids and footmen were now and then as lucky, and,
in the full-blown pride of their easily-acquired wealth, made the most
ridiculous mistakes. Preserving the language and manners of their old,
with the finery of their new station, they afforded continual subjects
for the pity of the sensible, the contempt of the sober, and the
laughter of everybody. But the folly and meanness of the higher ranks
of society were still more disgusting. One instance alone, related by
the Duke de St. Simon, will show the unworthy avarice which infected
the whole of society. A man of the name of Andre, without character or
education, had, by a series of well-timed speculations in Mississippi
bonds, gained enormous wealth, in an incredibly short space of time.
As St. Simon expresses it, "he had amassed mountains of gold." As he