Millionaire: The Philanderer, Gambler, and Duelist Who Invented Modern Finance by Janet Gleeson

to give me an audience. I await your orders.” Katherine, meanwhile, was in The Hague supervising the packing of furnishings and personal effects, a formidable task, with their extensive collection of art and furniture. They suffered a setback when they were held up by French customs officials at Rouen. Law wrote to Desmarets, confidently requesting the assistance he felt was due to a man who would soon be playing a key role in French affairs: “Several chests and crates with the valuables and furnishings that I used during my stay there are being dispatched from Holland. As among these there are some crockery and other fragile objects that will be easily damaged if they are opened
en route
and as I have no one to look after them, I am taking the liberty of begging your lordship to grant permission for them to pass through Rouen without being opened, and that they can be examined when they arrive at my house.” Desmarets was not unsympathetic, but neither would he allow Law to ignore the usual formalities. He gave instructions that Law should be told “that I can’t arrange a visit at his home . . . this is only usual for ambassadors . . . but if he likes I will send an order to have the chests and crates sent to the customs in Paris, where they can be opened in front of him.”
    A month or two later the Law family were comfortably settled in their new residence, a mansion staffed with “a sizeable retinue of servants,” in the Place Vendôme (then known as the Place Louis le Grand), one of Paris’s newest and most fashionable squares, where many of the capital’s most powerful financiers lived. The move had been noticed by d’Argenson, who remained extremely wary of Law and alerted foreign minister Torcy: “A Scot named Law, gambler by profession and suspected of evil intentions towards the King appears at Paris in high style and has even bought an impressive home in the Place Louis le Grand, although no one knows of any resource except fortune in gambling, which is his whole profession. I cannot believe that the motives which have aroused just suspicions against him have ended with the peace.” Torcy, however, must have caught wind of the shift in the establishment’s regard for him and scribbled on the letter, “He is not suspect. One can leave him in peace.”
    The move had just been completed during the summer of 1714 when Queen Anne died. Still hankering for a role in England, Law immediately lobbied an old Scottish friend, John Dalrymple, second Earl of Stair, the recently appointed British ambassador to France, to bring his case to the attention of the new king, George I. The son of the disgraced earl held responsible for the massacre at Glencoe, Stair shared the youthful Law’s passion for gambling and high living; he may have met Law over the tables in Edinburgh or London. When Stair arrived in Paris in January 1715, Law was the first person he visited.
    The encounter left him deeply impressed. Now forty-three, Law had retained his good looks and athletic physique, but his youthful appetite for self-indulgence had been replaced by lofty ambition. Stair was dazzled by Law’s grasp of finance and his ability to explain complex subjects lucidly. He had little hesitation in taking up Law’s case and wrote to the statesman and secretary of state in England, James Stanhope, to recommend Law as “a man of very good sense, and who has a head fit for calculations of all kinds to an extent beyond anybody.” He was, said Stair, “certainly the cleverest man that is,” who might be “useful in devising some plan for paying off the national debts.” Stair also recommended Law to Lord Halifax at the Treasury. Halifax, who had met Law in The Hague and seen the proposal he had written in Scotland, needed little convincing of Law’s talent: “I have a great esteem for his abilities, and am extreme fond of having his assistance in the Revenue,” he said. But his good opinion was not enough. Later he wrote,