Then people began to grow tired
of waiting. Some of them began to suspect that all the stories of
the splendours of Louisiana were not true, and they tried to sell
their paper money and paper shares, and get back the gold which
they had given for them. Soon every one wanted to sell, and no one
wanted to buy. The value of the paper money fell and fell, until
it was worth less than nothing. People who had thought themselves
millionaires found themselves beggars. Law, who had been flattered
and courted, was now hated and cursed. And in terror of his life
he fled from France in 1790 to die miserably in Italy a few years
later.
As to Louisiana, a new set of stories were told of it. Now it was
no longer described as a sort of earthly paradise, but as a place
of horror and misery. It was a land of noisome marsh and gloomy
forest, where prowled every imaginable evil beast. At certain times
of the year the river flooded the whole land, so that the people
were obliged to take refuge in the trees. There they lived more
like monkeys than men, springing from tree to tree in search of
food. The sun was so hot that it could strike a man dead as if with
a pistol. This was called sunstroke. Luscious fruits indeed grew
around, but they were all poisonous and those who ate of them died
in agonies. In fact Louisiana was now pictured as a place to be
shunned, as a place of punishment.
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