The authorities, however, declined to see the least connexion between the murder of Sandrier and the position which he had occupied, and nearly a year passed without any steps being taken against La Jonchère. It is, indeed, highly improbable that they would ever have been stirred to action had not Madame de Prie taken upon herself to intervene.
No sooner did that energetic lady hear of the crime that had been committed and of the rumours that were in circulation concerning La Jonchère and Le Blanc, than she resolved to employ every means in her power to get to the bottom of the affair. Fortune favoured her quest, in bringing her allies, wealthy, enterprising, and capable, and as determined to compass the ruin of the Minister for War as she was herself.
Quite apart from the Condé faction, Le Blanc possessed many enemies. Of these the most powerful were the four brothers Pâris, the famous bankers, who, after the Mississippi crash, had been entrusted by the Regent with the task of restoring the public credit. In the days before they had attained their present eminence, the Pâris had been in business as army-contractors, and Le Blanc, at that time Intendant of Flanders, had caused the third brother, Pâris-Le Montagne, to be arrested on a charge of rendering fraudulent accounts. More recently become Minister for War, he had accused the ablest of the four, Pâris-Duverney, of infringing the edicts forbidding the export of gold, and, though Duverney had succeeded in exculpating himself, both he and his brothers were provisionally banished from the realm. Hence, the bankers hated Le Blanc and had sworn to be avenged on him as soon as they were able.
The task of re-establishing the finances which had been entrusted to them, and which they conducted with undeniable skill, of course included an examination of the accounts of the public services. Scarcely had they begun to investigate those of the Ministry for War than they discovered such flagrant irregularities as to leave little room for doubt that a system of wholesale robbery prevailed. They immediately drew up a report to that effect and despatched it to the Regent, but, in their eagerness to bring their enemy to account, they had not waited to substantiate the charges they made; and Philippe d’Orléans, with whom Le Blanc was just then in high favour, excused himself from moving in the matter, on the ground that the Minister for War had rendered undoubted service to the State, and was extremely popular with the Army, and that, in the present critical condition of affairs, it would be better to watch his future conduct than to criticize his past acts.
The bankers were greatly mortified by this repulse. Nevertheless, they were too embittered against Le Blanc, and too apprehensive of reprisals on his part, to abandon the struggle; and they accordingly began to look about them for some powerful ally, whose assistance might enable them to resume it with some prospect of success.
Naturally, their thoughts turned in the direction of the Duc de Bourbon, but, since they had been the most strenuous opponents of his protégé Law, and they feared that the prince might harbour some resentment against them on that account, they hesitated to approach him. Great therefore was their satisfaction, when one day they received a letter from Madame de Prie proposing an alliance between them and the House of Condé against the common enemy.
The alliance was soon concluded, and, supported openly by the whole weight of the Condé influence, and encouraged in secret by Dubois, whose jealousy of Le Blanc Madame de Prie had artfully fanned, the Pâris brothers again advanced to the attack, and demanded that a commission should be appointed to investigate the accounts of the Ministry for War.
Their demand was conceded, the commissioners had been already nominated, and every one was expecting to hear that Le Blanc and La Jonchère had been summoned to appear before them, when the faction opposed to the Condés, with the Duc de Chartres, the Prince de Conti, and the legitimated princes at its head, started a violent agitation in favour of Le Blanc, and carried the war into the enemy’s camp by accusing the Pâris brothers of having themselves despoiled the State. This furnished the Regent with a pretext for intervening between the accused and justice, and the meeting of the commission was postponed sine die.
Madame de Prie, however, did not despair. She had made sure of the support of Dubois, who in August, 1722, had been named ministre principal—the same title which had been given the Cardinal de Richelieu—and her several agents were everywhere at work. Daily the evidence against Le Blanc was accumulating in her hands; towards the end of the spring of 1723, it was so overwhelming that she felt that it would be impossible for the Regent to ignore it.
She had ascertained that, apart from their official relations, Le Blanc and La Jonchère were on terms of the closest intimacy; that the latter had a pretty and coquettish wife, whom he had complacently surrendered to his chief, being himself in love with the wife of the unfortunate Sandrier; that he lived in almost princely style, and had, moreover, advanced large sums of money to the Comte de Belle-Isle, to defray the cost of a magnificent hôtel which he was building on the banks of the Seine, opposite the Tuileries; that, on learning of the death of Sandrier, Le Blanc had shown so much emotion that every one present was astonished, and that a day or two later he fell ill and was obliged to take to his bed. And finally, she discovered that it was practically certain that, in robbing the State, Le Blanc and La Jonchère had been acting with the connivance of the Palais-Royal, and that a considerable portion of the spoil had found its way into the Regent’s coffers.