A few days after the ceremony at Saint-Roch, on 5th January, 1720, Law was named Controller General of Finance in place of D’Argenson, whose tenure of office was wholly at Law’s mercy. Law had merely to create difficulties for his nominee, in order to obtain his resignation, and D’Argenson wise enough to perceive the futility of opposing the designs of Law readily yielded up the most important office in the national administration. As Voltaire remarks, Law had in the space of four years developed from a Scotsman into a Frenchman; from a Protestant into a Catholic; from an adventurer into a lord of the fairest lands of the kingdom; and from a banker into a minister of state. His phenomenal rise from obscurity to the highest office, and that in a foreign country, was an apparent witness to the truth of his theories, and the circumstance that he did not allow himself to be overcome by overestimation of his own importance, but maintained an unassuming and unpretentious manner throughout the whole of this period secured for him the personal attachment and admiration of the whole nation, and for his opinions a greater degree of implicit faith than probably they would otherwise have received. The Regent was himself delighted with the preferment he was thus easily enabled to confer upon his favourite, and marked the occasion by a lavish distribution of grants and pensions to numerous courtiers and relations. Of these the Duke of Saint-Simon mentions grants of 600,000 livres to La Fare, captain of the guard; 100,000 livres to Castries, chevalier d’honneur to Madame la Duchesse d’Orléans; 200,000 to the Prince de Courtenay; and 60,000 livres to the Comte de la Marche, the infant son of the Prince de Conti. Saint-Simon then adds that “seeing so much depredation, and no recovery to hope for, I asked M. la Duc d’Orléans to attach 12,000 livres, by way of increase, to my government of Senlis, which was worth only 1000 livres, and of which my second son had the reversion. I obtained it at once.” Two other honours of a different character were also conferred upon Law during these few months of greatness. One came from his native city, which was now anxious to do homage to the man of whom it formerly had reason to be somewhat ashamed. This consisted of the freedom of Edinburgh, presented to him in a gold casket of magnificent workmanship, which had cost the municipal treasury the sum of £300. The other consisted in his election as an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences, an honour of the highest order and conferred only upon Frenchmen of outstanding ability. In this latter condition was found the excuse for purging his name from the roll on his downfall, his election which took place on 2nd December, 1719, having preceded his naturalisation.