Mississippi Bubble (Reprise)

Lyrics

The Sun King is gone. France is broke. A vacuum of coin and of faith.
And into this silence walks a Scot, a gambler, a duelist named John Law.
He doesn't bring gold. He brings a system.
May, seventeen-sixteen. The Banque Générale.
He tells the Regent, Philippe d'Orléans, "We can make wealth from trust."
The first notes rustle, crisp and strange. Lighter than silver. A promise printed on rag paper.
A kingdom drowning in debt will believe anything that floats.
Then, a year later, the maps are unrolled. Louisiana.
A fiction of gold mines and fertile plains, sold in Paris. The Compagnie d'Occident.
You could buy a piece of a dream you'd never see. A future made of ink and wax.
And the shares, they begin their climb.
Oh, the Rue Quincampoix, a river of men.
Shouting prices, signing papers on a hunchback's willing spine.
They invented a new word for it then: Millionaire.
It's always the same System. The asset changes. The belief is the engine. The madness is the fuel.
By December seventeen-nineteen, the fever is absolute.
Ten thousand livres for a single share. The bank is the Banque Royale now, guaranteed by a child king.
A cook becomes a countess overnight. A footman buys an estate.
Nobody asks about the swamps of Louisiana. The number is the only truth.
But a number that only goes up is a lie waiting for a date.
The Prince de Conti sends three wagons for his gold. A crack in the faith.
Then May twenty-first, seventeen-twenty. The edict from Law's own hand.
Devaluation. The word falls like an axe. The rustle of paper becomes the sound of tearing.
Oh, the Rue Quincampoix, a river of tears.
Screaming prices, tearing paper, cursing the man and his name.
They remembered the word for it then: Ruin.
It's always the same System. The asset changes. The belief is the engine. The madness is the fuel.
John Law fled in a borrowed carriage.
The Regent faced the mobs.
And France remembered the weight of a coin, and the lightness of a broken promise.
A lesson for the ages.
Until the next time.