Claparon and his tempter exchanged a few words, with their faces
turned to the wall. None of the onlookers guessed the nature of this
by-play, though their curiosity was keenly excited by the strange
gestures of the two contracting parties. When Castanier returned,
there was a sudden outburst of amazed exclamation. As in the Assembly
where the least event immediately attracts attention, all faces were
turned to the two men who had caused the sensation, and a shiver
passed through all beholders at the change that had taken place in
them.

The men who form the moving crowd that fills the Stock Exchange are
soon known to each other by sight. They watch each other like players
round a card-table. Some shrewd observers can tell how a man will play
and the condition of his exchequer from a survey of his face; and the
Stock Exchange is simply a vast card-table. Every one, therefore, had
noticed Claparon and Castanier. The latter (like the Irishman before
him) had been muscular and powerful, his eyes were full of light, his
color high. The dignity and power in his face had struck awe into them
all; they wondered how old Castanier had come by it; and now they
beheld Castanier divested of his power, shrunken, wrinkled, aged, and
feeble. He had drawn Claparon out of the crowd with the energy of a
sick man in a fever fit; he had looked like an opium-eater during the
brief period of excitement that the drug can give; now, on his return,
he seemed to be in the condition of utter exhaustion in which the
patient dies after the fever departs, or to be suffering from the
horrible prostration that follows on excessive indulgence in the
delights of narcotics. The infernal power that had upheld him through
his debauches had left him, and the body was left unaided and alone to
endure the agony of remorse and the heavy burden of sincere