of business would be possible. More than one _bona fide_ banker, backed
up by a _bona fide_ government, has induced the hardest-headed men on
'Change to take up stock which is bound to fall within a given time.
You have seen better than that. Have you not seen stock created with
the concurrence of a government to pay the interest upon older stock,
so as to keep things going and tide over the difficulty? These
operations were more or less like Nucingen's settlements."

"The thing may look queer on a small scale," said Blondet, "but on a
large we call it finance. There are high-handed proceedings criminal
between man and man that amount to nothing when spread out over any
number of men, much as a drop of prussic acid becomes harmless in a
pail of water. You take a man's life, you are guillotined. But if, for
any political conviction whatsoever, you take five hundred lives,
political crimes are respected. You take five thousand francs out of
my desk; to the hulks you go. But with a sop cleverly pushed into the
jaws of a thousand speculators, you can cram the stock of any bankrupt
republic or monarchy down their throats; even if the loan has been
floated, as Couture says, to pay the interest on that very same
national debt. Nobody can complain. These are the real principles of
the present Golden Age."

"When the stage machinery is so huge," continued Bixiou, "a good many
puppets are required. In the first place, Nucingen had purposely and
with his eyes open invested his five millions in an American
investment, foreseeing that the profits would not come in until it was
too late. The firm of Nucingen deliberately emptied its coffers. Any
liquidation ought to be brought about naturally. In deposits belonging
to private individuals and other investments, the firm possessed about
six millions of capital altogether. Among those private individuals