on the watch, always at hand, ready to profit by any windfall, if one
should come. Oh, for example, I swear it upon my ribbon, upon my thirty
years of academical service, if ever an affair like this of the Nabob
allow me to recover my disbursements, I shall not wait another single
minute. I shall quickly be off to look after my pretty vineyard down
yonder, near Monbars, cured forever of my thoughts of speculation. But,
alas! that is a very chimerical hope. Exhausted, used up, known as we
are upon the Paris market, with our stocks which are no longer quoted on
the Bourse, our bonds which are near being waste paper, so many lies, so
many debts, and the hole that grows ever deeper and deeper. (We owe
at this moment three million five hundred thousand francs. It is not,
however, those three millions that worry us. On the contrary, it is they
that keep us going; but we have with the _concierge_ a little bill of a
hundred and twenty-five francs for postage-stamps, a month's gas bill,
and other little things. That is the really terrible part of it.) and we
are expected to believe that a man, a great financier like this Nabob,
even though he were just arrived from the Congo, or dropped from the
moon the same day, would be fool enough to put his money into a concern
like this. Come! Is the thing possible? You may tell that story to the
marines, my dear governor.




A DEBUT IN SOCIETY


"M. BERNARD JANSOULET!"

The plebeian name, accentuated proudly by the liveried servants, and