ng him short. "You
shall have more gold than you could stow in the cellars of the Bank of
France."

He held out a handful of notes. That decided Claparon.

"Done," he cried; "but how is the bargain to be make?"

"Let us go over yonder, no one is standing there," said Castanier,
pointing to a corner of the court.

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 repentance. Claparon's troubles every
one could guess; but Claparon reappeared, on the other hand, with
sparkling eyes, holding his head high with the pride of Lucifer. The
crisis had passed from the one man to the other.

"Now you can drop off with an easy mind, old man," said Claparon to
Cast