It may be imagined that the check-book and the three deep drawers in
the mahogany cabinet were not spared by this hoard of devouring locusts
which had fallen upon "Moussiou Jansoulet's" dwelling. Nothing could
be more comic than the haughty manner in which these good islanders
effected their loans, briskly, and with an air of defiance. At the same
time it was not they who were the worst--except for the boxes of cigars
which sank in their pockets as though they all meant to open a "Civette"
on their return to their own country. For just as the very hot
weather inflames and envenoms old sores, so the election had given
an astonishing new growth to the pillaging already established in the
house. Money was demanded for advertising expenses, for Moessard's
articles, which were sent to Corsica in bales of thousands of copies,
with portraits, biographies, pamphlets--all the printed clamour that
it was possible to raise round a name. And always the usual work of the
suction-pumps went on, those pumps now fixed to this great reservoir of
millions. Here, the Bethlehem Society, a powerful machine working with
regular, slow-recurring strokes, full of impetus; the Territorial Bank,
a marvellous exhauster, indefatigable, with triple and quadruple rows
of pumps, several thousand horse-power, the Schwalbach pump, the Bois
l'Hery pump, and how many others as well? Some enormous and noisy
with screaming pistons, some quite dumb and discreet with clack-valves
knowingly oiled, pumps with tiny valves, dear little pumps as fine
as the sting of insects, and like them, leaving a poison in the place
whence they have drawn life; all working together and bound to bring
about if not a complete drought, at least a serious lowering of level.

Already evil rumours, vague as yet, were going the round of the Bourse.
Was this a move of the enemy? For Jansoulet was waging a furious money
war against Hemerlingue, trying to thwart all his financial operations,
and was losing considerable sums at the game. He had against him his own
fury, his adversary's coolness, and the blunderings of Paganetti, who
was his man of straw. In any case his golden star was no longer in
the ascendant. Paul de Gery knew this through Joyeuse, who was now a
stock-broker's accountant and well up in the doings on the Bourse. What
troubled him most, however, was the Nabob's singular agitation, his need
of constant distraction which had succeeded his former splendid calm of
strength