o fortune; and he distributed to this little crowd, just as he
would throw food into a kennel, the discounts and clippings of his
ventures, taking malicious pleasure, the insolent delight of a fortunate
upstart, in feigning at the moment when loans were issued, sickness that
had no existence, in order to have the right of keeping his chamber, of
hearing persons of exalted names ringing at his door and dancing
attendance upon him,--powerful, influential and illustrious
persons,--him, the second-hand dealer and chafferer from Marseilles.

It was then that he tasted the joy of supreme power, that delight which
titillated even his marrow, and after having rested all day, the prey of
a convenient neuralgia, he experienced the unlimited pleasure of force
overcoming mind, the blow of a fist crushing a weakling, as with a white
cravat he appeared in some salon, in the greenroom of the ballet, or in
the dressing-room of a _premiere_, saying with the mocking smile of
triumph and the assurance attending a gorged appetite:

"I was sick to-day, I suffered from neuralgia! The Minister of Finance
called on me!--Baron Nathan came to get information from me!"

Among all the pleasures experienced by this man, he valued feminine
virtue occasionally purchased with gold as little in comparison with the
virgin souls, honor and virtue that he often succeeded in humiliating,
in bending before him like a reed, and snuffing out with his irony,
whenever necessity placed at his mercy any of those puritanical beings
who had passed sometimes with haughty brow before the millions of this
man of money. It was then that the clothes-dealer took his revenge in
all its hideousness. There was no pity to be expected from this fat,
smiling and easy-going man. His fat fingers strangled more certainly
than the lean hands of a usurer. Molina never pardoned.

Ah! if this fellow went to see the minister, most assuredly he wanted a
favor from him.

But what?

It was extraordinary, but before Vaudrey, Molina who could hold his own
among rascals, found himself ill at ease. There was in the frank look of
this _ninny_, as Molina the _Tumbler_ had one evening called him while
talking politics, such direct honesty that the banker, accustomed as he
was to dealings with sharks and intriguers, did not quite know how to
open the question, nevertheless a very important matter was in hand.

"A rich plum," thought Molina.

A matter of railways, a concession to be gaine