ndred and twenty years ago that coal-mine took fire; it
is still burning. Here we shall experience another such tragedy.
Good-morning."

The engineer only shrugged his shoulders; it was nothing to him.

Ivan shook the dust of the God-forsaken colony off his feet. He and
his men returned to his own side of the mountain.

Meantime what had happened to his own mine? He had been absent four
days and four nights, and had never given it a thought.

CHAPTER XXVII

FROM THE SUBLIME TO THE RIDICULOUS

Any one who wishes to understand the meaning of the proverb, "There is
only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous," should gamble on
the stock-exchange; there he will learn the full meaning of the words.

To-day you are a deity, to-morrow the meanest of street curs. To-day
sixty agents shriek out the name of your speculation; you are a sort
of king, and all the other kings on 'change study your countenance to
see how the wind shifts. To-day, so soon as one o'clock strikes by the
town clock, a swarm of buyers come round you. Your note-book is held
up to the view of all the agents. It is handed from one to another; it
is placed upon the back of an agent, and the competitors write the
number of shares they want. To-day all hands point to the percentage,
which is the proof of your high estate. To-day the crowd who are
speculating on your credit fill all the passages; they scream out, "I
sell!" "I buy!" Even outside the stock-exchange sweet creatures of the
opposite sex, who like dabbling in stock quite as much as do the male
creation, make their books. Women are prohibited from showing their
faces on 'change; but they gamble all the same. Hundreds of ladies
wait upon the stock-broker, with a copy of the exchange list in their
hands; they have marked your shares. Still greater ladies sit outside
the exchange in their grand carriages. In their eagerness they stretch
their heads out of their carriage windows to know from the first-comer
at what figure the shares--your shares--stand.

This is all to-day. To-morrow you are not to be found; your name is
scratched out of the exchange list. Every one knows that your affair
has "burst." You are nowhere. You are nobody. Your place is empty.

* * * * *

The firm of Kaulmann stood at the summit of its triumph. Felix and his
bosom friend, the Abbe Samuel, were enjoying their afternoon siesta.
The room was full of a cloud of smoke, and under it