f sanity, a panic chill of sober understanding swept over
this vast multitude of still unreasoning souls who had traded so long
upon this impossible supposition of an ever-advancing market. Reason
still lacked among them, yet fear and sudden suspicion were not wanting.
Man after man hastened swiftly away to sell privately his shares before
greater drop in the price might come. He met others upon the same
errand.

Precisely the reverse of the old situation now obtained. As all Paris
had fought to buy, so now all Paris fought to sell. The streets were
filled with clamoring mobs. If earlier there had been confusion, now
there was pandemonium. Never was such a scene witnessed. Never was there
chronicled so swift and utter reversion of emotion in the minds of a
great concourse of people. Bitter indeed was the wave of agony that
swept over Paris. It began at the Messasebe, in the gardens of the Hotel
de Soisson, at that focus hard by the temple of Fortuna. It spread and
spread, edging out into all the remoter portions of the walled city. It
reached ultimately the extreme confines of Paris. Into the crowded
square which had been decreed as the trading-place of the Messasebe
System, there crowded from the outer purlieus yet other thousands of
excited human beings. The end had come. The bubble had burst. There was
no longer any System of the Messasebe!

It was late in the day, in fact well on toward might, when the knowledge
of the crash came into the neighborhood where dwelt the Lady Catharine
Knolls. To her the news was brought by a servant, who excitedly burst
unannounced into her mistress's presence.

"Madame! Madame!" she cried. "Prepare! 'Tis horrible! 'Tis impossible!
All is at an end!"

"What mean you, girl!" cried Lady Catharine, displeased at the
disrespect. "What is happening? Is there fire? And even if there were,
could you not remember your duty more seemly than this?"

"Worse, worse than fire, Madame! Worse than anything! The bank has
failed! The shares of the System are going down! 'Tis said that we can
get but three thousand livres the share, perhaps less--perhaps they will
go down to nothing. I am ruined, ruined! We are all ruined! And within
the month I was to have been married to the footman of the Marquis
d'Allouez, who has bought himself a title this very week!"

"And if it has fallen so ill," said Lady Catharine, "since I have not
speculated in these things like most folk, I shall be none the worse fo