“By John’s advice, we began our operations in a plain, quiet way, as exporters of breadstuffs.  This we did, first, that the firm might make itself well enough known, and gain the confidence of the Bourse, so that the doors might be open to our subsequent operations; that I, secondly, might learn the business, and secure the proper recognition as John’s partner.  Meantime, John was making himself familiar with the way to practise my invention; and both of us, gaining daily assurance of our power by reason of the discovery, were also daily increasing in love and confidence for each other.  Happy days, those, Monsieur! Eh, bien! had the invention only proved a fiction then!

“In another six months we had matured our plans, and, as our present business seemed lamentably slow in the light of my gigantic projects, I was eager enough to begin work in earnest.  I had proved our telegraph thoroughly, and, ere I set out for London, to establish there a branch of the house of John Meavy & Co., I advised my good comrade to venture largely, so as to turn our capital over as often as possible, for there was no room for doubt or fear.  But John did not guess how high I dreamed of rising in fortune; he had no ambition to rival the Rothschilds.

“Monsieur, let me explain to you now the system of work we had agreed upon, and each slightest detail of which was perfectly familiar to us from constant manipulation, so that mistake or mishap, from any conceivable cause, was utterly impossible.

“Our business, nominally the buying of breadstuffs for exportation, was really one of speculation upon the New York market as affected by the European markets,—­a species of brokerage, which, ostensibly and in the eyes of the world attended by great risk, was really a thing of specifically safe and certain profits, thanks to the telegraphic system, the secret of which we alone possessed.  In our tentative efforts, we fixed upon flour as the best-adapted subject for our experiments, being a commodity simple to deal with, and requiring fewer complications in our arrangements than anything else.  But, in my own private mind, I had resolved, that, as soon as our capital had grown large enough, and our credit was become sufficiently extensive, we would change our business to that of buying and selling cotton, as a better speculative; or, perhaps, would enter upon that grand arena of sudden fortune and sudden ruin, the stock-market.  For the present, however, flour suited us well enough.  It is well known, that, at that time, much more than at present, the price of breadstuffs in New York was regulated by the price in Liverpool.  But Monsieur is not a merchant, I think? Eh, bien!—­then I must take care to make myself intelligible.  You know, Monsieur, that, in the stock-market especially, and more or less in every other kind of speculation, the greater part of the transactions are fictitious, to a certain extent. Par exemple: you buy or