So he made up his mind to operate a third suspension of payment.  About that time, the great man hit on the idea of indemnifying his creditors with paper of purely fictitious value and keeping their coin.  On the market, a great idea of this sort is not expressed in precisely this cut-and-dried way.  Such an arrangement consists in giving a lot of grown-up children a small pie in exchange for a gold piece; and, like children of a smaller growth, they prefer the pie to the gold piece, not suspecting that they might have a couple of hundred pies for it.”

“What is this all about, Bixiou?” cried Couture.  “Nothing more bona fide.  Not a week passes but pies are offered to the public for a louis.  But who compels the public to take them?  Are they not perfectly free to make inquiries?”

“You would rather have it made compulsory to take up shares, would you?” asked Blondet.

“No,” said Finot.  “Where would the talent come in?”

“Very good for Finot.”

“Who put him up to it?” asked Couture.

“The fact was,” continued Bixiou, “that Nucingen had twice had the luck to present the public (quite unintentionally) with a pie that turned out to be worth more than the money he received for it.  That unlucky good luck gave him qualms of conscience.  A course of such luck is fatal to a man in the long run.  This time he meant to make no mistake of this sort; he waited ten years for an opportunity of issuing negotiable securities which should seem on the face of it to be worth something, while as a matter of fact——­”

“But if you look at banking in that light,” broke in Couture, “no sort of business would be possible.  More than one bona fide banker, backed up by a bona fide government, has induced the hardest-headed men on ’Change to take up stock which is bound to fall within a given time.  You have seen better than that.  Have you not seen stock created with the concurrence of a government to pay the interest upon older stock, so as to keep things going and tide over the difficulty?  These operations were more or less like Nucingen’s settlements.”

“The thing may look queer on a small scale,” said Blondet, “but on a large we call it finance.  There are high-handed proceedings criminal between man and man that amount to nothing when spread out over any number of men, much as a drop of prussic acid becomes harmless in a pail of water.  You take a man’s life, you are guillotined.  But if, for any political conviction whatsoever, you take five hundred lives, political crimes are respected.  You take five thousand francs out of my desk; to the hulks you go.  But with a sop cleverly pushed into the jaws of a thousand speculators, you can cram the stock of any bankrupt republic or monarchy down their throats; even if the loan has been floated, as Couture says, to pay the interest on that very same national debt.  Nobody can complain.  These are the real principles of the present Golden Age.”