“‘Sly dog,’ said Werbrust.  ’Get along with you; you are a devil with long and sharp claws, and you have them deep in the butter.’

“’Just let me speak, or we shall not have time to operate.  I hit on the idea as soon as I heard the news.  I positively saw Mme. de Nucingen crying; she is afraid for her fortune.’

“‘Poor little thing!’ said the old Alsacien Jew, with an ironical expression.  ‘Well?’ he added, as du Tillet was silent.

“’Well.  At my place I have a thousand shares of a thousand francs in our concern; Nucingen handed them over to me to put on the market, do you understand?  Good.  Now let us buy up a million of Nucingen’s paper at a discount of ten or twenty per cent, and we shall make a handsome percentage out of it.  We shall be debtors and creditors both; confusion will be worked!  But we must set about it carefully, or the holders may imagine that we are operating in Nucingen’s interests.’

“Then Werbrust understood.  He squeezed du Tillet’s hand with an expression such as a woman’s face wears when she is playing her neighbor a trick.

“Martin Falleix came up.—­’Well, have you heard the news?’ he asked.  ‘Nucingen has stopped payment.’

“‘Pooh,’ said Werbrust, ’pray don’t noise it about; give those that hold his paper a chance.’

“‘What is the cause of the smash; do you know?’ put in Claparon.

“‘You know nothing about it,’ said du Tillet.  ’There isn’t any smash.  Payment will be made in full.  Nucingen will start again; I shall find him all the money he wants.  I know the causes of the suspension.  He has put all his capital into Mexican securities, and they are sending him metal in return; old Spanish cannon cast in such an insane fashion that they melted down gold and bell-metal and church plate for it, and all the wreck of the Spanish dominion in the Indies.  The specie is slow in coming, and the dear Baron is hard up.  That is all.’

“‘It is a fact,’ said Werbrust; ’I am taking his paper myself at twenty per cent discount.’

“The news spread swift as fire in a straw rick.  The most contradictory reports got about.  But such confidence was felt in the firm after the two previous suspensions, that every one stuck to Nucingen’s paper.  ‘Palma must lend us a hand,’ said Werbrust.

“Now Palma was the Keller’s oracle, and the Kellers were brimful of Nucingen’s paper.  A hint from Palma would be enough.  Werbrust arranged with Palma, and he rang the alarm bell.  There was a panic next day on the Bourse.  The Kellers, acting on Palma’s advice, let go Nucingen’s paper at ten per cent of loss; they set the example on ’Change, for they were supposed to know very well what they were about.  Taillefer followed up with three hundred thousand francs at a discount of twenty per cent, and Martin Falleix with two hundred thousand at fifteen.  Gigonnet saw what was going on.  He helped to spread the panic, with a view to buying up Nucingen’s paper himself and making a commission of two or three per cent out of Werbrust.