Yet before noon of the day following the decree of the regent, which fixed the value of actions upon a descending scale, the news, after a fashion of its own, spread rapidly abroad, and all too swiftly the truth was generally known.  The story started in a rumor that shares had been offered and declined at a price which had been current but a few moments before.  This was something which had not been known in all these feverish months of the Messasebe.  Then came the story that shares could not be counted upon to realize over eight thousand livres.  At that the price of all the actions dropped in a flash, as Law had prophesied.  A sudden wave of 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!”