must have been arranged in advance, and the catastrophe was far from taking him by surprise; therefore the scene with M. de Thaller must have been prepared; therefore, it must have been on purpose that he left his pocketbook behind, with the bill in it that was to lead us straight here; therefore all we have seen is but a transparent comedy, got up for our special benefit, and intended to cover up the truth, and mislead the law.”

But Maxence was not entirely convinced.

“Still,” he remarked, “those enormous expenses.”

M. de Tregars shrugged his shoulders.

“Have you any idea,” he said, “what display can be made with a million?  Let us admit that your father spent two, four millions even.  The loss of the Mutual Credit is twelve millions.  What has become of the other eight?”

And, as Maxence made no answer,

“It is those eight millions,” he added, “that I want, and that I shall have.  It is in Paris that your father is hid, I feel certain.  We must find him; and we must make him tell the truth, which I already more than suspect.”

Whereupon, throwing on the table the pint of beer which he had not drunk, he walked out of the cafe with Maxence.

“Here you are at last!” exclaimed the coachman, who had been waiting at the corner for over three hours, a prey to the utmost anxiety.

But M. de Tregars had no time for explanations; and, pushing Maxence into the cab, he jumped in after him, crying to the coachman,

“24 Rue Joquelet.  Five francs extra for yourself.”  A driver who expects an extra five francs, always has, for five minutes at least, a horse as fast as Gladiateur.

Whilst the cab was speeding on to its destination,

“What is most important for us now,” said M. de Tregars to Maxence, “is to ascertain how far the Mutual Credit crisis has progressed; and M. Latterman of the Rue Joquelet is the man in all Paris who can best inform us.”

Whoever has made or lost five hundred francs at the bourse knows M. Latterman, who, since the war, calls himself an Alsatian and curses with a fearful accent those “parparous Broossians.”  This worthy speculator modestly calls himself a money-changer; but he would be a simpleton who should ask him for change:  and it is certainly not that sort of business which gives him the three hundred thousand francs’ profits which he pockets every year.

When a company has failed, when it has been wound up, and the defrauded stockholders have received two or three per cent in all on their original investment, there is a prevailing idea that the certificates of its stocks are no longer good for any thing, except to light the fire.  That’s a mistake.  Long after the company has foundered, its shares float, like the shattered debris which the sea casts upon the beach months after the ship has been wrecked.  These shares M. Latterman collects, and carefully stores away; and upon the shelves of his office you may see numberless shares and bonds of those numerous companies which have absorbed, in the past twenty years, according to some statistics, twelve hundred millions, and, according to others, two thousand millions, of the public fortune.