He knows
as well as we do that supreme above the Charter reigns the holy,
venerated, substantial, delightful, obliging, beautiful, noble,
ever-youthful, and all-powerful five-franc piece! But money, my beauty,
insists on interest, and is always engaged in seeking it! 'God of the
Jews, thou art supreme!' says Racine. The perennial parable of the
golden calf, you see!--In the days of Moses there was stock-jobbing in
the desert!
"We have reverted to Biblical traditions; the Golden Calf was the
first State ledger," he went on. "You, my Adeline, have not gone
beyond the Rue Plumet. The Egyptians had lent enormous sums to the
Hebrews, and what they ran after was not God's people, but their
capital."
He looked at the Baroness with an expression which said, "How clever I
am!"
"You know nothing of the devotion of every city man to his sacred
hoard!" he went on, after a pause. "Excuse me. Listen to me. Get this
well into your head.--You want two hundred thousand francs? No one can
produce the sum without selling some security. Now consider! To have
two hundred thousand francs in hard cash it would be needful to sell
about seven hundred thousand francs' worth of stock at three per cent.
Well; and then you would only get the money on the third day. That is
the quickest way. To persuade a man to part with a fortune--for two
hundred thousand francs is the whole fortune of many a man--he ought
at least to know where it is all going to, and for what purpose--"
"It is going, my dear kind Crevel, to save the lives of two men, one
of whom will die of grief and the other will kill himself! And to save
me too from going mad! Am I not a little mad already?"
"Not so mad!" said he, taking Madame Hulot round the knees; "old
Crevel has his price, since you thought of applying to him, my angel.
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