anier.

"For pity's sake, send for a cab and for a priest; send for the curate
of Saint-Sulpice!" answered the old dragoon, sinking down upon the
curbstone.

The words "a priest" reached the ears of several people, and produced
uproarious jeering among the stockbrokers, for faith with these
gentlemen means a belief that a scrap of paper called a mortgage
represents an estate, and the List of Fundholders is their Bible.

"Shall I have time to repent?" said Castanier to himself, in a piteous
voice, that impressed Claparon.

A cab carried away the dying man; the speculator went to the bank at
once to meet his bills; and the momentary sensation produced upon the
throng of business men by the sudden change on the two faces, vanished
like the furrow cut by a ship's keel in the sea. News of the greatest
importance kept the attention of the world of commerce on the alert; and
when commercial interests are at stake, Moses might appear with his two
luminous horns, and his coming would scarcely receive the honors of
a pun, the gentlemen whose business it is to write the Market Reports
would ignore his existence.

When Claparon had made his payments, fear seized upon him. There was
no mistake about his power. He went on 'Change again, and offered his
bargain to other men in embarrassed circumstances. The Devil's bond,
"together with the rights, easements, and privileges appertaining
thereunto,"--to use the expression of the notary who succeeded Claparon,
changed hands for the sum of seven hundred thousand francs. The notary
in his turn parted with the agreement with the Devil for five hundred
thousand francs to a building contractor in difficulties, who likewise
was rid of it to an iron merchant in consideration of a hundred thousand
crowns. In fact, by five o'clock people had ceased to believe in the
strange contract, and purchasers were lacking for want of confidence.

At half-past five the holder of the bond was a house-painter, who was
lounging by the door of the building in the Rue Feydeau, where at that
time stockbrokers temporarily congregated. The house-painter, simple
fellow, could not think what was the matter with him. He "felt all
anyhow"; so he told his wife when he went home.

The Rue Feydeau, as idlers about town are aware, is a place of
pilgrimage for youths who for lack of a mistress bestow their ardent
affection upon the whole sex. On the first floor of the most rigidly
respectable domicile therein dwelt o