nsequently would have been closed long ago
by our most gracious sovereign, the Commune of Paris.

The Bourse, then, is open; but what is the good of that? you will say,
for all those who haunt it now, could get in just as well through closed
doors and opposing railings; spectres and other supernatural beings
never find any difficulty in insinuating themselves through keyholes and
slipping between bars. 'Poor phantoms! Thanks to the weakness of our
Government, which has neglected to put seals on the portals of the
Bourse, they are under the obligation of going in and coming out like
the most ordinary individuals; and a Parisian, who has not learned, by a
long intimacy with Hoffmann and Edgar Poe, to distinguish the living
from the dead, might take these ghosts of the money-market for simple
_boursiers_. Thank heaven! I am not a man to allow myself to be deceived
by specious appearances on such a subject, and I saw at once with whom I
had to do.

On the grand staircase there were four or five of them, spectres lean as
vampires who have not sucked blood for three months; they were walking
in silence, with the creeping, furtive step peculiar to apparitions who
glide among the yew-trees in church-yards. From time to time one of them
pulled a ghost of a notebook from his ghost of a waistcoat-pocket, and
wrote appearances of notes with the shadow of a pencil. Others gathered
together in groups, and one could distinctly hear the rattling of bones
beneath their shadowy overcoats. They spoke in that peculiar voice which
is only understood by the _confreres_ of the magi Eliphas Levy, and they
recall to each other's mind the quotations of former days, Austrian
funds triumphant, Government stock at 70 (_quantum mutata ab illa_),
bonds of the city of Paris 1860-1869, and the fugitive apotheosis of the
Suez shares. They said with sighs: "You remember the premiums? In former
times there were reports made, in former times there were settling days
at the end of the month, and huge pocket-book's were so well filled,
that they nearly burst; but now, we wander amidst the ruins of our
defunct splendour, as the shade of Diomedes wandered amid the ruins of
his house at Pompeii. We are of those who were; the imaginary quotations
of shares that have disappeared, are like vain epitaphs on tombs, and
we, despairing ghosts, we should die a second time of grief, if we were
not allowed to appear to each other in this deserted palace, here to
brood o