l; and I must add that, though they
are sleeping partners in a shop, they would not cheat you of a farthing.
Benign stars on earth, as Castor and Pollux were in heaven."

"But partners in a shop!"

"Bah! when a minister himself, like the late M. de M______, kept a shop,
and added the profits of 'bons bons' to his revenue, you may form
some idea of the spirit of the age. If young nobles are not generally
sleeping partners in shops, still they are more or less adventurers
in commerce. The Bourse is the profession of those who have no other
profession. You have visited the Bourse?"

"No."

"No! this is just the hour. We have time yet for the Bois. Coachman,
drive to the Bourse."

"The fact is," resumed Frederic, "that gambling is one of the wants of
civilized men. The 'rouge-et-noir' and 'roulette' tables are forbidden;
the hells closed: but the passion for making money without working for
it must have its vent, and that vent is the Bourse. As instead of a
hundred wax-lights you now have one jet of gas, so instead of a hundred
hells you have now one Bourse, and--it is exceedingly convenient;
always at hand; no discredit being seen there as it was to be seen at
Frascati's; on the contrary, at once respectable, and yet the mode."

The coupe stops at the Bourse, our friends mount the steps, glide
through the pillars, deposit their canes at a place destined to guard
them, and the Marquis follows Frederic up a flight of stairs till he
gains the open gallery round a vast hall below. Such a din! such a
clamour! disputations, wrangling, wrathful.

Here Lemercier distinguished some friends, whom he joined for a few
minutes.

Alain left alone, looked down into the hall. He thought himself in some
stormy scene of the First Revolution. An English contested election in
the market-place of a borough when the candidates are running close on
each other--the result doubtful, passions excited, the whole borough in
civil war--is peaceful compared to the scene at the Bourse.

Bulls and bears screaming, bawling, gesticulating, as if one were about
to strangle the other; the whole, to an uninitiated eye, a confusion, a
Babel, which it seems absolutely impossible to reconcile to the notion
of quiet mercantile transactions, the purchase and sale of shares and
stocks. As Alain gazed bewildered, he felt himself gently touched, and,
looking round, saw the Englishman.

"A lively scene!" whispered Mr. Vane. "This is the heart of Paris: it