is a comedy; some youngster will try to rehearse the scene
of M. Dimanche, brought up to date. You have heard the people extol the
eloquence of our latter day preachers; now and again I have wasted my
time by going to hear them; they produced a change in my opinions, but
in my conduct (as somebody said, I can't recollect his name), in my
conduct--never!--Well, well; these good priests and your Mirabeaus and
Vergniauds and the rest of them, are mere stammering beginners compared
with these orators of mine.

"'Often it is some girl in love, some gray-headed merchant on the verge
of bankruptcy, some mother with a son's wrong-doing to conceal, some
starving artist, some great man whose influence is on the wane, and, for
lack of money, is like to lose the fruit of all his labors--the power
of their pleading has made me shudder. Sublime actors such as these play
for me, for an audience of one, and they cannot deceive me. I can look
into their inmost thoughts, and read them as God reads them. Nothing is
hidden from me. Nothing is refused to the holder of the purse-strings to
loose and to bind. I am rich enough to buy the consciences of those
who control the action of ministers, from their office boys to their
mistresses. Is not that power?--I can possess the fairest women, receive
their softest caresses; is not that Pleasure? And is not your whole
social economy summed up in terms of Power and Pleasure?

"'There are ten of us in Paris, silent, unknown kings, the arbiters of
your destinies. What is life but a machine set in motion by money? Know
this for certain--methods are always confounded with results; you
will never succeed in separating the soul from the senses, spirit from
matter. Gold is the spiritual basis of existing society.--The ten of us
are bound by the ties of common interest; we meet on certain days of the
week at the Cafe Themis near the Pont Neuf, and there, in conclave, we
reveal the mysteries of finance. No fortune can deceive us; we are in
possession of family secrets in all directions. We keep a kind of Black
Book, in which we note the most important bills issued, drafts on public
credit, or on banks, or given and taken in the course of business. We
are the Casuists of the Paris Bourse, a kind of Inquisition weighing and
analyzing the most insignificant actions of every man of any fortune,
and our forecasts are infallible. One of us looks out over the judicial
world, one over the financial, another survey