had the luck
to present the public (quite unintentionally) with a pie that turned out
to be worth more than the money he received for it. That unlucky good
luck gave him qualms of conscience. A course of such luck is fatal to a
man in the long run. This time he meant to make no mistake of this sort;
he waited ten years for an opportunity of issuing negotiable securities
which should seem on the face of it to be worth something, while as a
matter of fact----"

"But if you look at banking in that light," broke in Couture, "no sort
of business would be possible. More than one _bona fide_ banker, backed
up by a _bona fide_ government, has induced the hardest-headed men on
'Change to take up stock which is bound to fall within a given time.
You have seen better than that. Have you not seen stock created with the
concurrence of a government to pay the interest upon older stock, so as
to keep things going and tide over the difficulty? These operations were
more or less like Nucingen's settlements."

"The thing may look queer on a small scale," said Blondet, "but on a
large we call it finance. There are high-handed proceedings criminal
between man and man that amount to nothing when spread out over any
number of men, much as a drop of prussic acid becomes harmless in a pail
of water. You take a man's life, you are guillotined. But if, for any
political conviction whatsoever, you take five hundred lives, political
crimes are respected. You take five thousand francs out of my desk;
to the hulks you go. But with a sop cleverly pushed into the jaws of a
thousand speculators, you can cram the stock of any bankrupt republic
or monarchy down their throats; even if the loan has been floated,
as Couture says, to pay the interest on that very same national debt.
Nobody can complain. These are the real principles of the present Golden
Age."

"When the stage machinery is so huge," continued Bixiou, "a good many
puppets are required. In the first place, Nucingen had purposely and
with his eyes open invested his five millions in an American investment,
foreseeing that the profits would not come in until it was too late. The
firm of Nucingen deliberately emptied its coffers. Any liquidation
ought to be brought about naturally. In deposits belonging to private
individuals and other investments, the firm possessed about six millions
of capital altogether. Among those private individuals was the Baroness
d'Aldrigger with her three hundred th