to shareholders the exact limits of their
liabilities when they informed them that the directors in their
goodness, refrained from asking any more than a thousand, or five
hundred, or even two hundred and fifty francs. It was not given out that
the experiment in _aere publico_ was not meant to last for more than
seven, five, or even three years, so that shareholders would not have
long to wait for the catastrophe. It was in the childhood of the art.
Promoters did not even publish the gigantic prospectuses with which they
stimulate the imagination, and at the same time make demands for money
of all and sundry."

"That only comes when nobody wishes to part with money," said Couture.

"In short, there was no competition in investments," continued Bixiou.
"Paper-mache manufacturers, cotton printers, zinc-rollers, theatres, and
newspapers as yet did not hurl themselves like hunting dogs upon their
quarry--the expiring shareholder. 'Nice things in shares,' as Couture
says, put thus artlessly before the public, and backed up by the
opinions of experts ('the princes of science'), were negotiated
shamefacedly in the silence and shadow of the Bourse. Lynx-eyed
speculators used to execute (financially speaking) the air _Calumny_ out
of _The Barber of Seville_. They went about piano, piano, making known
the merits of the concern through the medium of stock-exchange gossip.
They could only exploit the victim in his own house, on the Bourse, or
in company; so they reached him by means of the skilfully created rumor
which grew till it reached a _tutti_ of a quotation in four figures----"

"And as we can say anything among ourselves," said Couture, "I will go
back to the last subject."

"_Vous etes orfevre, Monsieur Josse_!" cried Finot.

"Finot will always be classic, constitutional, and pedantic," commented
Blondet.

"Yes," rejoined Couture, on whose account Cerizet had just been
condemned on a criminal charge. "I maintain that the new way is
infinitely less fraudulent, less ruinous, more straightforward than the
old. Publicity means time for reflection and inquiry. If here and there
a shareholder is taken in, he has himself to blame, nobody sells him a
pig in a poke. The manufacturing industry----"

"Ah!" exclaimed Bixiou, "here comes industry----"

"---- is a gainer by it," continued Couture, taking no notice of the
interruption. "Every government that meddles with commerce and
cannot leave it free, sets about an expensiv