end, have
bought a thousand shares, a hundred small speculators will immediately
invest in shares. In this way you secure to yourself a sinecure which
will give you five or six thousand gulden, and I will secure for my
undertaking a splendid future. Now, have I not spoken the truth?"

"H'm! I will consider the affair. Meet me to-morrow at the
restaurant."

Csanta spent all the morning in the restaurant; he listened to all
that was said of the Bondavara speculation, and came to the conclusion
that he would risk nothing, since all danger was covered by Kaulmann's
bond. When Felix arrived he had made up his mind.

"Good! I shall draw the shares; but none of them shall hang round my
neck, for I don't like paper. Paper is only paper, and silver is
always silver."

"Don't be afraid, my friend, I shall retain all shares for myself. I
deposit the caution for you, and I pay the instalments."

Felix completely satisfied the old Greek as to his upright intentions
in the matter of the shares, and left in his hands the undertaking in
which he pledged himself to take them over at par.

Now began the manoeuvre behind the scenes. The agents, the makers of
books, the brokers rushed in; the Bondavara shares rose rapidly. The
syndicate had, all this time, never given a share into any one's hand.
The bears had not yet begun to dance. Herr Csanta had become a student
of the newspapers. True, his eyes never left one column, but that
contained for him the tree of all knowledge; it spoke golden truth.
With amazement he read how every day the value of the Bondavara shares
increased. The profit grew higher and higher; it went up in leaps and
bounds; sixteen, eighteen, at last twenty gulden over par. Those who
had put down two hundred thousand gulden had won in two weeks twenty
thousand gulden. A splendid speculation, indeed, in less than a
fortnight to make a fortune! Compare the case of an honest,
hard-working usurer like himself. What difficulties he had to go
through to extract twenty per cent. out of his miserable clients! The
work was hardly worth the gain; the fatigue of trapping some silly
idiot, the odium and hatred incurred by exacting his rights from some
miserable beggar with a family, or taking the pillow from under the
head of a dying man; these things go against the grain, but they must
be done if you want to fill your cellar with silver coins. And here a
wretched, good-for-nothing speculator, by merely a stroke of the pen,