Payot felt extremely flattered and firmly persuaded himself that it was really the case, and that his name could command capital anywhere. After some hesitation he consented to take the shares, and prepared to arrange with his bankers to pay D'Ormontagne the purchase money.
He was delighted with his bargain, especially as every few days he received a copy of a cable message showing the increasing returns they were getting.
A meeting of directors was held at which Payot attended. It was passed unanimously that the Company should be floated with a capital of 10,000,000 francs, and the public was invited to take up shares.
"My dear Payot," said the baron, "now is a chance to underwrite. Each of our directors is going to underwrite a million francs, and of course we look to you to do the same. You will receive 250,000 shares as a bonus, and you will never have to pay for a single share. Why, the public will subscribe ten times over. The demand is already so great that the secretary has applied for ten extra clerks."
Payot hesitated and said he would think it over.
The next day the baron brought Armand with him, and the latter simply boiled over with enthusiasm.
"My dear Payot," he exclaimed, shaking his hand vigorously and patting him in a patronising way on the back. "My congratulations, you are a multi-millionaire already. Now you see the wisdom of following the advice of my esteemed friend the baron. Ah, D'Ormontagne is a great financier. Rothschild will have to look to his laurels now, but I am afraid he will have to give up the race. You mark my words, Payot, we shall all be in the Ministry at the next elections. France simply can't get on without us."
Payot sighed and merely shook his head. "I perceive you are an optimist, monsieur, and to be candid with you I confess I dread optimists. They are only a shade better than the pessimists. The latter look only on the dark side of everything, and are so cautious that they are afraid to embark on any enterprise at all, the result being that they never attempt anything unless it is absolutely devoid of any risk whatsoever. But the optimists—believe me, I have had enough of them, goodness only knows—the optimist, I repeat, always counts his chickens before they are hatched. He sees everything through rose-coloured spectacles. He counts on everything going right, and makes no provision for anything going wrong. This fanatic has also a curious way of calculating the number of tons of ore extracted every month which he multiplies by the number of ounces assayed per ton, and sets the total down as the amount which will be distributed in dividends. The silly fellow overlooks the immense amount of money which has to be sunk in working capital on the mine—in transport, food, tools, machinery, water, motive power and fuel. The condition of the roads, the proximity to a railway, the amount of available horse-power, fuel and water, the absence of any one of which is enough to ruin the prospects of the best mine—are details which never trouble him in the least. Nothing is set aside for reserve, nothing for emergencies, and so his estimate of the profits instead of being, let us say for the sake of argument, £10,000 a month, really works out at £1,000—or a tenth of his estimate when it comes to be divided among the shareholders. In a word, he becomes saturated with megalomania like a general paralytic."
"My dear Payot, you have almost taken the words out of my mouth, so thoroughly do I agree with all that you have just said," replied Armand, "but you are entirely mistaken, if you imagine that I am an optimist. On the contrary, I am so cautious that my friends nickname me the pessimist, a quite inappropriate term, I assure you, since I have the reputation of having the dash and boldness of the great Napoleon. Is that not so, baron?"
The baron had been nodding approval so violently at every word that his friend Armand had been saying, that he had to express his assent by patting him on the back instead.