"My dear Payot," said the baron, "excuse me always addressing you in this way—but your charm of manner has so won my heart that I feel it quite impossible to address you by any other term. If you will be good enough to read the prospectus carefully you will see that everyone of these items is munificently provided for. No detail has been omitted. The sum which our engineer considers ample to meet every possible contingency only amounts to £10,000 a month."
"What!" cried Payot, horrified beyond measure as he jumped up with a bound. "Do you really mean to say that this blessed mine is going to cost us £120,000 a year to keep going? Why, we shall have to close down before we can distribute a sou in dividends. Ma foi, we shall all be ruined in no time."
"Not so fast, my dear sir," they both shouted together, "not so fast. It is quite clear that the magnitude of the undertaking has been too vast to enter your brain. You must digest it gradually, and take in bits at a time, just as a boa constrictor swallows an antelope. Now just follow me very carefully," said the baron, standing up from his chair and waving his hands about like a musical conductor, in order to give greater emphasis to his remarks. "Let me repeat. The expenses all told amount to £10,000 a month. Let us multiply that sum by two to be on the safe side, and we arrive at £20,000 a month."
"Stop, my good fellow, you must be mad," cried Payot excitedly.
"Please reserve your remarks, mon ami, until I have done. When our stamp battery is in full work, the engineer says we shall crush 20,000 tons a month, and taking the lowest estimate of the richness of the ore at 28 ounces per ton—which is far below our average, as you must admit—we shall recover 560,000 ounces of gold a month. Reckon the market price of gold at £4 per ounce, the output of the mine amounts to £2,240,000 a month! Now, to satisfy the doubts of our mutual friend let us suppose the monthly working expenses to come to four times what our engineer considers ample, or £40,000, and still we have two million two hundred thousand golden sovereigns to distribute among the shareholders every month—a fortune amounting to six hundred and sixty million francs a year. I can prove that is absolutely correct," added Armand, bringing his fist down on the table with a thud, "and you, mon cher Payot, with your underwriting shares added to those you already possess will enjoy a perpetual income of eighty-eight million francs a year. Only think of it, my dear friend, and ask yourself what will all this wealth have cost you? A paltry £8,000. Why, in a year's time you will be spending more than that in fancy waistcoats and cigars, or tips to your servants."
A few days later the Petit Journal appeared with a whole page devoted to the Prospectus of the Company.
The Journal des Mines in a scathing article pointed out that the whole thing was a fraud from beginning to end, and warned the public not to touch a share. It even cast doubts on the very existence of the mine, and called attention to the fact that no railway existed within a hundred miles of it. But the Mining Journal is not printed for the general public, who, after all, comprise the vast majority of the subscribers.
Le Soir, Le Petit Journal, Le Temps, La Patrie and all the other dailies contained leading articles on the wonderful richness of the baron's discovery. But although these newspapers made use of it as excellent copy, they one and all ridiculed it as a 'mare's nest,' and pointed out that no such mines ever had been, or ever would be found. Payot had not only taken up the 100 founders' shares of 1,000 francs each in cash which he borrowed on the securities at his bank, and which principally found its way into the pockets of the baron and Norcier, but he had further committed himself by underwriting 40,000 shares at 25 francs each.
As he walked along the boulevard his ears were delighted by the hoarse cries of the newsvendors—"Discovery of a wonderful mine in Mexico," "The New Jerusalem Mine," "Meeting of the Directors," "Complete copy of the Prospectus."