"But, my young friend, although I am only a provincial merchant in a small way, I know that, so far as money is in question, to subscribe is another word for payment."
"With this exception—if both subscriptions equalize one another. Ah, I see you do not like even a question of subscribing. Well, listen. We will suppose that you take one thousand shares in my coal company, and at the same time I give you an undertaking to take over one thousand shares at par from you; in this way we are even, and neither of us loses a shilling."
"Hem! But what is the necessity for such a joke?"
"I will be frank with you. The world has its eyes fixed upon the actions of important men; if these stir in any affair, the others stir likewise. If on 'change it is known that you, my worthy friend, 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 manœuvre 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, makes in two short weeks a fortune. Luck is not evenly meted out to mortals.