Ivan shook the dust of the God-forsaken colony off his feet. He and his men returned to his own side of the mountain.
Meantime what had happened to his own mine? He had been absent four days and four nights, and had never given it a thought.
CHAPTER XXVII
FROM THE SUBLIME TO THE RIDICULOUS
Any one who wishes to understand the meaning of the proverb, "There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous," should gamble on the stock-exchange; there he will learn the full meaning of the words.
To-day you are a deity, to-morrow the meanest of street curs. To-day sixty agents shriek out the name of your speculation; you are a sort of king, and all the other kings on 'change study your countenance to see how the wind shifts. To-day, so soon as one o'clock strikes by the town clock, a swarm of buyers come round you. Your note-book is held up to the view of all the agents. It is handed from one to another; it is placed upon the back of an agent, and the competitors write the number of shares they want. To-day all hands point to the percentage, which is the proof of your high estate. To-day the crowd who are speculating on your credit fill all the passages; they scream out, "I sell!" "I buy!" Even outside the stock-exchange sweet creatures of the opposite sex, who like dabbling in stock quite as much as do the male creation, make their books. Women are prohibited from showing their faces on 'change; but they gamble all the same. Hundreds of ladies wait upon the stock-broker, with a copy of the exchange list in their hands; they have marked your shares. Still greater ladies sit outside the exchange in their grand carriages. In their eagerness they stretch their heads out of their carriage windows to know from the first-comer at what figure the shares—your shares—stand.
This is all to-day. To-morrow you are not to be found; your name is scratched out of the exchange list. Every one knows that your affair has "burst." You are nowhere. You are nobody. Your place is empty.
The firm of Kaulmann stood at the summit of its triumph. Felix and his bosom friend, the Abbé Samuel, were enjoying their afternoon siesta. The room was full of a cloud of smoke, and under its soothing influence the friends were building castles in the air.
"To-morrow," said Felix, "the pope's loan upon the Hungarian Church lands will be floated at the exchange."