During the week he received twice every day, morning and evening, a telegram from Spitzhase pressing him to part with his shares, for every day they were falling ten per cent. lower. At the end of the week they had gone down still more. The bears had won the day.
Csanta never moved a finger. He hugged himself in his own safety; and as for the others, their shares might go to the bottom of the sea for all he cared. He had no shares. They were all Kaulmann's. "Take them away, and give me back my silver!" This was his cry. "Rogue! villain! I have you by the neck!"
The accounts that he read of the sudden collapse of the company and the ruin of the shareholders did not in the least disturb him. The losses of others could not affect him. On the ninth day, however, he began to tremble. The morning's paper contained an account, telegraphed from Paris, of the flight of the banker, Felix Kaulmann, leaving his affairs in the uttermost confusion. This was succeeded by a second telegram, announcing that the banker, Kaulmann, seeing that the officers of police were on his track, had thrown himself from the window of the railway-carriage, and had been killed instantaneously.
Csanta narrowly missed an apoplectic stroke. When he came to he telegraphed to Spitzhase to sell all his shares for what they would fetch.
Spitzhase answered by return:
"Too late; they are quoted at seventy, but this is only nominal. There are neither buyers nor sellers. The mine is gone; the railway is gone; everything is gone. Why didn't you part with them a week ago, when I advised you? Now you can put your shares in the fire, and cook chestnuts at the blaze."
"All is over with me!" sobbed Csanta. "Let me get home; let me lie down and die! I cannot live! I shall not be alive in three days!"
He took leave of his acquaintances; he had no friends. He told them they need not be afraid, he would do himself no injury. He was simply dying of grief, just as a man might die of sickness.
All gone!
Some compassionate souls had pity on the old man and took him home. If he had been alone he had never found his own house. Once arrived there, he insisted on going down to his cellar, to see with his own eyes if it were not some hideous dream, from which he would wake and find his beloved casks in their old places. When he saw all were gone, he set up a fearful cry, "Fool! fool! fool!" and fell forward on his face.