Often, on seeing the positive result of Cæsar’s speculations, Alzugaray would ask him:
“Do you find out at the Ministry what is going to happen?”
“Pshaw!” Cæsar would say; “the market is not a capricious thing, as you think. There are signs. I pay attention to a lot of facts, which give me indications: coupons, the amount shares advance, the calculation of probabilities; and I compare all these scientific data with empirical observations that are difficult to explain. In such a situation, events are what make the least difference to me. Is there going to be a revolution or a Carlist war?... I am careless about it.”
“But this is impossible,” Alzugaray used to say. “Excuse me for saying so, but I don’t believe you. You have some secret, and that is what helps you.”
“How fantastic you all are!”’ Cæsar would exclaim; “you refuse to believe in the rational, and still you believe in the miraculous.”
“No, I do not believe in the miraculous; but I cannot explain your methods.”
“That’s clear! Am I to explain them to you! When you don’t know the mechanism of the market! I am certain that you have never considered the mechanism of the rise produced by the reintegration of the coupon, or the way that rise is limited to double its value. Tell me. Do you know what that means?”
“No.”
“Well, then, how are you to understand anything?”
“All right, then; explain it to me.”