“There’s no difficulty. You know that the natural tendency of the market is to rise.”
“To rise and to fall,” interrupted Alzugaray.
“No, only to rise.”
“I don’t see it.”
“The general tendency of the market is to rise, because having to fall eighty céntimos, the value of the coupon, every quarter, if the market didn’t rise to offset that loss, shares would reach zero....”
“I don’t understand,” said Alzugaray.
“Imagine a man on a stairway; if you oblige him to go down one step every so often, in order to keep in the same place as before he will necessarily have to go up again, because if he didn’t do so, he would be constantly approaching the front door.”
“Yes, surely.” “Well, this man on the stairway is the quotation, and the mechanical task of constantly making up for the quarterly loss is what is called the reintegration of the coupon.”
“You do not convince me.”
Alzugaray didn’t like listening to these explanations. He had formed an opinion that had not much foundation, but he would not admit that Cæsar, by reasoning, could arrive at the glimmering of an inductive and deductive method, where others saw no more than chance.