cherished trinkets, and the familiar piece
of furniture ticketed before the public in
the auction-room, and consigned to alien
hands by the ruthless agents of the salle
des ventes; we have pictured in the future
the tears and slow decline of wives, the
helpless wonderment and hopeless future
of children reared in comfort, and the
suicidal ends of husbands and fathers.
Suicide, indeed, is only too common a
termination to life with the frequenters of
the Bourse; disease of the heart, too, this
is not uncommon with them, brought on by
the intensity of the daily exertions of the
speculator who stakes, not unfreqnently,
his whole means of existence upon a word
of idle gossip, a trivial incident, or a chance
rumour.

During the time of the passing illness of
the Emperor of the French at St. Cloud,
at the end of last summer, the report of a
cigarette smoked the less by his majesty,
or of a bad appetite at breakfast, caused
thousands to change hands, and brought
ruin to multitudes; and when the future
looks dark with war, the leaps of the
prices of the market follow each other
with lightning rapidity. A single phrase
of Ollivier, overheard in the Chamber of
Deputies, before the outbreak of the French
and Prussian war, and brought down by a
cab in full gallop to the Bourse, sent the
funds up to a towering height, only, however,
to fall, like a partridge when shot in
the head, with double rapidity. But the
most pleasing instance of effect produced
on the Bourse by light causes was one of
which we were informed by an eye-witness.
A hausse of the Bourse was veritably
brought about by the entry of a stray
swallow into the building. The boursicotier
spirits were actually touched by the
strangeness of this apparition, and the
Bourse rose.

The rage for speculation seizes by turns
on all classes of society. Even your
concierge turns boursicotier at times, and
respectable fathers of families, patterns of
order, probity, and domestic habits, members
of learned professions, quiet dwellers
in provincial towns, are bitten at times by
the mad fury of speculation, and become
changed from thenceforward. The conversion
of the quiet provincial citizen into the
wild gambler on the Parisian Bourse is a
very rapid process. There are few residents
in the provinces who have not some
cousin or friend in Paris who deals in
money in some way or other.

Suppose M. Tartempin, local juge de paix,
has saved a little money out of his small
income; Tartempin applies to his cousin in
the capital for advice as to investment; high
interest has charms for Tartempin, as for
many, and the Parisian cousin advises him
to buy twenty shares of the Parisian Gas
Company, which seems to be in a good way.
Tartempin then buys twenty shares, or
"actions," of the Companie Parisienne de
Gas, and the actions continue to rise in the
market from eight hundred francs to two
thousand. Tartempin, who has watched the
rise of the gas shares daily in triumph as he
gloated over the share-list in his daily journal
in his little town, is overjoyed; but there
must be an end at last to the rising of gas
shares, Tartempin thinks, and he will sell
out. Since he has thus made a little money,
Tartempin will not refuse himself the
pleasure of a trip to Paris to see to the
operation. Arriving in Paris, Tartempin
goes with the money-dealing cousin to the
Bourse, just to see how his shares are sold,
and what the Bourse is really like. Tartempin's
shares are sold, and Tartempin
carefully puts the money away in his
pocket-book in his breast-pocket, and
inquires about the strange scene before him.
"Everything en hausse just now," says the
cousin, " but there will be a baisse before
the day is over." Tartempin's cousin, by
the simple process of buying and selling
Espagnols, wins before Tartempin's eyes, in
a quarter of an hour, more than twice the
amount of his paltry salary as juge de paix
for a year. Tartempin is caught, Tartempin
will play his gas winnings on Italians.
The hausse still continues long enough for
Tartempin to come off a very considerable
winner before the baisse sets in. It is at the
Bourse as at Baden and Homberg. The best
thing which can happen to a commencing
player is to lose; if he lose, the probability
is he will cease to play; if he win, the
desire of play will in all human likelihood
get hold of him. Since he has won once,
why should he not do so again? Tartempin
thinks at once that he has the stuff in
him to make a magnate of the Bourse; he
dreams that night of playing immense
coups; actions of Italian, Spanish, and
Lombard rentes dance before his eyes, and
fall down in piles before his feet. Adieu
now to Tartempin's peaceful days and quiet
nights of slumber. The poor man has
visions now of being able in time to hold
the market against Rothschild, for he is
successful for awhile, and his head is turned
with his success in such a way that the
steady provincial dignitary rushes into all