Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/240

212, in the woollen or drapery business, in which he claimed his competency was unrivalled, he risked all he possessed in aleatory and long-winded ventures. While Béjard stood over him, the gambler profited by his advice and quit the game, if not without profit, at least without serious losses. But, abandoned to his own initiative, he allowed himself to be thoroughly trimmed. Things came to such a pass that he neglected the most elementary precautions; he hardly even asked the state of the market. Persuaded of his own genius, he speculated indiscriminately in foreign exchange, in metals, in public funds and industrial stocks. For a while he had been able to discount his notes and to continue his short sales; then, one after another, the bankers had refused him credit, and, with the exception of a few pigeons who were taken in by his sweet and oily manner, his hypocritical talk, his air of respectability, and who, taking his jeremiads for truth, thought him a victim of Béjard, he had no one to guarantee his signature but a few freebooters as badly rated as himself.

The forbearance by which he had formerly benefited was now costing him dear.

It happened that the day was one of huge liquidation on the Exchange. The speculator, at the end of his resources, had spent the morning in running from office to office, without finding anyone who would lend him a penny. That did not at all deter him from showing himself on the Exchange, exactly as usual, shining, curly, mild, greeting everyone hypocritically and pretending not to notice the rebuffs and affronts that he met with. Spying one of his partners whom he had properly fleeced, he greeted him with his most captivating smile, and began to converse with him, in a