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What a head a man must have if he has to found a business in times when the shareholder is as covetous and keen as the inventor! What a great magnetizer must he be that can create a Claparon and hit upon expedients never tried before! Do you know the moral of it all?
The men who form the moving crowd that fills the Stock Exchange are soon known to each other by sight. They watch each other like players round a card table. Some shrewd observers can tell how a man will play and the condition of his exchequer from a survey of his face; and the Stock Exchange is simply a vast card table. Everyone, therefore, had noticed Claparon and Castanier.
"In your place, monsieur, I should do the same towards a stranger." "Monsieur Birotteau won't die of it," said Claparon; "it takes more than one shot to kill an old wolf. I have seen wolves with a ball in their head run, by God, like wolves!"
There was no mistake about his power. He went on 'Change again, and offered his bargain to other men in embarrassed circumstances. The Devil's bond, "together with the rights, easements, and privileges appertaining thereunto," to use the expression of the notary who succeeded Claparon, changed hands for the sum of seven hundred thousand francs.
Monsieur Claparon gave me no receipt; my acceptances were to be negotiated. Roguin was to give him my two hundred and forty thousand francs. He was told that he was to pay for the property definitely. Monsieur Popinot the judge said The receipt! but why do you ask the question?" "Why ask the question? To know if your two hundred and forty thousand francs are still with Roguin.
"You will have to come and see me," said Claparon; "that first scrap of paper you gave Cayron has come back to us protested; I endorsed it, so I've paid it. I shall send after you; business before everything." Birotteau felt stabbed to the heart by this cold and grinning kindness as much as by the harshness of Keller or the coarse German banter of Nucingen.
"I know nothing, so it seems!" he cried, shaking his shoulders, "but Claparon knows a great deal; he has worked with the big-wig bankers, and when I told what you wanted he began to laugh, and said, 'I thought as much! You will have to bring me the twenty-five thousand you offer me to-morrow morning, my lad; and as much more before you can recover your notes."
"'Monsieur le Comte, began Cerizet, 'I have come from a M. Charles Claparon, who used to be a banker "'Ah! poor devil, and what does he want with me? "'Well, he is at present your creditor for a matter of three thousand two hundred francs, seventy-five centimes, principal, interest, and costs "'Coutelier's business? put in Maxime, who knew his affairs as a pilot knows his coast.
"I can blow him down like a house of cards any day. As for you, papa Dutocq, you are able to see him at work all the time; watch him carefully. Besides, I'll feel his pulse by getting Claparon to propose to him to get rid of us; that will help us to judge him." "Pretty good, that!" said Dutocq. "You are daring, anyhow." "I've got my hand in, that's all," replied Cerizet.
Old Claparon, who entered the ministry of the interior at the same time as Bridau, and was one of the faithful friends who played whist every night with the two widows, used to say of Philippe two or three times a month, giving him a tap on the cheek, "Here's a young rascal who'll stand to his guns!" The boy, thus stimulated, naturally and out of bravado, assumed a resolute manner.
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