And what has become of the Bourse? What are the brokers and jobbers
saying and doing now? I ask myself this question for the first time, as
in ordinary circumstances, the Bourse is of all sublunary things that
which occupies me the least. I am one of those excessively stupid
people, who have never yet been able to understand how all those
black-coated individuals can occupy three mortal hours of every day, in
coming and going beneath the colonnade of the “temple of Plutus.” I
know perfectly well that stockbrokers and jobbers exist; but if I were
asked what these stockbrokers and jobbers do, I should be incapable of
answering a single word. We have all our special ignorances. I have
heard, it is true, of the _Corbeille_,[60] but I ingeniously imagined,
in my simple ignorance, that this famous basket was made in wicker
work, and crammed with sweet-scented leaves and flowers, which the
gentlemen of the Bourse, with the true gallantry of their nation, made
up into emblematical bouquets to offer to their lady friends. I was
shown, however, how much I was deceived by a friend who enlightened me,
more or less, as to what is really done in the Bourse in usual times,
and what they are doing there now.
I must begin by acknowledging that in using the worn metaphor of the
“temple of Plutus” just now, I knew little of what I was talking about.
The Bourse is not a temple; if it were it would necessarily be a church
or something like one, and consequently would have been closed long ago
by our most gracious sovereign, the Commune of Paris.
The Bourse, then, is open; but what is the good of that? you will say,
for all those who haunt it now, could get in just as well through
closed doors and opposing railings; spectres and other supernatural
beings never find any difficulty in insinuating themselves through
keyholes and slipping between bars. ‘Poor phantoms! Thanks to the
weakness of our Government, which has neglected to put seals on the
portals of the Bourse, they are under the obligation of going in and
coming out like the most ordinary individuals; and a Parisian, who has
not learned, by a long intimacy with Hoffmann and Edgar Poë, to
distinguish the living from the dead, might take these ghosts of the
money-market for simple _boursiers_. Thank heaven! I am not a man to
allow myself to be deceived by specious appearances on such a subject,
and I saw at once with whom I had to do.
On the grand staircase there were four or five of them, spectres lean
as vampires who have not sucked blood for three months; they were
walking in silence, with the creeping, furtive step peculiar to
apparitions who glide among the yew-trees in church-yards. From time to
time one of them pulled a ghost of a notebook from his ghost of a
waistcoat-pocket, and wrote appearances of notes with the shadow of a
pencil. Others gathered together in groups, and one could distinctly
hear the rattling of bones beneath their shadowy overcoats. They spoke
in that peculiar voice which is only understood by the _confrères_ of
the magi Eliphas Levy, and they recall to each other’s mind the
quotations of former days, Austrian funds triumphant, Government stock
at 70 (_quantum mutata ab illâ_), bonds of the city of Paris 1860-1869,
and the fugitive apotheosis of the Suez shares. They said with sighs:
“You remember the premiums? In former times there were reports made, in
former times there were settling days at the end of the month, and huge
pocket-book’s were so well filled, that they nearly burst; but now, we
wander amidst the ruins of our defunct splendour, as the shade of
Diomedes wandered amid the ruins of his house at Pompeii. We are of
those who were; the imaginary quotations of shares that have
disappeared, are like vain epitaphs on tombs, and we, despairing
ghosts, we should die a second time of grief, if we were not allowed to
appear to each other in this deserted palace, here to brood over our
past financial glories!” Thus spoke the phantoms of the money market,
and then added: “Oh! Commune, Commune, give us back our settling days?”
From time to time a phantom, which still retains its haughty air, and
in which we recognise a defunct of distinction, passes near them. In
the days of Napoleon the Third and the Prussians this was a
stockbroker; it passed along with a mass of documents under its arm,—as
the father of Hamlet, rising from the grave, still wore his helmet and
his sword. It enters the building, goes towards the _Corbeille_, shouts
out once or twice, is answered only by an echo in the solitude, and
then returns, saluted on his passage by his fellow-ghost. And to think
that a little bombardment, followed by a successful attack, seven or
eight houses set on fire by the Versailles shells, seven or eight
hundred Federals shot, a few women blown to pieces, and a few children
killed, would suffice to restore these desolate spectres to life and
joy. But, alas! hope for them is deferred; the last circular of
Monsieur Thiers announces that the great military operations will not
commence for several days. They must wait still longer yet. The people
who cross the Place de la Bourse draw aside with a sort of religious
terror from the necropolis where sleep the three per cents and the
shares of the _Crédit Foncier_; and if the churches were not closed,
more than one charitable soul would perhaps burn a candle to lay the
unquiet spirits of these despairing jobbers.