“A recent event, we ought to say a recent disaster, has just confirmed
our doctrines, and justifies but too clearly our admonition to be
careful.
“A company which started into existence last year with amazing
suddenness, which filled the whole world with its flaming
advertisements, crowding the newspapers, and decorating the
street-corners,--a company which was most surely to enrich its
stockholders, is already no longer able to pay the interest on its
paid-up capital.
“As to the capital itself--but we will not anticipate events.
“All of our readers will have understood that we are speaking of the
Franco-American Society of Pennsylvania Oil-Wells, which for the last
eight days has been the subject of universal excitement.
“On ‘Change the shares of a hundred dollars are quoted at 4-to-5.”
Blinding tears prevented Henrietta from going on. “Great God!” she
exclaimed. “O God!” Then, mastering her weakness, she began once more to
read,--
“And yet if ever any company seemed to offer all the material and
moral guarantees which we can desire before risking our carefully saved
earnings, this company presented them.
“It had at its head a man who in his day was looked up to as a statesman
endowed with rare administrative talents, and whose reputation as a man
of sterling integrity seemed to lie above all suspicion.
“Need we say that this was the ‘high and mighty Count Ville-Handry’?
“Hence they did not spare this great and noble name, but proclaimed
it aloud on the housetops. It was the Count Ville-Handry here, and the
Count Ville-Handry there. He was to bestow upon the country a new branch
of industry. He was to change vile petroleum into precious gold.
“It was especially brought into notice that the noble count’s personal
fortune was nearly equal to the whole capital of the new company,--ten
millions. Hence he was risking his own money rather than the money of
others.
“It is now a year since these dazzling promises were made. What remains
of them all? Shares, worth five dollars yesterday, worth, perhaps,
nothing at all to-morrow, and a more than doubtful capital.
“Who could have expected in our day a new edition of Law’s Mississippi
Scheme?”
The paper fell from the hands of the poor girl. She had turned as pale
as death, and was staggering so, that Papa Ravinet’s sister took her in
her arms to support her.
“Horrible,” she murmured; “this is horrible!” Still she had not yet read
all. The old man picked up the paper, and read from another article,
below the lines which carried poison in every word, the following
comments:--
“Two delegates of the stockholders of the Pennsylvania Petroleum Company
were to sail this morning from Brest for New York.
“These gentlemen have been sent out by their fellow-sufferers to examine
the lands on which the oil-wells are situated which constitute the only
security of the shareholders. Certain people have gone so far as to
doubt even the existence of such oil-wells.”