It may be imagined that the check-book and the three deep drawers in the mahogany cabinet were not spared by this hoard of devouring locusts which had fallen upon “Moussiou Jansoulet’s” dwelling.  Nothing could be more comic than the haughty manner in which these good islanders effected their loans, briskly, and with an air of defiance.  At the same time it was not they who were the worst—­except for the boxes of cigars which sank in their pockets as though they all meant to open a “Civette” on their return to their own country.  For just as the very hot weather inflames and envenoms old sores, so the election had given an astonishing new growth to the pillaging already established in the house.  Money was demanded for advertising expenses, for Moessard’s articles, which were sent to Corsica in bales of thousands of copies, with portraits, biographies, pamphlets—­all the printed clamour that it was possible to raise round a name.  And always the usual work of the suction-pumps went on, those pumps now fixed to this great reservoir of millions.  Here, the Bethlehem Society, a powerful machine working with regular, slow-recurring strokes, full of impetus; the Territorial Bank, a marvellous exhauster, indefatigable, with triple and quadruple rows of pumps, several thousand horse-power, the Schwalbach pump, the Bois l’Hery pump, and how many others as well?  Some enormous and noisy with screaming pistons, some quite dumb and discreet with clack-valves knowingly oiled, pumps with tiny valves, dear little pumps as fine as the sting of insects, and like them, leaving a poison in the place whence they have drawn life; all working together and bound to bring about if not a complete drought, at least a serious lowering of level.

Already evil rumours, vague as yet, were going the round of the Bourse.  Was this a move of the enemy?  For Jansoulet was waging a furious money war against Hemerlingue, trying to thwart all his financial operations, and was losing considerable sums at the game.  He had against him his own fury, his adversary’s coolness, and the blunderings of Paganetti, who was his man of straw.  In any case his golden star was no longer in the ascendant.  Paul de Gery knew this through Joyeuse, who was now a stock-broker’s accountant and well up in the doings on the Bourse.  What troubled him most, however, was the Nabob’s singular agitation, his need of constant distraction which had succeeded his former splendid calm of strength and security, the loss, too, of his southern sobriety.  He kept himself in a continual state of excitement, drinking great glasses of raki before his meals, laughing long, talking loud, like a rough sailor ashore.  You felt that here was a man overdoing himself to escape from some heavy care.  It showed, however, in the sudden contraction of all the muscles of his face, as some unhappy thought crossed his mind, or when he feverishly turned the pages of his little gilt-edged note-book.  The serious interview that Paul wanted