Richard Marsh

“ I will undertake that there is a sufficient margin of profit. Every account we will do a fresh bear until the trick is made. Unless I am mistaken, the trick will be made with a rapidity of which you appear to have no conception."
"It is like a dream of the Arabian nights," the lady said.
"Before the actual reality the Arabian nights pale their ineffectual fires. It is a chance which no man ever had before, which no man may ever have again. I don't think, Macmathers, we ought to let it slip." ”

“ Macmathers, I want to go a bear, a large bear, to win, say—I want to put it modestly—a hundred millions."
"Pounds?"
"Pounds."
It is to be feared that Mrs. Macmathers whistled.
"Figures large," she said.
"All the world knows that war is inevitable between France and Germany." ”

“ You will find no difficulty in obtaining the permission of the necessary authorities sanctioning your schemes; but at the very last moment, owing to some stated informality, the German brigands will interfere even at the edge of the already open grave; patriot bones will be dishonoured, France will be shamed in the face of all the world. ”

“ And in the morning Europe was electrified by the news that a revolution had been effected in the small hours of the morning, that the Chambers had been dissolved, and that with the Army were the issues of peace and war. ”

“ The story of permission having been accorded by the authorities was pure fiction—there had been a scuffle in which a man had been killed, probably by his own friends—the tale of the dishonoured flags was the invention of an imaginative brain. ”

“ I have my own reasons for asserting that some remarkable proceedings may be expected soon. No man knows better than myself that there is nothing some Frenchmen wall not do."
On the same day there appeared in La Patrie a really touching article. It was the story of two brothers-one was, the other was not; in life they had been together, but in death they were divided. Both alike had fought for their native land. One returned—désolé!—to Paris. The other stayed behind. He still stayed behind. It appeared that he was buried in Alsace, in a nameless grave! ”

“ No one anything like his age had a better reputation in the House; it was stated by those who had best reason to know that he had never once been left, and few had a larger credit. Lately he had wandered outside his markets to indulge in little operations in what he called La Haute Finance. In these Mr. Macmathers had been his partner more than once, and in him he had found just the man he wished to find. ”

“ The particular journal or journals which were rendered famous by the productions of his pen were rather difficult to discover—there appeared to be political reasons, too, for that.
"The man is an all-round bad lot." This was what Mr. Railton said when speaking of this gentleman to Mr. and Mrs. Macmathers. "A type of scoundrel only produced by France. Just the man we want." ”

“ What he said need not be recorded, but M. de Vrai-Castille used some very bad language indeed, expressive of the satisfaction with which the gift would be received.
"And suppose I should hint at your becoming possessed of another hundred thousand pounds to back it?"
"Pardon me, M. Railton, but is it murder? If so, I would say frankly at once that I have always resolved that in those sort of transactions I would take no hand."
"Stuff and nonsense! It is nothing of the kind! You say you are a politician. Well, I want you to pose as a patriot—a French patriot, you understand." ”

“ Next his heart he at that moment carried portions of the flags—emblems of France!—which had been subjected to such shame.
But it was on the following day that the situation first took a definitely serious shape. Placards appeared on every dead wall in Paris, small bills were thrust under every citizen's door—on the bills and placards were printed the same words. They were signed "Quelquechose." They pointed out that France owed her present degradation—like all her other degradations—to her Government. The nation was once more insulted; the Army was once more betrayed ”