The finest speculations fell through in Saccard's hands. As he confessed, he had just experienced considerable losses on the Bourse. M. Toutin-Laroche had almost capsized the Crédit Viticole by a "bulling" game which had suddenly turned against him; fortunately the government, intervening secretly, had reset the famous farmers' loan machine on its legs. Saccard--already badly shaken by this double blow, warmly rated by his brother the minister on account of the danger which had threatened the delegation bonds of the city of Paris, compromised at the same time at the Crédit Viticole--was yet even unluckier in his speculations in house property. Mignon and Charrier had altogether ceased dealing with him. If he accused them it was because he was secretly enraged to think that he had blundered by building on his share of the land, whilst they prudently sold theirs. While they were netting a fortune, he remained hampered by his houses which he was often only able to dispose of at a loss. Among others he sold a mansion in the Rue de Marignan, on which he still owed three hundred and eighty thousand francs, for three hundred thousand. He had certainly invented a dodge worthy of him, which consisted in demanding ten thousand francs for a flat worth eight thousand at the most. The frightened tenant only signed a lease when the landlord consented to make him a present of the first two years' rent; the apartment was thus brought down to its real value, but the lease enunciated the figure of ten thousand francs, and when Saccard found a purchaser and capitalized the income of the property the valuation proved most fantastic. He could not apply this swindle on a large scale as his houses did not let; indeed he had built them too soon; the clearings, amid which they were so to say lost, in the mud and the winter cold, isolated them and lowered their value considerably. The affair, which affected Saccard the most, was the vulgar swindle of Messieurs Mignon and Charrier, who bought back from him the mansion which he had been compelled to give up building on the Boulevard Malesherbes. The contractors were at last smitten with the desire of residing on "their Boulevard." As they had sold their share of the building plots at a profit, and scented the embarrassed circumstances of their ex-partner, they offered to rid him of the enclosure in the centre of which the mansion rose to the flooring of the first storey, where the iron girders were partly placed. Only they talked of the solid foundations in cut stone as "useless rubbish," saying that they would have preferred the soil to be bare so as to build upon it according to their taste. Saccard had to sell, without taking the hundred and odd thousand francs which he had already expended into account. And what exasperated him the more was that the contractors would never agree to take the ground back at the rate of two hundred and fifty francs the metre, at which figure it had been valued when the plots were shared. They knocked off twenty-five francs per metre, like those second-hand dealers who will only give four francs for an object which they sold for five the day before. Forty-eight hours later, Saccard had the grief of seeing an army of masons invade the enclosure and continue building upon the so called "useless rubbish."