The price of the stock was still further inflated on the market by requiring as a condition precedent for subscriptions to the new issues, that persons desiring to subscribe should be holders of a certain number of shares of the old stock for each share of the new. Subscriptions were in turn stimulated by spreading the payments over a protracted period, on the instalment plan, thus enabling persons of small capital who wished to profit by the upward movement of the stock to operate on margins. To the competition fostered by these ingenious and at that time novel devices was now added the pressure for new shares on the part of those whose investments had been disturbed by the redemption of the _rentes_. Their demand that some favor be shown them in the matter of subscriptions was recognized, and edicts were issued which removed the stipulation that payments should be made in coin or bank-notes; and in their place _billets d’état_, notes of the common treasury, and orders on the cashier of the Company given in liquidation of Government obligations, were ordered to be received. Shares rose to ten thousand francs,[50] and even higher; and those who paid for original shares in discredited _billets d’état_ could now realize forty times their purchase-money. The temptation to those of conservative disposition to realize their profits and convert them into coin or property now burst the bubble. For a time the Company, by purchasing its own stock, was able to check the impending disaster; but in spite of all efforts of this sort, and notwithstanding edict after edict ordaining the compulsory circulation of the notes and demonetizing gold and silver, the bank, which had in the mean time been placed under control of the Company, collapsed. The promoter of the scheme, in the same year that he was controller-general of the finances of France, was a fugitive and almost a pauper.