His plan for making his fortune was simple and practical. Now that he possessed more money than he had ever hoped for to commence his operations, he intended to put his designs into execution on a grand scale. He knew Paris by heart; he knew that the shower of gold which was already beating against the walls would fall heavier every day. Clever people had only to open their pockets. He had placed himself among the clever ones by reading the future in the offices of the Hôtel de Ville. His duties had taught him what can be stolen in the buying and selling of houses and ground. He was fully acquainted with all the classic swindles: he knew how to sell for a million that which only cost five hundred thousand francs; how to pay the right to ransack the cash boxes of the State, which smiles and shuts its eyes; how, by making a Boulevard pass over the entrails of some old neighbourhood, to juggle with six storeyed houses, amidst the applause of all the dupes. And that which in those still clouded days, when the chancre of speculation was not beyond the period of incubation, made him a terrible gambler was that he foresaw more than his chiefs themselves respecting the future of stone and plaster reserved to Paris. He had ferreted about so much, collected together so many clues, that he might have prophesied the spectacle the new districts would offer in 1870. At times, as he walked along the streets, he would look at certain houses in a singular manner, as though they were old friends whose destiny, known to him alone, affected him deeply.