The Arcades Project - Operi

could withstand the exorbitant commissions of the stockbrokers . . . . On the
Rhine, there are two gambling establishments (at Homburg and Wiesbaden) where
they conduct a game of trente et quurunt'e in which a slight commission of 621/2
centimes for every 100 francs is deducted in advance . ... This is . .. one thirtysecond
of the stockbroker's commission and the earnings combined. Trente et
quurunte is played for red and black, just as on the Stock Market one plays for the
rise and fall, with the difference that the odds are always exactly the same with the
former and any kind of fraud is impossible-the weak, there, being not at all at the
mercy of thc strong" . [07a,7]
In the provinces, speculation on the Stock Exchange was dependent on " getting
news from Paris ... about the fluctuations in the exchange of the most important
stocks . ... Special couriers and carrier pigeons had to serve this end, and one of
the favorite methods in a France that, in those days, was dotted with windmills was
to transmit signals from mill to mill. If the window of one of these mills was opened,
that meant a rise in prices, and the signal was taken up by nearby mills and passed
on; if the window remained closed, then a fall in prices was indicated. And the
news traveled in this way, from mill to mill, out of the capital and into the provinces."
The Blanc brothers, however, preferred to make use of the optical telegraph,
which was legally reserved for the government. "One fine day in 1834, at
the request of an agent for Blanc, a Parisian telegraphist in an official telegram
sent an H to Bordeaux, which was supposed to indicate a rise in stocks. In order to
mark this letter, and also to guard against discovery, he inserted after the H a
symbol denoting error." Difficulties cropped up along this route, and so the Blancs
combined this method with another. ·"If, for example, the French stocks at 3
percent showed an advance of at least 25 centimes, then the Paris agent for the
Blancs, a certain Gosmand, sent a packet containing gloves to the telegraph official
in Tout's, whose name was Guibout, and who was prudently addressed on the
parcel as a manufacturer of gloves and stockings. But if there was a decline of at
least the same amount, then Gosmand sent stockings or neckties. The address
written on this packet carried a letter or a numher which Guihout then immedi­
ately dispatched, together with the error symbol, in an official telegram to Bordeaux."
This syst.em functioned for about two years. Reported in the Gazette des
Tribunaux of 1837. Egon Caesar Conte Corti, Der ZalLberer 'von Hornburg lLnd
Monte Carlo (Leipzig