- Murice Brachard, a dock laborer, rises to be a "Samson" of finance with terrific power and a primordial ferocity, which he needs when his wife spurns his devotion, and people he trusts try to pull down the structure of wealth he has erected.—Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>
- Brachard, born in the Thieves Alley of Marseilles, breaks from his foul and evil surroundings as a youth and obtains a job as a dock laborer. Giant-muscled and slow-moving, he yet has within him a spark of unquenchable ambition that is kindled when, on the docks at Toulon, he hears, of a Sunday, street preachers reading of "an old chap called Samson." Brachard buys the damaged cargo of a stove-in canal boat and disposes of it at a profit. It is the first step that is to bring him to his financial Dagon. Bit by bit he increases his holdings till he is enabled to make a plunge in Egyptian copper. This coup ultimately makes him a financial power with all Paris at his feet. The Marquis D'Andolin and the Marquise, both worldly financial schemers on the verge of ruin, but keeping up aristocratic appearances, marry off their daughter Marie, whom Brachard loves with all the rugged force of his crude soul, to the newly-risen Croesus. Marie, however, loathes the rough, powerful man, with the uncouth vigor of the dockyard still clinging to him despite the partial veneer that his dealings with men of millions has given him. Jerome Govaine, libertine, duelist and general man-about-town, meets the Brachards and Marie, fascinated by this polished Lothario, agrees to meet him at an orgy in a private room at a fast café. A "cast off" of Govaine's, Elise, warns Samson that the appointment is to be kept while the millionaire is absent on a business trip in London. He pretends to start but, instead of taking the train, returns home in time to trap his wife on her return disheveled and hysterical from the supper party. She has succeeded in escaping after a struggle when she saw into what company she had fallen. Brachard, with the intuition that has made him the master in many a financial duel, worms the truth from her at last and swears to avenge himself. Govaine, who has posed as his friend, is deeply involved in copper, thanks to Brachard's tips. The former dock laborer knows no weapons but his fists and a duel with Govaine would mean suicide for him. So he decides to ruin Govaine by "striking the market like a thunderbolt." He does so and, in the crash that follows the fall of Egyptian copper, his own fortune is wiped out and all France is plunged into the convulsions of a financial crisis. Mr. Brachard, having pulled down the pillars of his temple of gold, prepares to leave France forever, but he does not go alone, for Marie, who in his greatness has despised his rugged shrewdness, and rude strength, finds in his downfall that she loves him.
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