It is needless to say that Mr. Hahn picked up a good deal of valuable
information in the course of his career as a waiter; and to him
information meant money, and money meant power and a recognized place
in society. The diplomatic shrewdness which enabled him to estimate
the moral calibre of a patron served him equally well in estimating
the value of an investment. He had a hundred subterranean channels of
information, and his judgment as to the soundness or unsoundness of a
financial enterprise was almost unerring. His little secret
transactions on the Bourse, where he had his _commissionaires_, always
yielded him ample returns; and when an opportunity presented itself,
which he had long foreseen, of buying a suburban garden at a bankrupt
sale, he found himself, at least preliminarily, at the goal of his
ambition. From this time forth, Mr. Hahn rose rapidly in wealth and
power. He kept his thumb, so to speak, constantly on the public pulse,
and prescribed amusements as unerringly as a physician prescribes
medicine, and usually, it must be admitted, with better results. The
"Haute Noblesse" became the favorite resort of fashionable idlers,
among whom the military element usually pre-ponderated, and the flash
of gilt buttons and the rattle of swords and scabbards could always be
counted on as the unvarying accompaniment to the music.
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