A new play was being performed at the Royal Theater, and the actors' performances were exceptionally refined, but Broad had not taken in a single bit of it.
Walsh had told him that the return on investing in railways could very well reach 20 percent, but it was, after all, an industry completely unfamiliar to him.
After all, the Dutch tulip craze and France's Mississippi Company had once painted similarly alluring prospects, yet those who entered the game last had all lost everything.
Investing in Marseille Port was clearly safer, though the returns certainly could not compare to those of the railways.
Walsh did not press him to make a decision either. After all, this concerned his entire fortune.
Broad barely slept at all that night. Before dawn the next day, he heard a servant knocking outside his bedroom.
Rubbing his two dark-ringed eyes, he fumbled for his pocket watch and immediately snapped in displeasure, "Famic, have you gone mad? It's not even seven yet!"
"Sir, today is the official opening day of the matches. Have you forgotten?"
Broad propped himself up and barked, "The Netherlands Team's match is at two thirty in the afternoon, idiot!"
The servant said aggrievedly, "But Mr. Walsh said the match is being held in Reims."
"Even so, there's no need to get up this ear—" Broad was about to go back to sleep when he suddenly jolted upright. "What did you say? Reims?!"
Reims was a full 140 kilometers from Paris, and he was still in Paris.
"Damn it!" He hurriedly threw on his clothes, grabbed his hat, and complained, "I should have checked the fixture list beforehand. What are the French thinking, holding a match somewhere so far away?"
As he rushed out of the bedroom while fastening his buttons, he ran right