Title: Gobseck
Author: Balzac, Honoré de
Language: English
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GOBSECK


By Honore De Balzac


Translated By Ellen Marriage



                            DEDICATION

                  To M. le Baron Barchou de Penhoen.

  Among all the pupils of the Oratorian school at Vendome, we are, I
  think, the only two who have afterwards met in mid-career of a
  life of letters--we who once were cultivating Philosophy when by
  rights we should have been minding our De viris. When we met, you
  were engaged upon your noble works on German philosophy, and I
  upon this study. So neither of us has missed his vocation; and
  you, when you see your name here, will feel, no doubt, as much
  pleasure as he who inscribes his work to you.--Your old
  schoolfellow,

       1840                                              De Balzac.



GOBSECK


It was one o’clock in the morning, during the winter of 1829-30, but in
the Vicomtesse de Grandlieu’s salon two persons stayed on who did not
belong to her family circle. A young and good-looking man heard the
clock strike, and took his leave. When the courtyard echoed with the
sound of a departing carriage, the Vicomtesse looked up, saw that no one
was present save her brother and a friend of the family finishing their
game of piquet, and went across to her daughter. The girl, standing by
the chimney-piece, apparently examining a transparent fire-screen,
was listening to the sounds from the courtyard in a way that justified
certain maternal fears.

“Camille,” said the Vicomtesse, “if you continue to behave to young
Comte de Restaud as you have done this evening, you will oblige me to
see no more of him here. Listen, child, and if you have any confidence
in my love, let me guide you in life. At seventeen one cannot judge of
past or future, nor of certain social considerations. I have only one
thing to say to you. M. de Restaud has a mother, a mother who would
waste millions of francs; a woman of no birth, a Mlle. Goriot; people
talked a good deal about her at one time. She behaved so badly to her
own father, that she certainly does not deserve to have so good a son.
The young Count adores her, and maintains her in her position with
dutifulness worthy of all praise, and he is extremely good to his
brother and sister.--But however admirable _his_ behavior may be,” the
Vicomtesse added with a shrewd expression, “so long as his mother lives,
any family would take alarm at the idea of intrusting a daughter’s
fortune and future to young Restaud.”

“I overheard a word now and again in your talk with Mlle. de Grandlieu,”
 cried the friend of the family, “and it made me anxious to put in a word
of my own.--I have won, M. le Comte,” he added, turning to his opponent.
“I shall throw you over and go to your niece’s assistance.”

“See what it is to have an attorney’s ears!” exclaimed the Vicomtesse.
“My dear Derville, how could you know what I was saying to Camille in a
whisper?”

“I knew it from your looks,” answered Derville, seating himself in a low
chair by the fire.

Camille’s uncle went to her side, and Mme. de Grandlieu took up her
position on a hearth stool between her daughter and Derville.

“The time has come for telling a story, which should modify your
judgment as to Ernest de Restaud’s prospects.”

“A story?” cried Camille. “Do begin at once, monsieur.”

The glance that Derville gave the Vicomtesse told her that this tale was
meant for her. The Vicomtesse de Grandlieu, be it said, was one of the
greatest ladies in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, by reason of her fortune
and her ancient name; and though it may seem improbable that a Paris
attorney should speak so familiarly to her, or be so much at home in her
house, the fact is nevertheless easily explained.

When Mme. de Grandlieu returned to France with the Royal family, she
came to Paris, and at first lived entirely on the pension allowed her
out of the Civil List by Louis XVIII.--an intolerable position. The
Hotel de Grandlieu had been sold by the Republic. It came to Derville’s
knowledge that there were flaws in the title, and he thought that it
ought to return to the Vicomtesse. He instituted proceedings for nullity
of contract, and gained the day. Encouraged by this success, he used
legal quibbles to such purpose that he compelled some institution or
other to disgorge the Forest of Liceney. Then he won certain lawsuits
against the Canal d’Orleans, and recovered a tolerably large amount
of property, with which the Emperor had endowed various public
institutions. So it fell out that, thanks to the young attorney’s
skilful management, Mme. de Grandlieu’s income reached the sum of some
sixty thousand francs, to say nothing of the vast sums returned to her
by the law of indemnity. And Derville, a man of high character, well
informed, modest, and pleasant in company, became the house-friend of
the family.

By his conduct of Mme. de Grandlieu’s affairs he had fairly earned the
esteem of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and numbered the best families
among his clients; but he did not take advantage of his popularity, as
an ambitious man might have done. The Vicomtesse would have had him sell
his practice and enter the magistracy, in which career advancement would
have been swift and certain with such influence at his disposal; but he
persistently refused all offers. He only went into society to keep up
his connections, but he occasionally spent an evening at the Hotel de
Grandlieu. It was a very lucky thing for him that his talents had been
brought into the light by his devotion to Mme. de Grandlieu, for his
practice otherwise might have gone to pieces. Derville had not an
attorney’s soul. Since Ernest de Restaud had appeared at the Hotel de
Grandlieu, and he had noticed that Camille felt attracted to the young
man, Derville had been as assiduous in his visits as any dandy of the
Chausee-d’Antin newly admitted to the noble Faubourg. At a ball only
a few days before, when he happened to stand near Camille, and said,
indicating the Count:

“It is a pity that yonder youngster has not two or three million francs,
is it not?”

“Is it a pity? I do not think so,” the girl answered. “M. de Restaud
has plenty of ability; he is well educated, and the Minister, his
chief, thinks well of him. He will be a remarkable man, I have no doubt.
‘Yonder youngster’ will have as much money as he wishes when he comes
into power.”

“Yes, but suppose that he were rich already?”

“Rich already?” repeated Camille, flushing red. “Why all the girls
in the room would be quarreling for him,” she said, glancing at the
quadrilles.

“And then,” retorted the attorney, “Mlle. de Grandlieu might not be the
one towards whom his eyes are always turned? That is what that red color
means! You like him, do you not? Come, speak out.”

Camille suddenly rose to go.

“She loves him,” Derville thought.

Since that evening, Camille had been unwontedly attentive to the
attorney, who approved of her liking for Ernest de Restaud. Hitherto,
although she knew well that her family lay under great obligations to
Derville, she had felt respect rather than real friendship for him,
their relation was more a matter of politeness than of warmth of
feeling; and by her manner, and by the tones of her voice, she had
always made him sensible of the distance which socially lay between
them. Gratitude is a charge upon the inheritance which the second
generation is apt to repudiate.



“This adventure,” Derville began after a pause, “brings the one romantic
event in my life to my mind. You are laughing already,” he went on;
“it seems so ridiculous, doesn’t it, that an attorney should speak of
a romance in his life? But once I was five-and-twenty, like everybody
else, and even then I had seen some queer things. I ought to begin at
the beginning by telling you about some one whom it is impossible that
you should have known. The man in question was a usurer.

“Can you grasp a clear notion of that sallow, wan face of his? I wish
the _Academie_ would give me leave to dub such faces the _lunar_
type. It was like silver-gilt, with the gilt rubbed off. His hair was
iron-gray, sleek, and carefully combed; his features might have been
cast in bronze; Talleyrand himself was not more impassive than this
money-lender. A pair of little eyes, yellow as a ferret’s, and with
scarce an eyelash to them, peered out from under the sheltering peak of
a shabby old cap, as if they feared the light. He had the thin lips that
you see in Rembrandt’s or Metsu’s portraits of alchemists and shrunken
old men, and a nose so sharp at the tip that it put you in mind of a
gimlet. His voice was so low; he always spoke suavely; he never flew
into a passion. His age was a problem; it was hard to say whether he had
grown old before his time, or whether by economy of youth he had saved
enough to last him his life.

“His room, and everything in it, from the green baize of the bureau
to the strip of carpet by the bed, was as clean and threadbare as the
chilly sanctuary of some elderly spinster who spends her days in rubbing
her furniture. In winter time, the live brands of the fire smouldered
all day in a bank of ashes; there was never any flame in his grate. He
went through his day, from his uprising to his evening coughing-fit,
with the regularity of a pendulum, and in some sort was a clockwork man,
wound up by a night’s slumber. Touch a wood-louse on an excursion across
your sheet of paper, and the creature shams death; and in something the
same way my acquaintance would stop short in the middle of a sentence,
while a cart went by, to save the strain to his voice. Following the
example of Fontenelle, he was thrifty of pulse-strokes, and concentrated
all human sensibility in the innermost sanctuary of Self.

“His life flowed soundless as the sands of an hour-glass. His victims
sometimes flew into a rage and made a great deal of noise, followed by a
great silence; so is it in a kitchen after a fowl’s neck has been wrung.

“Toward evening this bill of exchange incarnate would assume ordinary
human shape, and his metals were metamorphosed into a human heart. When
he was satisfied with his day’s business, he would rub his hands; his
inward glee would escape like smoke through every rift and wrinkle of
his face;--in no other way is it possible to give an idea of the mute
play of muscle which expressed sensations similar to the soundless
laughter of _Leather Stocking_. Indeed, even in transports of joy,
his conversation was confined to monosyllables; he wore the same
non-committal countenance.

“This was the neighbor Chance found for me in the house in the Rue
de Gres, where I used to live when as yet I was only a second clerk
finishing my third year’s studies. The house is damp and dark, and
boasts no courtyard. All the windows look on the street; the whole
dwelling, in claustral fashion, is divided into rooms or cells of equal
size, all opening upon a long corridor dimly lit with borrowed lights.
The place must have been part of an old convent once. So gloomy was it,
that the gaiety of eldest sons forsook them on the stairs before they
reached my neighbor’s door. He and his house were much alike; even so
does the oyster resemble his native rock.

“I was the one creature with whom he had any communication, socially
speaking; he would come in to ask for a light, to borrow a book or a
newspaper, and of an evening he would allow me to go into his cell,
and when he was in the humor we would chat together. These marks of
confidence were the results of four years of neighborhood and my own
sober conduct. From sheer lack of pence, I was bound to live pretty much
as he did. Had he any relations or friends? Was he rich or poor? Nobody
could give an answer to these questions. I myself never saw money in his
room. Doubtless his capital was safely stowed in the strong rooms of the
Bank. He used to collect his bills himself as they fell due, running
all over Paris on a pair of shanks as skinny as a stag’s. On occasion he
would be a martyr to prudence. One day, when he happened to have gold in
his pockets, a double napoleon worked its way, somehow or other, out of
his fob and fell, and another lodger following him up the stairs picked
up the coin and returned it to its owner.

“‘That isn’t mine!’ said he, with a start of surprise. ‘Mine indeed! If
I were rich, should I live as I do!’

“He made his cup of coffee himself every morning on the cast-iron
chafing dish which stood all day in the black angle of the grate; his
dinner came in from a cookshop; and our old porter’s wife went up at the
prescribed hour to set his room in order. Finally, a whimsical chance,
in which Sterne would have seen predestination, had named the man
Gobseck. When I did business for him later, I came to know that he was
about seventy-six years old at the time when we became acquainted. He
was born about 1740, in some outlying suburb of Antwerp, of a Dutch
father and a Jewish mother, and his name was Jean-Esther Van Gobseck.
You remember how all Paris took an interest in that murder case, a
woman named _La belle Hollandaise_? I happened to mention it to my old
neighbor, and he answered without the slightest symptom of interest or
surprise, ‘She is my grandniece.’

“That was the only remark drawn from him by the death of his sole
surviving next of kin, his sister’s granddaughter. From reports of the
case I found that _La belle Hollandaise_ was in fact named Sara Van
Gobseck. When I asked by what curious chance his grandniece came to bear
his surname, he smiled:

“‘The women never marry in our family.’

“Singular creature, he had never cared to find out a single relative
among four generations counted on the female side. The thought of his
heirs was abhorrent to him; and the idea that his wealth could pass into
other hands after his death simply inconceivable.

“He was a child, ten years old, when his mother shipped him off as a
cabin boy on a voyage to the Dutch Straits Settlements, and there he
knocked about for twenty years. The inscrutable lines on that sallow
forehead kept the secret of horrible adventures, sudden panic,
unhoped-for luck, romantic cross events, joys that knew no limit,
hunger endured and love trampled under foot, fortunes risked, lost, and
recovered, life endangered time and time again, and saved, it may be, by
one of the rapid, ruthless decisions absolved by necessity. He had known
Admiral Simeuse, M. de Lally, M. de Kergarouet, M. d’Estaing, _le Bailli
de Suffren_, M. de Portenduere, Lord Cornwallis, Lord Hastings, Tippoo
Sahib’s father, Tippoo Sahib himself. The bully who served Mahadaji
Sindhia, King of Delhi, and did so much to found the power of the
Mahrattas, had had dealings with Gobseck. Long residence at St. Thomas
brought him in contact with Victor Hughes and other notorious pirates.
In his quest of fortune he had left no stone unturned; witness an
attempt to discover the treasure of that tribe of savages so famous in
Buenos Ayres and its neighborhood. He had a personal knowledge of the
events of the American War of Independence. But if he spoke of the
Indies or of America, as he did very rarely with me, and never with
anyone else, he seemed to regard it as an indiscretion and to repent of
it afterwards. If humanity and sociability are in some sort a religion,
Gobseck might be ranked as an infidel; but though I set myself to study
him, I must confess, to my shame, that his real nature was impenetrable
up to the very last. I even felt doubts at times as to his sex. If all
usurers are like this one, I maintain that they belong to the neuter
gender.

“Did he adhere to his mother’s religion? Did he look on Gentiles as
his legitimate prey? Had he turned Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Mahometan,
Brahmin, or what not? I never knew anything whatsoever about his
religious opinions, and so far as I could see, he was indifferent rather
than incredulous.

“One evening I went in to see this man who had turned himself to gold;
the usurer, whom his victims (his clients, as he styled them) were
wont to call Daddy Gobseck, perhaps ironically, perhaps by way of
antiphrasis. He was sitting in his armchair, motionless as a statue,
staring fixedly at the mantel-shelf, where he seemed to read the figures
of his statements. A lamp, with a pedestal that had once been green, was
burning in the room; but so far from taking color from its smoky light,
his face seemed to stand out positively paler against the background. He
pointed to a chair set for me, but not a word did he say.

“‘What thoughts can this being have in his mind?’ said I to myself.
‘Does he know that a God exists; does he know there are such things
as feeling, woman, happiness?’ I pitied him as I might have pitied a
diseased creature. But, at the same time, I knew quite well that while
he had millions of francs at his command, he possessed the world no
less in idea--that world which he had explored, ransacked, weighed,
appraised, and exploited.

“‘Good day, Daddy Gobseck,’ I began.

“He turned his face towards me with a slight contraction of his bushy,
black eyebrows; this characteristic shade of expression in him meant as
much as the most jubilant smile on a Southern face.

“‘You look just as gloomy as you did that day when the news came of the
failure of that bookseller whose sharpness you admired so much, though
you were one of his victims.’

“‘One of his victims?’ he repeated, with a look of astonishment.

“‘Yes. Did you not refuse to accept composition at the meeting of
creditors until he undertook privately to pay you your debt in full; and
did he not give you bills accepted by the insolvent firm; and then, when
he set up in business again, did he not pay you the dividend upon those
bills of yours, signed as they were by the bankrupt firm?’

“‘He was a sharp one, but I had it out of him.’

“‘Then have you some bills to protest? To-day is the 30th, I believe.’

“It was the first time I had spoken to him of money. He looked
ironically up at me; then in those bland accents, not unlike the husky
tones which the tyro draws from a flute, he answered, ‘I am amusing
myself.’

“‘So you amuse yourself now and again?’

“‘Do you imagine that the only poets in the world are those who print
their verses?’ he asked, with a pitying look and shrug of the shoulders.

“‘Poetry in that head!’ thought I, for as yet I knew nothing of his
life.

“‘What life could be as glorious as mine?’ he continued, and his eyes
lighted up. ‘You are young, your mental visions are colored by youthful
blood, you see women’s faces in the fire, while I see nothing but coals
in mine. You have all sorts of beliefs, while I have no beliefs at
all. Keep your illusions--if you can. Now I will show you life with
the discount taken off. Go wherever you like, or stay at home by the
fireside with your wife, there always comes a time when you settle down
in a certain groove, the groove is your preference; and then happiness
consists in the exercise of your faculties by applying them to
realities. Anything more in the way of precept is false. My principles
have been various, among various men; I had to change them with every
change of latitude. Things that we admire in Europe are punishable in
Asia, and a vice in Paris becomes a necessity when you have passed the
Azores. There are no such things as hard-and-fast rules; there are only
conventions adapted to the climate. Fling a man headlong into one social
melting pot after another, and convictions and forms and moral systems
become so many meaningless words to him. The one thing that always
remains, the one sure instinct that nature has implanted in us, is the
instinct of self-interest. If you had lived as long as I have, you would
know that there is but one concrete reality invariable enough to be
worth caring about, and that is--GOLD. Gold represents every form of
human power. I have traveled. I found out that there were either hills
or plains everywhere: the plains are monotonous, the hills a weariness;
consequently, place may be left out of the question. As to manners; man
is man all the world over. The same battle between the poor and the rich
is going on everywhere; it is inevitable everywhere; consequently, it is
better to exploit than to be exploited. Everywhere you find the man of
thews and sinews who toils, and the lymphatic man who torments himself;
and pleasures are everywhere the same, for when all sensations are
exhausted, all that survives is Vanity--Vanity is the abiding substance
of us, the _I_ in us. Vanity is only to be satisfied by gold in floods.
Our dreams need time and physical means and painstaking thought before
they can be realized. Well, gold contains all things in embryo; gold
realizes all things for us.

“‘None but fools and invalids can find pleasure in shuffling cards all
evening long to find out whether they shall win a few pence at the end.
None but driveling idiots could spend time in inquiring into all that
is happening around them, whether Madame Such-an-One slept single on
her couch or in company, whether she has more blood than lymph, more
temperament than virtue. None but the dupes, who fondly imagine that
they are useful to their like, can interest themselves in laying down
rules for political guidance amid events which neither they nor any one
else foresees, nor ever will foresee. None but simpletons can delight
in talking about stage players and repeating their sayings; making the
daily promenade of a caged animal over a rather larger area; dressing
for others, eating for others, priding themselves on a horse or a
carriage such as no neighbor can have until three days later. What is
all this but Parisian life summed up in a few phrases? Let us find a
higher outlook on life than theirs. Happiness consists either in strong
emotions which drain our vitality, or in methodical occupation which
makes existence like a bit of English machinery, working with the
regularity of clockwork. A higher happiness than either consists in a
curiosity, styled noble, a wish to learn Nature’s secrets, or to attempt
by artificial means to imitate Nature to some extent. What is this in
two words but Science and Art, or passion or calm?--Ah! well, every
human passion wrought up to its highest pitch in the struggle for
existence comes to parade itself before me--as I live in calm. As for
your scientific curiosity, a kind of wrestling bout in which man is
never uppermost, I replace it by an insight into all the springs of
action in man and woman. To sum up, the world is mine without effort of
mine, and the world has not the slightest hold on me. Listen to this,’
he went on, ‘I will tell you the history of my morning, and you will
divine my pleasures.’

“He got up, pushed the bolt of the door, drew a tapestry curtain across
it with a sharp grating sound of the rings on the rod, then he sat down
again.

“‘This morning,’ he said, ‘I had only two amounts to collect; the rest
of the bills that were due I gave away instead of cash to my customers
yesterday. So much saved, you see, for when I discount a bill I always
deduct two francs for a hired brougham--expenses of collection. A pretty
thing it would be, would it not, if my clients were to set _me_ trudging
all over Paris for half-a-dozen francs of discount, when no man is my
master, and I only pay seven francs in the shape of taxes?

“‘The first bill for a thousand francs was presented by a young fellow,
a smart buck with a spangled waistcoat, and an eyeglass, and a tilbury
and an English horse, and all the rest of it. The bill bore the
signature of one of the prettiest women in Paris, married to a Count, a
great landowner. Now, how came that Countess to put her name to a
bill of exchange, legally not worth the paper it was written upon, but
practically very good business; for these women, poor things, are afraid
of the scandal that a protested bill makes in a family, and would give
themselves away in payment sooner than fail? I wanted to find out what
that bill of exchange really represented. Was it stupidity, imprudence,
love or charity?

“‘The second bill, bearing the signature “Fanny Malvaut,” came to me
from a linen-draper on the highway to bankruptcy. Now, no creature who
has any credit with a bank comes to _me_. The first step to my door
means that a man is desperately hard up; that the news of his failure
will soon come out: and, most of all, it means that he has been
everywhere else first. The stag is always at bay when I see him, and a
pack of creditors are hard upon his track. The Countess lived in the Rue
du Helder, and my Fanny in the Rue Montmartre. How many conjectures I
made as I set out this morning! If these two women were not able to pay,
they would show me more respect than they would show their own fathers.
What tricks and grimaces would not the Countess try for a thousand
francs! She would be so nice to me, she would talk to me in that
ingratiating tone peculiar to endorsers of bills, she would pour out
a torrent of coaxing words, perhaps she would beg and pray, and I...’
(here the old man turned his pale eyes upon me)--‘and I not to be moved,
inexorable!’ he continued. ‘I am there as the avenger, the apparition of
Remorse. So much for hypotheses. I reached the house.

“‘“Madame la Comtesse is asleep,” says the maid.

“‘“When can I see her?”

“‘“At twelve o’clock.”

“‘“Is Madame la Comtesse ill?”

“‘“No, sir, but she only came home at three o’clock this morning from a
ball.”

“‘“My name is Gobseck, tell her that I shall call again at twelve
o’clock,” and I went out, leaving traces of my muddy boots on the carpet
which covered the paved staircase. I like to leave mud on a rich man’s
carpet; it is not petty spite; I like to make them feel a touch of the
claws of Necessity. In the Rue Montmartre I thrust open the old gateway
of a poor-looking house, and looked into a dark courtyard where the
sunlight never shines. The porter’s lodge was grimy, the window looked
like the sleeve of some shabby wadded gown--greasy, dirty, and full of
holes.

“‘“Mlle. Fanny Malvaut?”

“‘“She has gone out; but if you have come about a bill, the money is
waiting for you.”

“‘“I will look in again,” said I.

“‘As soon as I knew that the porter had the money for me, I wanted to
know what the girl was like; I pictured her as pretty. The rest of the
morning I spent in looking at the prints in the shop windows along the
boulevard; then, just as it struck twelve, I went through the Countess’
ante-chamber.

“‘“Madame has just this minute rung for me,” said the maid; “I don’t
think she can see you yet.”

“‘“I will wait,” said I, and sat down in an easy-chair.

“‘Venetian shutters were opened, and presently the maid came hurrying
back.

“‘“Come in, sir.”

“‘From the sweet tone of the girl’s voice, I knew that the mistress
could not be ready to pay. What a handsome woman it was that I saw in
another moment! She had flung an Indian shawl hastily over her bare
shoulders, covering herself with it completely, while it revealed the
bare outlines of the form beneath. She wore a loose gown trimmed with
snowy ruffles, which told plainly that her laundress’ bills amounted
to something like two thousand francs in the course of a year. Her
dark curls escaped from beneath a bright Indian handkerchief, knotted
carelessly about her head after the fashion of Creole women. The bed lay
in disorder that told of broken slumber. A painter would have paid money
to stay a while to see the scene that I saw. Under the luxurious hanging
draperies, the pillow, crushed into the depths of an eider-down quilt,
its lace border standing out in contrast against the background of blue
silk, bore a vague impress that kindled the imagination. A pair of
satin slippers gleamed from the great bear-skin rug spread by the carved
mahogany lions at the bed-foot, where she had flung them off in her
weariness after the ball. A crumpled gown hung over a chair, the sleeves
touching the floor; stockings which a breath would have blown away were
twisted about the leg of an easy-chair; while ribbon garters straggled
over a settee. A fan of price, half unfolded, glittered on the
chimney-piece. Drawers stood open; flowers, diamonds, gloves, a bouquet,
a girdle, were littered about. The room was full of vague sweet perfume.
And--beneath all the luxury and disorder, beauty and incongruity, I saw
Misery crouching in wait for her or for her adorer, Misery rearing its
head, for the Countess had begun to feel the edge of those fangs.
Her tired face was an epitome of the room strewn with relics of past
festival. The scattered gewgaws, pitiable this morning, when gathered
together and coherent, had turned heads the night before.

“‘What efforts to drink of the Tantalus cup of bliss I could read
in these traces of love stricken by the thunderbolt remorse--in this
visible presentment of a life of luxury, extravagance, and riot. There
were faint red marks on her young face, signs of the fineness of the
skin; but her features were coarsened, as it were, and the circles about
her eyes were unwontedly dark. Nature nevertheless was so vigorous in
her, that these traces of past folly did not spoil her beauty. Her eyes
glittered. She looked like some _Herodias_ of da Vinci’s (I have dealt
in pictures), so magnificently full of life and energy was she; there
was nothing starved nor stinted in feature or outline; she awakened
desire; it seemed to me that there was some passion in her yet stronger
than love. I was taken with her. It was a long while since my heart
had throbbed; so I was paid then and there--for I would give a thousand
francs for a sensation that should bring me back memories of youth.

“‘“Monsieur,” she said, finding a chair for me, “will you be so good as
to wait?”

“‘“Until this time to-morrow, madame,” I said, folding up the bill
again. “I cannot legally protest this bill any sooner.” And within
myself I said--“Pay the price of your luxury, pay for your name, pay for
your ease, pay for the monopoly which you enjoy! The rich have invented
judges and courts of law to secure their goods, and the guillotine--that
candle in which so many lie in silk, under silken coverlets, there is
remorse, and grinding of teeth beneath a smile, and those fantastical
lions’ jaws are gaping to set their fangs in your heart.”

“‘“Protest the bill! Can you mean it?” she cried, with her eyes upon me;
“could you have so little consideration for me?”

“‘“If the King himself owed money to me, madame, and did not pay it, I
should summons him even sooner than any other debtor.”

“‘While we were speaking, somebody tapped gently at the door.

“‘“I cannot see any one,” she cried imperiously.

“‘“But, Anastasie, I particularly wish to speak to you.”

“‘“Not just now, dear,” she answered in a milder tone, but with no sign
of relenting.

“‘“What nonsense! You are talking to some one,” said the voice, and in
came a man who could only be the Count.

“‘The Countess gave me a glance. I saw how it was. She was thoroughly
in my power. There was a time, when I was young, and might perhaps have
been stupid enough not to protest the bill. At Pondicherry, in 1763, I
let a woman off, and nicely she paid me out afterwards. I deserved it;
what call was there for me to trust her?

“‘“What does this gentleman want?” asked the Count.

“‘I could see that the Countess was trembling from head to foot; the
white satin skin of her throat was rough, “turned to goose flesh,” to
use the familiar expression. As for me, I laughed in myself without
moving a muscle.

“‘“This gentleman is one of my tradesmen,” she said.

“‘The Count turned his back on me; I drew the bill half out of my
pocket. After that inexorable movement, she came over to me and put a
diamond into my hands. “Take it,” she said, “and be gone.”

“‘We exchanged values, and I made my bow and went. The diamond was quite
worth twelve hundred francs to me. Out in the courtyard I saw a swarm of
flunkeys, brushing out their liveries, waxing their boots, and cleaning
sumptuous equipages.

“‘“This is what brings these people to me!” said I to myself. “It is
to keep up this kind of thing that they steal millions with all due
formalities, and betray their country. The great lord, and the little
man who apes the great lord, bathes in mud once for all to save himself
a splash or two when he goes afoot through the streets.”

“‘Just then the great gates were opened to admit a cabriolet. It was the
same young fellow who had brought the bill to me.

“‘“Sir,” I said, as he alighted, “here are two hundred francs, which I
beg you to return to Mme. la Comtesse, and have the goodness to tell her
that I hold the pledge which she deposited with me this morning at her
disposition for a week.”

“‘He took the two hundred francs, and an ironical smile stole over his
face; it was as if he had said, “Aha! so she has paid it, has she? ...
Faith, so much the better!” I read the Countess’ future in his face.
That good-looking, fair-haired young gentleman is a heartless gambler;
he will ruin himself, ruin her, ruin her husband, ruin the children, eat
up their portions, and work more havoc in Parisian salons than a whole
battery of howitzers in a regiment.

“‘I went back to see Mlle. Fanny in the Rue Montmartre, climbed a very
steep, narrow staircase, and reached a two-roomed dwelling on the fifth
floor. Everything was as neat as a new ducat. I did not see a speck of
dust on the furniture in the first room, where Mlle. Fanny was sitting.
Mlle. Fanny herself was a young Parisian girl, quietly dressed, with a
delicate fresh face, and a winning look. The arrangement of her neatly
brushed chestnut hair in a double curve on her forehead lent a refined
expression to blue eyes, clear as crystal. The broad daylight streaming
in through the short curtains against the window pane fell with softened
light on her girlish face. A pile of shaped pieces of linen told me that
she was a sempstress. She looked like a spirit of solitude. When I held
out the bill, I remarked that she had not been at home when I called in
the morning.

“‘“But the money was left with the porter’s wife,” said she.

“‘I pretended not to understand.

“‘“You go out early, mademoiselle, it seems.”

“‘“I very seldom leave my room; but when you work all night, you are
obliged to take a bath sometimes.”

“‘I looked at her. A glance told me all about her life. Here was a girl
condemned by misfortune to toil, a girl who came of honest farmer folk,
for she had still a freckle or two that told of country birth. There
was an indefinable atmosphere of goodness about her; I felt as if I were
breathing sincerity and frank innocence. It was refreshing to my lungs.
Poor innocent child, she had faith in something; there was a crucifix
and a sprig or two of green box above her poor little painted wooden
bedstead; I felt touched, or somewhat inclined that way. I felt ready
to offer to charge no more than twelve per cent, and so give something
towards establishing her in a good way of business.

“‘“But maybe she has a little youngster of a cousin,” I said to myself,
“who would raise money on her signature and sponge on the poor girl.”

“‘So I went away, keeping my generous impulses well under control; for
I have frequently had occasion to observe that when benevolence does no
harm to him who gives it, it is the ruin of him who takes. When you came
in I was thinking that Fanny Malvaut would make a nice little wife; I
was thinking of the contrast between her pure, lonely life and the life
of the Countess--she has sunk as low as a bill of exchange already, she
will sink to the lowest depths of degradation before she has done!’--I
scrutinized him during the deep silence that followed, but in a moment
he spoke again. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘do you think that it is nothing to
have this power of insight into the deepest recesses of the human heart,
to embrace so many lives, to see the naked truth underlying it all?
There are no two dramas alike: there are hideous sores, deadly chagrins,
love scenes, misery that soon will lie under the ripples of the Seine,
young men’s joys that lead to the scaffold, the laughter of despair,
and sumptuous banquets. Yesterday it was a tragedy. A worthy soul of
a father drowned himself because he could not support his family.
To-morrow is a comedy; some youngster will try to rehearse the scene
of M. Dimanche, brought up to date. You have heard the people extol the
eloquence of our latter day preachers; now and again I have wasted my
time by going to hear them; they produced a change in my opinions, but
in my conduct (as somebody said, I can’t recollect his name), in my
conduct--never!--Well, well; these good priests and your Mirabeaus and
Vergniauds and the rest of them, are mere stammering beginners compared
with these orators of mine.

“‘Often it is some girl in love, some gray-headed merchant on the verge
of bankruptcy, some mother with a son’s wrong-doing to conceal, some
starving artist, some great man whose influence is on the wane, and, for
lack of money, is like to lose the fruit of all his labors--the power
of their pleading has made me shudder. Sublime actors such as these play
for me, for an audience of one, and they cannot deceive me. I can look
into their inmost thoughts, and read them as God reads them. Nothing is
hidden from me. Nothing is refused to the holder of the purse-strings to
loose and to bind. I am rich enough to buy the consciences of those
who control the action of ministers, from their office boys to their
mistresses. Is not that power?--I can possess the fairest women, receive
their softest caresses; is not that Pleasure? And is not your whole
social economy summed up in terms of Power and Pleasure?

“‘There are ten of us in Paris, silent, unknown kings, the arbiters of
your destinies. What is life but a machine set in motion by money? Know
this for certain--methods are always confounded with results; you
will never succeed in separating the soul from the senses, spirit from
matter. Gold is the spiritual basis of existing society.--The ten of us
are bound by the ties of common interest; we meet on certain days of the
week at the Cafe Themis near the Pont Neuf, and there, in conclave, we
reveal the mysteries of finance. No fortune can deceive us; we are in
possession of family secrets in all directions. We keep a kind of Black
Book, in which we note the most important bills issued, drafts on public
credit, or on banks, or given and taken in the course of business. We
are the Casuists of the Paris Bourse, a kind of Inquisition weighing and
analyzing the most insignificant actions of every man of any fortune,
and our forecasts are infallible. One of us looks out over the judicial
world, one over the financial, another surveys the administrative, and
yet another the business world. I myself keep an eye on eldest
sons, artists, people in the great world, and gamblers--on the most
sensational side of Paris. Every one who comes to us lets us into his
neighbor’s secrets. Thwarted passion and mortified vanity are great
babblers. Vice and disappointment and vindictiveness are the best of
all detectives. My colleagues, like myself, have enjoyed all things, are
sated with all things, and have reached the point when power and money
are loved for their own sake.

“‘Here,’ he said, indicating his bare, chilly room, ‘here the most
high-mettled gallant, who chafes at a word and draws swords for a
syllable elsewhere will entreat with clasped hands. There is no city
merchant so proud, no woman so vain of her beauty, no soldier of so bold
a spirit, but that they entreat me here, one and all, with tears of rage
or anguish in their eyes. Here they kneel--the famous artist, and the
man of letters, whose name will go down to posterity. Here, in short’
(he lifted his hand to his forehead), ‘all the inheritances and all the
concerns of all Paris are weighed in the balance. Are you still of the
opinion that there are no delights behind the blank mask which so often
has amazed you by its impassiveness?’ he asked, stretching out that
livid face which reeked of money.

“I went back to my room, feeling stupefied. The little, wizened old man
had grown great. He had been metamorphosed under my eyes into a strange
visionary symbol; he had come to be the power of gold personified. I
shrank, shuddering, from life and my kind.

“‘Is it really so?’ I thought; ‘must everything be resolved into gold?’

“I remember that it was long before I slept that night. I saw heaps
of gold all about me. My thoughts were full of the lovely Countess; I
confess, to my shame, that the vision completely eclipsed another quiet,
innocent figure, the figure of the woman who had entered upon a life of
toil and obscurity; but on the morrow, through the clouds of slumber,
Fanny’s sweet face rose before me in all its beauty, and I thought of
nothing else.”



“Will you take a glass of _eau sucree_?” asked the Vicomtesse,
interrupting Derville.

“I should be glad of it.”

“But I can see nothing in this that can touch our concerns,” said Mme.
de Grandlieu, as she rang the bell.

“Sardanapalus!” cried Derville, flinging out his favorite invocation.
“Mademoiselle Camille will be wide awake in a moment if I say that her
happiness depended not so long ago upon Daddy Gobseck; but as the old
gentleman died at the age of ninety, M. de Restaud will soon be in
possession of a handsome fortune. This requires some explanation. As for
poor Fanny Malvaut, you know her; she is my wife.”

“Poor fellow, he would admit that, with his usual frankness, with a
score of people to hear him!” said the Vicomtesse.

“I would proclaim it to the universe,” said the attorney.

“Go on, drink your glass, my poor Derville. You will never be anything
but the happiest and the best of men.”

“I left you in the Rue du Helder,” remarked the uncle, raising his face
after a gentle doze. “You had gone to see a Countess; what have you done
with her?”



“A few days after my conversation with the old Dutchman,” Derville
continued, “I sent in my thesis, and became first a licentiate in
law, and afterwards an advocate. The old miser’s opinion of me went up
considerably. He consulted me (gratuitously) on all the ticklish bits
of business which he undertook when he had made quite sure how he stood,
business which would have seemed unsafe to any ordinary practitioner.
This man, over whom no one appeared to have the slightest influence,
listened to my advice with something like respect. It is true that he
always found that it turned out very well.

“At length I became head-clerk in the office where I had worked for
three years and then I left the Rue des Gres for rooms in my employer’s
house. I had my board and lodging and a hundred and fifty francs per
month. It was a great day for me!

“When I went to bid the usurer good-bye, he showed no sign of feeling,
he was neither cordial nor sorry to lose me, he did not ask me to come
to see him, and only gave me one of those glances which seemed in some
sort to reveal a power of second-sight.

“By the end of a week my old neighbor came to see me with a tolerably
thorny bit of business, an expropriation, and he continued to ask for my
advice with as much freedom as if he paid for it.

“My principal was a man of pleasure and expensive tastes; before the
second year (1818-1819) was out he had got himself into difficulties,
and was obliged to sell his practice. A professional connection in those
days did not fetch the present exorbitant prices, and my principal asked
a hundred and fifty thousand francs. Now an active man, of competent
knowledge and intelligence, might hope to pay off the capital in ten
years, paying interest and living respectably in the meantime--if
he could command confidence. But I as the seventh child of a small
tradesman at Noyon, I had not a sou to my name, nor personal knowledge
of any capitalist but Daddy Gobseck. An ambitious idea, and an
indefinable glimmer of hope, put heart into me. To Gobseck I betook
myself, and slowly one evening I made my way to the Rue des Gres. My
heart thumped heavily as I knocked at his door in the gloomy house. I
recollected all the things that he used to tell me, at a time when I
myself was very far from suspecting the violence of the anguish awaiting
those who crossed his threshold. Now it was I who was about to beg and
pray like so many others.

“‘Well, no, not _that_,’ I said to myself; ‘an honest man must keep his
self-respect wherever he goes. Success is not worth cringing for; let us
show him a front as decided as his own.’

“Daddy Gobseck had taken my room since I left the house, so as to have
no neighbor; he had made a little grated window too in his door since
then, and did not open until he had taken a look at me and saw who I
was.

“‘Well,’ said he, in his thin, flute notes, ‘so your principal is
selling his practice?’

“‘How did you know that?’ said I; ‘he has not spoken of it as yet except
to me.’

“The old man’s lips were drawn in puckers, like a curtain, to either
corner of his mouth, as a soundless smile bore a hard glance company.

“‘Nothing else would have brought you here,’ he said drily, after a
pause, which I spent in confusion.

“‘Listen to me, M. Gobseck,’ I began, with such serenity as I could
assume before the old man, who gazed at me with steady eyes. There was a
clear light burning in them that disconcerted me.

“He made a gesture as if to bid me ‘Go on.’ ‘I know that it is not
easy to work on your feelings, so I will not waste my eloquence on the
attempt to put my position before you--I am a penniless clerk, with no
one to look to but you, and no heart in the world but yours can form
a clear idea of my probable future. Let us leave hearts out of the
question. Business is business, and business is not carried on with
sentimentality like romances. Now to the facts. My principal’s practice
is worth in his hands about twenty thousand francs per annum; in my
hands, I think it would bring in forty thousand. He is willing to
sell it for a hundred and fifty thousand francs. And _here_,’ I
said, striking my forehead, ‘I feel that if you would lend me the
purchase-money, I could clear it off in ten years’ time.’

“‘Come, that is plain speaking,’ said Daddy Gobseck, and he held out his
hand and grasped mine. ‘Nobody since I have been in business has stated
the motives of his visit more clearly. Guarantees?’ asked he, scanning
me from head to foot. ‘None to give,’ he added after a pause, ‘How old
are you?’

“‘Twenty-five in ten days’ time,’ said I, ‘or I could not open the
matter.’

“‘Precisely.’

“‘Well?’

“‘It is possible.’

“‘My word, we must be quick about it, or I shall have some one buying
over my head.’

“‘Bring your certificate of birth round to-morrow morning, and we will
talk. I will think it over.’

“‘Next morning, at eight o’clock, I stood in the old man’s room. He took
the document, put on his spectacles, coughed, spat, wrapped himself
up in his black greatcoat, and read the whole certificate through from
beginning to end. Then he turned it over and over, looked at me, coughed
again, fidgeted about in his chair, and said, ‘We will try to arrange
this bit of business.’

“I trembled.

“‘I make fifty per cent on my capital,’ he continued, ‘sometimes I make
a hundred, two hundred, five hundred per cent.’

“I turned pale at the words.

“‘But as we are acquaintances, I shall be satisfied to take twelve and
a half per cent per--(he hesitated)--‘well, yes, from you I would be
content to take thirteen per cent per annum. Will that suit you?’

“‘Yes,’ I answered.

“‘But if it is too much, stick up for yourself, Grotius!’ (a name he
jokingly gave me). ‘When I ask you for thirteen per cent, it is all in
the way of business; look into it, see if you can pay it; I don’t like a
man to agree too easily. Is it too much?’

“‘No,’ said I, ‘I will make up for it by working a little harder.’

“‘Gad! your clients will pay for it!’ said he, looking at me wickedly
out of the corner of his eyes.

“‘No, by all the devils in hell!’ cried I, ‘it shall be I who will pay.
I would sooner cut my hand off than flay people.’

“‘Good-night,’ said Daddy Gobseck.

“‘Why, fees are all according to scale,’ I added.

“‘Not for compromises and settlements out of Court, and cases where
litigants come to terms,’ said he. ‘You can send in a bill for thousands
of francs, six thousand even at a swoop (it depends on the importance of
the case), for conferences with So-and-so, and expenses, and drafts, and
memorials, and your jargon. A man must learn to look out for business of
this kind. I will recommend you as a most competent, clever attorney. I
will send you such a lot of work of this sort that your colleagues will
be fit to burst with envy. Werbrust, Palma, and Gigonnet, my cronies,
shall hand over their expropriations to you; they have plenty of them,
the Lord knows! So you will have two practices--the one you are buying,
and the other I will build up for you. You ought almost to pay me
fifteen per cent on my loan.’

“‘So be it, but no more,’ said I, with the firmness which means that a
man is determined not to concede another point.

“Daddy Gobseck’s face relaxed; he looked pleased with me.

“‘I shall pay the money over to your principal myself,’ said he, ‘so as
to establish a lien on the purchase and caution-money.’

“‘Oh, anything you like in the way of guarantees.’

“‘And besides that, you will give me bills for the amount made payable
to a third party (name left blank), fifteen bills of ten thousand francs
each.’

“‘Well, so long as it is acknowledged in writing that this is a
double----’

“‘No!’ Gobseck broke in upon me. ‘No! Why should I trust you any more
than you trust me?’

“I kept silence.

“‘And furthermore,’ he continued, with a sort of good humor, ‘you will
give me your advice without charging fees as long as I live, will you
not?’

“‘So be it; so long as there is no outlay.’

“‘Precisely,’ said he. “Ah, by the by, you will allow me to go to see
you?’ (Plainly the old man found it not so easy to assume the air of
good-humor.)

“‘I shall always be glad.’

“‘Ah! yes, but it would be very difficult to arrange of a morning. You
will have your affairs to attend to, and I have mine.’

“‘Then come in the evening.’

“‘Oh, no!’ he answered briskly, ‘you ought to go into society and see
your clients, and I myself have my friends at my cafe.’

“‘His friends!’ thought I to myself.--‘Very well,’ said I, ‘why not come
at dinner-time?’

“‘That is the time,’ said Gobseck, ‘after ‘Change, at five o’clock.
Good, you will see me Wednesdays and Saturdays. We will talk over
business like a pair of friends. Aha! I am gay sometimes. Just give me
the wing of a partridge and a glass of champagne, and we will have our
chat together. I know a great many things that can be told now at
this distance of time; I will teach you to know men, and what is
more--women!’

“‘Oh! a partridge and a glass of champagne if you like.’

“‘Don’t do anything foolish, or I shall lose my faith in you. And don’t
set up housekeeping in a grand way. Just one old general servant. I will
come and see that you keep your health. I have capital invested in your
head, he! he! so I am bound to look after you. There, come round in the
evening and bring your principal with you!’

“‘Would you mind telling me, if there is no harm in asking, what was the
good of my birth certificate in this business?’ I asked, when the little
old man and I stood on the doorstep.

“Jean-Esther Van Gobseck shrugged his shoulders, smiled maliciously, and
said, ‘What blockheads youngsters are! Learn, master attorney (for learn
you must if you don’t mean to be taken in), that integrity and brains
in a man under thirty are commodities which can be mortgaged. After that
age there is no counting on a man.’

“And with that he shut the door.


“Three months later I was an attorney. Before very long, madame, it was
my good fortune to undertake the suit for the recovery of your estates.
I won the day, and my name became known. In spite of the exorbitant rate
of interest, I paid off Gobseck in less than five years. I married Fanny
Malvaut, whom I loved with all my heart. There was a parallel between
her life and mine, between our hard work and our luck, which increased
the strength of feeling on either side. One of her uncles, a well-to-do
farmer, died and left her seventy thousand francs, which helped to clear
off the loan. From that day my life has been nothing but happiness and
prosperity. Nothing is more utterly uninteresting than a happy man,
so let us say no more on that head, and return to the rest of the
characters.

“About a year after the purchase of the practice, I was dragged into a
bachelor breakfast-party given by one of our number who had lost a
bet to a young man greatly in vogue in the fashionable world. M. de
Trailles, the flower of the dandyism of that day, enjoyed a prodigious
reputation.”

“But he is still enjoying it,” put in the Comte de Born. “No one wears
his clothes with a finer air, nor drives a tandem with a better grace.
It is Maxime’s gift; he can gamble, eat, and drink more gracefully than
any man in the world. He is a judge of horses, hats, and pictures. All
the women lose their heads over him. He always spends something like a
hundred thousand francs a year, and no creature can discover that he has
an acre of land or a single dividend warrant. The typical knight errant
of our salons, our boudoirs, our boulevards, an amphibian half-way
between a man and a woman--Maxime de Trailles is a singular being, fit
for anything, and good for nothing, quite as capable of perpetrating a
benefit as of planning a crime; sometimes base, sometimes noble, more
often bespattered with mire than besprinkled with blood, knowing more of
anxiety than of remorse, more concerned with his digestion than with any
mental process, shamming passion, feeling nothing. Maxime de Trailles is
a brilliant link between the hulks and the best society; he belongs to
the eminently intelligent class from which a Mirabeau, or a Pitt, or a
Richelieu springs at times, though it is more wont to produce Counts of
Horn, Fouquier-Tinvilles, and Coignards.”

“Well,” pursued Derville, when he had heard the Vicomtesse’s brother to
the end, “I had heard a good deal about this individual from poor old
Goriot, a client of mine; and I had already been at some pains to avoid
the dangerous honor of his acquaintance, for I came across him sometimes
in society. Still, my chum was so pressing about this breakfast-party of
his that I could not well get out of it, unless I wished to earn a name
for squeamishness. Madame, you could hardly imagine what a bachelor’s
breakfast-party is like. It means superb display and a studied
refinement seldom seen; the luxury of a miser when vanity leads him to
be sumptuous for a day.

“You are surprised as you enter the room at the neatness of the table,
dazzling by reason of its silver and crystal and linen damask. Life is
here in full bloom; the young fellows are graceful to behold; they smile
and talk in low, demure voices like so many brides; everything about
them looks girlish. Two hours later you might take the room for a
battlefield after the fight. Broken glasses, serviettes crumpled and
torn to rags lie strewn about among the nauseous-looking remnants of
food on the dishes. There is an uproar that stuns you, jesting toasts, a
fire of witticisms and bad jokes; faces are empurpled, eyes inflamed
and expressionless, unintentional confidences tell you the whole truth.
Bottles are smashed, and songs trolled out in the height of a diabolical
racket; men call each other out, hang on each other’s necks, or fall
to fisticuffs; the room is full of a horrid, close scent made up of a
hundred odors, and noise enough for a hundred voices. No one has any
notion of what he is eating or drinking or saying. Some are depressed,
others babble, one will turn monomaniac, repeating the same word over
and over again like a bell set jangling; another tries to keep the
tumult within bounds; the steadiest will propose an orgy. If any one in
possession of his faculties should come in, he would think that he had
interrupted a Bacchanalian rite.

“It was in the thick of such a chaos that M. de Trailles tried to
insinuate himself into my good graces. My head was fairly clear, I was
upon my guard. As for him, though he pretended to be decently drunk,
he was perfectly cool, and knew very well what he was about. How it was
done I do not know, but the upshot of it was that when we left Grignon’s
rooms about nine o’clock in the evening, M. de Trailles had thoroughly
bewitched me. I had given him my promise that I would introduce him the
next day to our Papa Gobseck. The words ‘honor,’ ‘virtue,’ ‘countess,’
‘honest woman,’ and ‘ill-luck’ were mingled in his discourse with
magical potency, thanks to that golden tongue of his.

“When I awoke next morning, and tried to recollect what I had done the
day before, it was with great difficulty that I could make a connected
tale from my impressions. At last, it seemed to me that the daughter of
one of my clients was in danger of losing her reputation, together
with her husband’s love and esteem, if she could not get fifty thousand
francs together in the course of the morning. There had been gaming
debts, and carriage-builders’ accounts, money lost to Heaven knows whom.
My magician of a boon companion had impressed it upon me that she was
rich enough to make good these reverses by a few years of economy. But
only now did I begin to guess the reasons of his urgency. I confess, to
my shame, that I had not the shadow of a doubt but that it was a matter
of importance that Daddy Gobseck should make it up with this dandy. I
was dressing when the young gentleman appeared.

“‘M. le Comte,’ said I, after the usual greetings, ‘I fail to see why
you should need me to effect an introduction to Van Gobseck, the most
civil and smooth-spoken of capitalists. Money will be forthcoming if he
has any, or rather, if you can give him adequate security.’

“‘Monsieur,’ said he, ‘it does not enter into my thoughts to force you
to do me a service, even though you have passed your word.’

“‘Sardanapalus!’ said I to myself, ‘am I going to let that fellow
imagine that I will not keep my word with him?’

“‘I had the honor of telling you yesterday,’ said he, ‘that I had fallen
out with Daddy Gobseck most inopportunely; and as there is scarcely
another man in Paris who can come down on the nail with a hundred
thousand francs, at the end of the month, I begged of you to make my
peace with him. But let us say no more about it----’

“M. de Trailles looked at me with civil insult in his expression, and
made as if he would take his leave.

“‘I am ready to go with you,’ said I.

“When we reached the Rue de Gres, my dandy looked about him with a
circumspection and uneasiness that set me wondering. His face grew
livid, flushed, and yellow, turn and turn about, and by the time that
Gobseck’s door came in sight the perspiration stood in drops on his
forehead. We were just getting out of the cabriolet, when a hackney cab
turned into the street. My companion’s hawk eye detected a woman in the
depths of the vehicle. His face lighted up with a gleam of almost savage
joy; he called to a little boy who was passing, and gave him his horse
to hold. Then we went up to the old bill discounter.

“‘M. Gobseck,’ said I, ‘I have brought one of my most intimate friends
to see you (whom I trust as I would trust the Devil,’ I added for the
old man’s private ear). ‘To oblige me you will do your best for him (at
the ordinary rate), and pull him out of his difficulty (if it suits your
convenience).’

“M. de Trailles made his bow to Gobseck, took a seat, and listened to us
with a courtier-like attitude; its charming humility would have touched
your heart to see, but my Gobseck sits in his chair by the fireside
without moving a muscle, or changing a feature. He looked very like the
statue of Voltaire under the peristyle of the Theatre-Francais, as you
see it of an evening; he had partly risen as if to bow, and the skull
cap that covered the top of his head, and the narrow strip of sallow
forehead exhibited, completed his likeness to the man of marble.

“‘I have no money to spare except for my own clients,’ said he.

“‘So you are cross because I may have tried in other quarters to ruin
myself?’ laughed the Count.

“‘Ruin yourself!’ repeated Gobseck ironically.

“‘Were you about to remark that it is impossible to ruin a man who has
nothing?’ inquired the dandy. ‘Why, I defy you to find a better _stock_
in Paris!’ he cried, swinging round on his heels.

“This half-earnest buffoonery produced not the slightest effect upon
Gobseck.

“‘Am I not on intimate terms with the Ronquerolles, the Marsays, the
Franchessinis, the two Vandenesses, the Ajuda-Pintos,--all the most
fashionable young men in Paris, in short? A prince and an ambassador
(you know them both) are my partners at play. I draw my revenues from
London and Carlsbad and Baden and Bath. Is not this the most brilliant
of all industries!’

“‘True.’

“‘You make a sponge of me, begad! you do. You encourage me to go and
swell myself out in society, so that you can squeeze me when I am hard
up; but you yourselves are sponges, just as I am, and death will give
you a squeeze some day.’

“‘That is possible.’

“‘If there were no spendthrifts, what would become of you? The pair of
us are like soul and body.’

“‘Precisely so.’

“‘Come, now, give us your hand, Grandaddy Gobseck, and be magnanimous if
this is “true” and “possible” and “precisely so.”’

“‘You come to me,’ the usurer answered coldly, ‘because Girard, Palma,
Werbrust, and Gigonnet are full up of your paper; they are offering it
at a loss of fifty per cent; and as it is likely they only gave you half
the figure on the face of the bills, they are not worth five-and-twenty
per cent of their supposed value. I am your most obedient! Can I in
common decency lend a stiver to a man who owes thirty thousand francs,
and has not one farthing?’ Gobseck continued. ‘The day before yesterday
you lost ten thousand francs at a ball at the Baron de Nucingen’s.’

“‘Sir,’ said the Count, with rare impudence, ‘my affairs are no concern
of yours,’ and he looked the old man up and down. ‘A man has no debts
till payment is due.’

“‘True.’

“‘My bills will be duly met.’

“‘That is possible.’

“‘And at this moment the question between you and me is simply whether
the security I am going to offer is sufficient for the sum I have come
to borrow.’

“‘Precisely.’

“A cab stopped at the door, and the sound of wheels filled the room.

“‘I will bring something directly which perhaps will satisfy you,’ cried
the young man, and he left the room.

“‘Oh! my son,’ exclaimed Gobseck, rising to his feet, and stretching
out his arms to me, ‘if he has good security, you have saved my life. It
would be the death of me. Werbrust and Gigonnet imagined that they were
going to play off a trick on me; and now, thanks to you, I shall have a
good laugh at their expense to-night.’

“There was something frightful about the old man’s ecstasy. It was the
one occasion when he opened his heart to me; and that flash of joy,
swift though it was, will never be effaced from my memory.

“‘Favor me so far as to stay here,’ he added. ‘I am armed, and a sure
shot. I have gone tiger-hunting, and fought on the deck when there
was nothing for it but to win or die; but I don’t care to trust yonder
elegant scoundrel.’

“He sat down again in his armchair before his bureau, and his face grew
pale and impassive as before.

“‘Ah!’ he continued, turning to me, ‘you will see that lovely creature
I once told you about; I can hear a fine lady’s step in the corridor; it
is she, no doubt;’ and, as a matter of fact, the young man came in with
a woman on his arm. I recognized the Countess, whose levee Gobseck had
described for me, one of old Goriot’s two daughters.

“The Countess did not see me at first; I stayed where I was in the
window bay, with my face against the pane; but I saw her give Maxime a
suspicious glance as she came into the money-lender’s damp, dark room.
So beautiful she was, that in spite of her faults I felt sorry for her.
There was a terrible storm of anguish in her heart; her haughty, proud
features were drawn and distorted with pain which she strove in vain
to disguise. The young man had come to be her evil genius. I admired
Gobseck, whose perspicacity had foreseen their future four years ago at
the first bill which she endorsed.

“‘Probably,’ said I to myself, ‘this monster with the angel face
controls every possible spring of action in her: rules her through
vanity, jealousy, pleasure, and the current of life in the world.’”

The Vicomtesse de Grandlieu broke in on the story.

“Why, the woman’s very virtues have been turned against her,” she
exclaimed. “He has made her shed tears of devotion, and then abused her
kindness and made her pay very dearly for unhallowed bliss.”

Derville did not understand the signs which Mme. de Grandlieu made to
him.

“I confess,” he said, “that I had no inclination to shed tears over the
lot of this unhappy creature, so brilliant in society, so repulsive to
eyes that could read her heart; I shuddered rather at the sight of her
murderer, a young angel with such a clear brow, such red lips and white
teeth, such a winning smile. There they stood before their judge, he
scrutinizing them much as some fifteenth-century Dominican inquisitor
might have peered into the dungeons of the Holy Office while the torture
was administered to two Moors.

“The Countess spoke tremulously. ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘is there any way
of obtaining the value of these diamonds, and of keeping the right of
repurchase?’ She held out a jewel-case.

“‘Yes, madame,’ I put in, and came forwards.

“She looked at me, and a shudder ran through her as she recognized me,
and gave me the glance which means, ‘Say nothing of this,’ all the world
over.

“‘This,’ said I, ‘constitutes a sale with faculty of redemption, as it
is called, a formal agreement to transfer and deliver over a piece of
property, either real estate or personalty, for a given time, on the
expiry of which the previous owner recovers his title to the property in
question, upon payment of a stipulated sum.’

“She breathed more freely. The Count looked black; he had grave doubts
whether Gobseck would lend very much on the diamonds after such a fall
in their value. Gobseck, impassive as ever, had taken up his magnifying
glass, and was quietly scrutinizing the jewels. If I were to live for
a hundred years, I should never forget the sight of his face at that
moment. There was a flush in his pale cheeks; his eyes seemed to have
caught the sparkle of the stones, for there was an unnatural glitter in
them. He rose and went to the light, holding the diamonds close to his
toothless mouth, as if he meant to devour them; mumbling vague words
over them, holding up bracelets, sprays, necklaces, and tiaras one after
another, to judge their water, whiteness, and cutting; taking them out
of the jewel-case and putting them in again, letting the play of the
light bring out all their fires. He was more like a child than an old
man; or, rather, childhood and dotage seemed to meet in him.

“‘Fine stones! The set would have fetched three hundred thousand
francs before the Revolution. What water! Genuine Asiatic diamonds from
Golconda or Visapur. Do you know what they are worth? No, no; no one in
Paris but Gobseck can appreciate them. In the time of the Empire such a
set would have cost another two hundred thousand francs!’

“He gave a disgusted shrug, and added:

“‘But now diamonds are going down in value every day. The Brazilians
have swamped the market with them since the Peace; but the Indian stones
are a better color. Others wear them now besides court ladies. Does
madame go to court?’

“While he flung out these terrible words, he examined one stone after
another with delight which no words can describe.

“‘Flawless!’ he said. ‘Here is a speck!... here is a flaw!... A fine
stone that!’

“His haggard face was so lighted up by the sparkling jewels, that it put
me in mind of a dingy old mirror, such as you see in country inns. The
glass receives every luminous image without reflecting the light, and
a traveler bold enough to look for his face in it beholds a man in an
apoplectic fit.

“‘Well?’ asked the Count, clapping Gobseck on the shoulder.

“The old boy trembled. He put down his playthings on his bureau, took
his seat, and was a money-lender once more--hard, cold, and polished as
a marble column.

“‘How much do you want?’

“‘One hundred thousand francs for three years,’ said the Count.

“‘That is possible,’ said Gobseck, and then from a mahogany box
(Gobseck’s jewel-case) he drew out a faultlessly adjusted pair of
scales!

“He weighed the diamonds, calculating the value of stones and setting
at sight (Heaven knows how!), delight and severity struggling in the
expression of his face the meanwhile. The Countess had plunged in a kind
of stupor; to me, watching her, it seemed that she was fathoming the
depths of the abyss into which she had fallen. There was remorse still
left in that woman’s soul. Perhaps a hand held out in human charity
might save her. I would try.

“‘Are the diamonds your personal property, madame?’ I asked in a clear
voice.

“‘Yes, monsieur,’ she said, looking at me with proud eyes.

“‘Make out the deed of purchase with power of redemption, chatterbox,’
said Gobseck to me, resigning his chair at the bureau in my favor.

“‘Madame is without doubt a married woman?’ I tried again.

“She nodded abruptly.

“‘Then I will not draw up the deed,’ said I.

“‘And why not?’ asked Gobseck.

“‘Why not?’ echoed I, as I drew the old man into the bay window so as
to speak aside with him. ‘Why not? This woman is under her husband’s
control; the agreement would be void in law; you could not possibly
assert your ignorance of a fact recorded on the very face of the
document itself. You would be compelled at once to produce the diamonds
deposited with you, according to the weight, value, and cutting therein
described.’

“Gobseck cut me short with a nod, and turned towards the guilty couple.

“‘He is right!’ he said. ‘That puts the whole thing in a different
light. Eighty thousand francs down, and you leave the diamonds with
me,’ he added, in the husky, flute-like voice. ‘In the way of property,
possession is as good as a title.’

“‘But----’ objected the young man.

“‘You can take it or leave it,’ continued Gobseck, returning the
jewel-case to the lady as he spoke.

“‘I have too many risks to run.’

“‘It would be better to throw yourself at your husband’s feet,’ I bent
to whisper in her ear.

“The usurer doubtless knew what I was saying from the movement of
my lips. He gave me a cool glance. The Count’s face grew livid. The
Countess was visibly wavering. Maxime stepped up to her, and, low as he
spoke, I could catch the words:

“‘Adieu, dear Anastasie, may you be happy! As for me, by to-morrow my
troubles will be over.’

“‘Sir!’ cried the lady, turning to Gobseck. ‘I accept your offer.’

“‘Come, now,’ returned Gobseck. ‘You have been a long time in coming to
it, my fair lady.’

“He wrote out a cheque for fifty thousand francs on the Bank of France,
and handed it to the Countess.

“‘Now,’ continued he with a smile, such a smile as you will see in
portraits of M. Voltaire, ‘now I will give you the rest of the amount in
bills, thirty thousand francs’ worth of paper as good as bullion. This
gentleman here has just said, “My bills will be met when they are due,”’
added he, producing certain drafts bearing the Count’s signature, all
protested the day before at the request of some of the confraternity,
who had probably made them over to him (Gobseck) at a considerably
reduced figure.

“The young man growled out something, in which the words ‘Old
scoundrel!’ were audible. Daddy Gobseck did not move an eyebrow. He drew
a pair of pistols out of a pigeon-hole, remarking coolly:

“‘As the insulted man, I fire first.’

“‘Maxime, you owe this gentleman an explanation,’ cried the trembling
Countess in a low voice.

“‘I had no intention of giving offence,’ stammered Maxime.

“‘I am quite sure of that,’ Gobseck answered calmly; ‘you had no
intention of meeting your bills, that was all.’

“The Countess rose, bowed, and vanished, with a great dread gnawing her,
I doubt not. M. de Trailles was bound to follow, but before he went he
managed to say:

“‘If either of you gentlemen should forget himself, I will have his
blood, or he will have mine.’

“‘Amen!’ called Daddy Gobseck as he put his pistols back in their place;
‘but a man must have blood in his veins though before he can risk it, my
son, and you have nothing but mud in yours.’

“When the door was closed, and the two vehicles had gone, Gobseck rose
to his feet and began to prance about.

“‘I have the diamonds! I have the diamonds!’ he cried again and again,
‘the beautiful diamonds! such diamonds! and tolerably cheaply. Aha! aha!
Werbrust and Gigonnet, you thought you had old Papa Gobseck! _Ego
sum papa_! I am master of the lot of you! Paid! paid, principal and
interest! How silly they will look to-night when I shall come out with
this story between two games of dominoes!’

“The dark glee, the savage ferocity aroused by the possession of a few
water-white pebbles, set me shuddering. I was dumb with amazement.

“‘Aha! There you are, my boy!’ said he. ‘We will dine together. We will
have some fun at your place, for I haven’t a home of my own, and these
restaurants, with their broths, and sauces, and wines, would poison the
Devil himself.’

“Something in my face suddenly brought back the usual cold, impassive
expression to his.

“‘You don’t understand it,’ he said, and sitting down by the hearth,
he put a tin saucepan full of milk on the brazier.--‘Will you breakfast
with me?’ continued he. ‘Perhaps there will be enough here for two.’

“‘Thanks,’ said I, ‘I do not breakfast till noon.’

“I had scarcely spoken before hurried footsteps sounded from the
passage. The stranger stopped at Gobseck’s door and rapped; there was
that in the knock which suggested a man transported with rage. Gobseck
reconnoitred him through the grating; then he opened the door, and in
came a man of thirty-five or so, judged harmless apparently in spite of
his anger. The newcomer, who was quite plainly dressed, bore a strong
resemblance to the late Duc de Richelieu. You must often have met him,
he was the Countess’ husband, a man with the aristocratic figure (permit
the expression to pass) peculiar to statesmen of your faubourg.

“‘Sir,’ said this person, addressing himself to Gobseck, who had quite
recovered his tranquillity, ‘did my wife go out of this house just now?’

“‘That is possible.’

“‘Well, sir? do you not take my meaning?’

“‘I have not the honor of the acquaintance of my lady your wife,’
returned Gobseck. ‘I have had a good many visitors this morning, women
and men, and mannish young ladies, and young gentlemen who look like
young ladies. I should find it very hard to say----’

“‘A truce to jesting, sir! I mean the woman who has this moment gone out
from you.’

“‘How can I know whether she is your wife or not? I never had the
pleasure of seeing you before.’

“‘You are mistaken, M. Gobseck,’ said the Count, with profound irony in
his voice. ‘We have met before, one morning in my wife’s bedroom. You
had come to demand payment for a bill--no bill of hers.’

“‘It was no business of mine to inquire what value she had received for
it,’ said Gobseck, with a malignant look at the Count. ‘I had come by
the bill in the way of business. At the same time, monsieur,’ continued
Gobseck, quietly pouring coffee into his bowl of milk, without a trace
of excitement or hurry in his voice, ‘you will permit me to observe that
your right to enter my house and expostulate with me is far from proven
to my mind. I came of age in the sixty-first year of the preceding
century.’

“‘Sir,’ said the Count, ‘you have just bought family diamonds, which do
not belong to my wife, for a mere trifle.’

“‘Without feeling it incumbent upon me to tell you my private affairs, I
will tell you this much M. le Comte--if Mme. la Comtesse has taken your
diamonds, you should have sent a circular around to all the jewelers,
giving them notice not to buy them; she might have sold them
separately.’

“‘You know my wife, sir!’ roared the Count.

“‘True.’

“‘She is in her husband’s power.’

“‘That is possible.’

“‘She had no right to dispose of those diamonds----’

“‘Precisely.’

“‘Very well, sir?’

“‘Very well, sir. I knew your wife, and she is in her husband’s power;
I am quite willing, she is in the power of a good many people;
but--I--do--_not_--know--your diamonds. If Mme. la Comtesse can put her
name to a bill, she can go into business, of course, and buy and sell
diamonds on her own account. The thing is plain on the face of it!’

“‘Good-day, sir!’ cried the Count, now white with rage. ‘There are
courts of justice.’

“‘Quite so.’

“‘This gentleman here,’ he added, indicating me, ‘was a witness of the
sale.’

“‘That is possible.’

“The Count turned to go. Feeling the gravity of the affair, I suddenly
put in between the two belligerents.

“‘M. le Comte,’ said I, ‘you are right, and M. Gobseck is by no means in
the wrong. You could not prosecute the purchaser without bringing your
wife into court, and the whole of the odium would not fall on her. I am
an attorney, and I owe it to myself, and still more to my professional
position, to declare that the diamonds of which you speak were purchased
by M. Gobseck in my presence; but, in my opinion, it would be unwise
to dispute the legality of the sale, especially as the goods are not
readily recognizable. In equity our contention would lie, in law it
would collapse. M. Gobseck is too honest a man to deny that the sale was
a profitable transaction, more especially as my conscience, no less than
my duty, compels me to make the admission. But once bring the case into
a court of law, M. le Comte, the issue would be doubtful. My advice to
you is to come to terms with M. Gobseck, who can plead that he bought
the diamonds in all good faith; you would be bound in any case to return
the purchase money. Consent to an arrangement, with power to redeem
at the end of seven or eight months, or a year even, or any convenient
lapse of time, for the repayment of the sum borrowed by Mme. la
Comtesse, unless you would prefer to repurchase them outright and give
security for repayment.’

“Gobseck dipped his bread into the bowl of coffee, and ate with perfect
indifference; but at the words ‘come to terms,’ he looked at me as
who should say, ‘A fine fellow that! he has learned something from
my lessons!’ And I, for my part, riposted with a glance, which he
understood uncommonly well. The business was dubious and shady; there
was pressing need of coming to terms. Gobseck could not deny all
knowledge of it, for I should appear as a witness. The Count thanked me
with a smile of good-will.

“In the debate which followed, Gobseck showed greed enough and skill
enough to baffle a whole congress of diplomatists; but in the end I
drew up an instrument, in which the Count acknowledged the receipt of
eighty-five thousand francs, interest included, in consideration of
which Gobseck undertook to return the diamonds to the Count.

“‘What waste!’ exclaimed he as he put his signature to the agreement.
‘How is it possible to bridge such a gulf?’

“‘Have you many children, sir?’ Gobseck asked gravely.

“The Count winced at the question; it was as if the old money-lender,
like an experienced physician, had put his finger at once on the sore
spot. The Comtesse’s husband did not reply.

“‘Well,’ said Gobseck, taking the pained silence for answer, ‘I know
your story by heart. The woman is a fiend, but perhaps you love her
still; I can well believe it; she made an impression on me. Perhaps,
too, you would rather save your fortune, and keep it for one or two of
your children? Well, fling yourself into the whirlpool of society, lose
that fortune at play, come to Gobseck pretty often. The world will say
that I am a Jew, a Tartar, a usurer, a pirate, will say that I have
ruined you! I snap my fingers at them! If anybody insults me, I lay my
man out; nobody is a surer shot nor handles a rapier better than your
servant. And every one knows it. Then, have a friend--if you can find
one--and make over your property to him by a fictitious sale. You call
that a _fidei commissum_, don’t you?’ he asked, turning to me.

“The Count seemed to be entirely absorbed in his own thoughts.

“‘You shall have your money to-morrow,’ he said, ‘have the diamonds in
readiness,’ and he went.

“‘There goes one who looks to me to be as stupid as an honest man,’
Gobseck said coolly when the Count had gone.

“‘Say rather stupid as a man of passionate nature.’

“‘The Count owes you your fee for drawing up the agreement!’ Gobseck
called after me as I took my leave.”


“One morning, a few days after the scene which initiated me into the
terrible depths beneath the surface of the life of a woman of fashion,
the Count came into my private office.

“‘I have come to consult you on a matter of grave moment,’ he said, ‘and
I begin by telling you that I have perfect confidence in you, as I
hope to prove to you. Your behavior to Mme. de Grandlieu is above all
praise,’ the Count went on. (You see, madame, that you have paid me a
thousand times over for a very simple matter.)

“I bowed respectfully, and replied that I had done nothing but the duty
of an honest man.

“‘Well,’ the Count went on, ‘I have made a great many inquiries about
the singular personage to whom you owe your position. And from all that
I can learn, Gobseck is a philosopher of the Cynic school. What do you
think of his probity?’

“‘M. le Comte,’ said I, ‘Gobseck is my benefactor--at fifteen per cent,’
I added, laughing. ‘But his avarice does not authorize me to paint him
to the life for a stranger’s benefit.’

“‘Speak out, sir. Your frankness cannot injure Gobseck or yourself. I do
not expect to find an angel in a pawnbroker.’

“‘Daddy Gobseck,’ I began, ‘is intimately convinced of the truth of the
principle which he takes for a rule of life. In his opinion, money is a
commodity which you may sell cheap or dear, according to circumstances,
with a clear conscience. A capitalist, by charging a high rate of
interest, becomes in his eyes a secured partner by anticipation. Apart
from the peculiar philosophical views of human nature and financial
principles, which enable him to behave like a usurer, I am fully
persuaded that, out of his business, he is the most loyal and upright
soul in Paris. There are two men in him; he is petty and great--a miser
and a philosopher. If I were to die and leave a family behind me, he
would be the guardian whom I should appoint. This was how I came to see
Gobseck in this light, monsieur. I know nothing of his past life. He
may have been a pirate, may, for anything I know, have been all over the
world, trafficking in diamonds, or men, or women, or State secrets; but
this I affirm of him--never has human soul been more thoroughly
tempered and tried. When I paid off my loan, I asked him, with a little
circumlocution of course, how it was that he had made me pay such an
exorbitant rate of interest; and why, seeing that I was a friend, and
he meant to do me a kindness, he should not have yielded to the wish and
made it complete.--“My son,” he said, “I released you from all need to
feel any gratitude by giving you ground for the belief that you owed
me nothing.”--So we are the best friends in the world. That answer,
monsieur, gives you the man better than any amount of description.’

“‘I have made up my mind once and for all,’ said the Count. ‘Draw up the
necessary papers; I am going to transfer my property to Gobseck. I have
no one but you to trust to in the draft of the counter-deed, which will
declare that this transfer is a simulated sale, and that Gobseck as
trustee will administer my estate (as he knows how to administer), and
undertakes to make over my fortune to my eldest son when he comes of
age. Now, sir, this I must tell you: I should be afraid to have that
precious document in my own keeping. My boy is so fond of his mother,
that I cannot trust him with it. So dare I beg of you to keep it for me?
In case of death, Gobseck would make you legatee of my property. Every
contingency is provided for.’

“The Count paused for a moment. He seemed greatly agitated.

“‘A thousand pardons,’ he said at length; ‘I am in great pain, and have
very grave misgivings as to my health. Recent troubles have disturbed me
very painfully, and forced me to take this great step.’

“‘Allow me first to thank you, monsieur,’ said I, ‘for the trust you
place me in. But I am bound to deserve it by pointing out to you that
you are disinheriting your--other children. They bear your name. Merely
as the children of a once-loved wife, now fallen from her position, they
have a claim to an assured existence. I tell you plainly that I cannot
accept the trust with which you propose to honor me unless their future
is secured.’

“The Count trembled violently at the words, and tears came into his eyes
as he grasped my hand, saying, ‘I did not know my man thoroughly.
You have made me both glad and sorry. We will make provision for the
children in the counter-deed.’

“I went with him to the door; it seemed to me that there was a glow of
satisfaction in his face at the thought of this act of justice.

“Now, Camille, this is how a young wife takes the first step to the
brink of a precipice. A quadrille, a ballad, a picnic party is
sometimes cause sufficient of frightful evils. You are hurried on by
the presumptuous voice of vanity and pride, on the faith of a smile,
or through giddiness and folly! Shame and misery and remorse are three
Furies awaiting every woman the moment she oversteps the limits----”

“Poor Camille can hardly keep awake,” the Vicomtesse hastily broke
in.--“Go to bed, child; you have no need of appalling pictures to keep
you pure in heart and conduct.”

Camille de Grandlieu took the hint and went.

“You were going rather too far, dear M. Derville,” said the Vicomtesse,
“an attorney is not a mother of daughters nor yet a preacher.”

“But any newspaper is a thousand times----”

“Poor Derville!” exclaimed the Vicomtesse, “what has come over you?
Do you really imagine that I allow a daughter of mine to read the
newspapers?--Go on,” she added after a pause.

“Three months after everything was signed and sealed between the Count
and Gobseck----”

“You can call him the Comte de Restaud, now that Camille is not here,”
 said the Vicomtesse.

“So be it! Well, time went by, and I saw nothing of the counter-deed,
which by rights should have been in my hands. An attorney in Paris lives
in such a whirl of business that with certain exceptions which we make
for ourselves, we have not the time to give each individual client the
amount of interest which he himself takes in his affairs. Still, one day
when Gobseck came to dine with me, I asked him as we left the table if
he knew how it was that I had heard no more of M. de Restaud.

“‘There are excellent reasons for that,’ he said; ‘the noble Count is at
death’s door. He is one of the soft stamp that cannot learn how to put
an end to chagrin, and allow it to wear them out instead. Life is a
craft, a profession; every man must take the trouble to learn
that business. When he has learned what life is by dint of painful
experiences, the fibre of him is toughened, and acquires a certain
elasticity, so that he has his sensibilities under his own control; he
disciplines himself till his nerves are like steel springs, which
always bend, but never break; given a sound digestion, and a man in
such training ought to live as long as the cedars of Lebanon, and famous
trees they are.’

“‘Then is the Count actually dying?’ I asked.

“‘That is possible,’ said Gobseck; ‘the winding up of his estate will be
a juicy bit of business for you.’

“I looked at my man, and said, by way of sounding him:

“‘Just explain to me how it is that we, the Count and I, are the only
men in whom you take an interest?’

“‘Because you are the only two who have trusted me without finessing,’
he said.

“Although this answer warranted my belief that Gobseck would act fairly
even if the counter-deed were lost, I resolved to go to see the Count. I
pleaded a business engagement, and we separated.

“I went straight to the Rue du Helder, and was shown into a room where
the Countess sat playing with her children. When she heard my name, she
sprang up and came to meet me, then she sat down and pointed without a
word to a chair by the fire. Her face wore the inscrutable mask beneath
which women of the world conceal their most vehement emotions. Trouble
had withered that face already. Nothing of its beauty now remained, save
the marvelous outlines in which its principal charm had lain.

“‘It is essential, madame, that I should speak to M. le Comte----”

“‘If so, you would be more favored than I am,’ she said, interrupting
me. ‘M. de Restaud will see no one. He will hardly allow his doctor to
come, and will not be nursed even by me. When people are ill, they have
such strange fancies! They are like children, they do not know what they
want.’

“‘Perhaps, like children, they know very well what they want.’

“The Countess reddened. I almost repented a thrust worthy of Gobseck.
So, by way of changing the conversation, I added, ‘But M. de Restaud
cannot possibly lie there alone all day, madame.’

“‘His oldest boy is with him,’ she said.

“It was useless to gaze at the Countess; she did not blush this time,
and it looked to me as if she were resolved more firmly than ever that I
should not penetrate into her secrets.

“‘You must understand, madame, that my proceeding is no way indiscreet.
It is strongly to his interest--’ I bit my lips, feeling that I had gone
the wrong way to work. The Countess immediately took advantage of my
slip.

“‘My interests are in no way separate from my husband’s, sir,’ said she.
‘There is nothing to prevent your addressing yourself to me----’

“‘The business which brings me here concerns no one but M. le Comte,’ I
said firmly.

“‘I will let him know of your wish to see him.’

“The civil tone and expression assumed for the occasion did not impose
upon me; I divined that she would never allow me to see her husband. I
chatted on about indifferent matters for a little while, so as to study
her; but, like all women who have once begun to plot for themselves, she
could dissimulate with the rare perfection which, in your sex, means the
last degree of perfidy. If I may dare to say it, I looked for anything
from her, even a crime. She produced this feeling in me, because it was
so evident from her manner and in all that she did or said, down to
the very inflections of her voice, that she had an eye to the future. I
went.

“Now, I will pass on to the final scenes of this adventure, throwing in
a few circumstances brought to light by time, and some details guessed
by Gobseck’s perspicacity or by my own.

“When the Comte de Restaud apparently plunged into the vortex of
dissipation, something passed between the husband and wife, something
which remains an impenetrable secret, but the wife sank even lower in
the husband’s eyes. As soon as he became so ill that he was obliged to
take to his bed, he manifested his aversion for the Countess and the two
youngest children. He forbade them to enter his room, and any attempt
to disobey his wishes brought on such dangerous attacks that the doctor
implored the Countess to submit to her husband’s wish.

“Mme. de Restaud had seen the family estates and property, nay, the very
mansion in which she lived, pass into the hands of Gobseck, who appeared
to play the fantastic ogre so far as their wealth was concerned.
She partially understood what her husband was doing, no doubt. M. de
Trailles was traveling in England (his creditors had been a little too
pressing of late), and no one else was in a position to enlighten the
lady, and explain that her husband was taking precautions against her
at Gobseck’s suggestion. It is said that she held out for a long while
before she gave the signature required by French law for the sale of
the property; nevertheless the Count gained his point. The Countess was
convinced that her husband was realizing his fortune, and that somewhere
or other there would be a little bunch of notes representing the amount;
they had been deposited with a notary, or perhaps at the bank, or in
some safe hiding-place. Following out her train of thought, it was
evident that M. de Restaud must of necessity have some kind of document
in his possession by which any remaining property could be recovered and
handed over to his son.

“So she made up her mind to keep the strictest possible watch over the
sick-room. She ruled despotically in the house, and everything in it
was submitted to this feminine espionage. All day she sat in the salon
adjoining her husband’s room, so that she could hear every syllable that
he uttered, every least movement that he made. She had a bed put there
for her of a night, but she did not sleep very much. The doctor was
entirely in her interests. Such wifely devotion seemed praiseworthy
enough. With the natural subtlety of perfidy, she took care to disguise
M. de Restaud’s repugnance for her, and feigned distress so perfectly
that she gained a sort of celebrity. Strait-laced women were even found
to say that she had expiated her sins. Always before her eyes she
beheld a vision of the destitution to follow on the Count’s death if her
presence of mind should fail her; and in these ways the wife, repulsed
from the bed of pain on which her husband lay and groaned, had drawn
a charmed circle round about it. So near, yet kept at a distance;
all-powerful, but in disgrace, the apparently devoted wife was lying
in wait for death and opportunity; crouching like the ant-lion at the
bottom of his spiral pit, ever on the watch for the prey that cannot
escape, listening to the fall of every grain of sand.

“The strictest censor could not but recognize that the Countess pushed
maternal sentiment to the last degree. Her father’s death had been a
lesson to her, people said. She worshiped her children. They were so
young that she could hide the disorders of her life from their eyes,
and could win their love; she had given them the best and most brilliant
education. I confess that I cannot help admiring her and feeling sorry
for her. Gobseck used to joke me about it. Just about that time she had
discovered Maxime’s baseness, and was expiating the sins of the past in
tears of blood. I was sure of it. Hateful as were the measures which
she took for regaining control of her husband’s money, were they not
the result of a mother’s love, and a desire to repair the wrongs she
had done her children? And again, it may be, like many a woman who has
experienced the storm of lawless love, she felt a longing to lead a
virtuous life again. Perhaps she only learned the worth of that life
when she came to reap the woeful harvest sown by her errors.

“Every time that little Ernest came out of his father’s room, she put
him through a searching examination as to all that his father had done
or said. The boy willingly complied with his mother’s wishes, and told
her even more than she asked in her anxious affection, as he thought.

“My visit was a ray of light for the Countess. She was determined to
see in me the instrument of the Count’s vengeance, and resolved that
I should not be allowed to go near the dying man. I augured ill of all
this, and earnestly wished for an interview, for I was not easy in my
mind about the fate of the counter-deed. If it should fall into the
Countess’ hands, she might turn it to her own account, and that would
be the beginning of a series of interminable lawsuits between her and
Gobseck. I knew the usurer well enough to feel convinced that he would
never give up the property to her; there was room for plenty of legal
quibbling over a series of transfers, and I alone knew all the ins and
outs of the matter. I was minded to prevent such a tissue of misfortune,
so I went to the Countess a second time.

“I have noticed, madame,” said Derville, turning to the Vicomtesse, and
speaking in a confidential tone, “certain moral phenomena to which we
do not pay enough attention. I am naturally an observer of human nature,
and instinctively I bring a spirit of analysis to the business that I
transact in the interest of others, when human passions are called into
lively play. Now, I have often noticed, and always with new wonder, that
two antagonists almost always divine each other’s inmost thoughts and
ideas. Two enemies sometimes possess a power of clear insight into
mental processes, and read each other’s minds as two lovers read in
either soul. So when we came together, the Countess and I, I understood
at once the reason of her antipathy for me, disguised though it was by
the most gracious forms of politeness and civility. I had been forced to
be her confidant, and a woman cannot but hate the man before whom she
is compelled to blush. And she on her side knew that if I was the man in
whom her husband placed confidence, that husband had not as yet given up
his fortune.

“I will spare you the conversation, but it abides in my memory as one of
the most dangerous encounters in my career. Nature had bestowed on her
all the qualities which, combined, are irresistibly fascinating; she
could be pliant and proud by turns, and confiding and coaxing in
her manner; she even went so far as to try to subjugate me. It was a
failure. As I took my leave of her, I caught a gleam of hate and rage
in her eyes that made me shudder. We parted enemies. She would fain have
crushed me out of existence; and for my own part, I felt pity for her,
and for some natures pity is the deadliest of insults. This feeling
pervaded the last representations I put before her; and when I left her,
I left, I think, dread in the depths of her soul, by declaring that,
turn which way she would, ruin lay inevitably before her.

“‘If I were to see M. le Comte, your children’s property at any rate
would----’

“‘I should be at your mercy,’ she said, breaking in upon me, disgust in
her gesture.

“Now that we had spoken frankly, I made up my mind to save the family
from impending destitution. I resolved to strain the law at need to gain
my ends, and this was what I did. I sued the Comte de Restaud for a sum
of money, ostensibly due to Gobseck, and gained judgment. The Countess,
of course, did not allow him to know of this, but I had gained on my
point, I had a right to affix seals to everything on the death of the
Count. I bribed one of the servants in the house--the man undertook to
let me know at any hour of the day or night if his master should be
at the point of death, so that I could intervene at once, scare
the Countess with a threat of affixing seals, and so secure the
counter-deed.

“I learned later on that the woman was studying the Code, with her
husband’s dying moans in her ears. If we could picture the thoughts of
those who stand about a deathbed, what fearful sights should we not see?
Money is always the motive-spring of the schemes elaborated, of all the
plans that are made and the plots that are woven about it! Let us leave
these details, nauseating in the nature of them; but perhaps they may
have given you some insight into all that this husband and wife endured;
perhaps too they may unveil much that is passing in secret in other
houses.

“For two months the Comte de Restaud lay on his bed, alone, and resigned
to his fate. Mortal disease was slowly sapping the strength of mind and
body. Unaccountable and grotesque sick fancies preyed upon him; he would
not suffer them to set his room in order, no one could nurse him, he
would not even allow them to make his bed. All his surroundings bore the
marks of this last degree of apathy, the furniture was out of place, the
daintiest trifles were covered with dust and cobwebs. In health he had
been a man of refined and expensive tastes, now he positively delighted
in the comfortless look of the room. A host of objects required in
illness--rows of medicine bottles, empty and full, most of them dirty,
crumpled linen, and broken plates, littered the writing-table, chairs,
and chimney-piece. An open warming-pan lay on the floor before the
grate; a bath, still full of mineral water had not been taken away. The
sense of coming dissolution pervaded all the details of an unsightly
chaos. Signs of death appeared in things inanimate before the Destroyer
came to the body on the bed. The Comte de Restaud could not bear the
daylight, the Venetian shutters were closed, darkness deepened the gloom
in the dismal chamber. The sick man himself had wasted greatly. All the
life in him seemed to have taken refuge in the still brilliant eyes. The
livid whiteness of his face was something horrible to see, enhanced as
it was by the long dank locks of hair that straggled along his cheeks,
for he would never suffer them to cut it. He looked like some religious
fanatic in the desert. Mental suffering was extinguishing all human
instincts in this man of scarce fifty years of age, whom all Paris had
known as so brilliant and so successful.

“One morning at the beginning of December 1824, he looked up at Ernest,
who sat at the foot of his bed gazing at his father with wistful eyes.

“‘Are you in pain?’ the little Vicomte asked.

“‘No,’ said the Count, with a ghastly smile, ‘it all lies _here and
about my heart_!’

“He pointed to his forehead, and then laid his wasted fingers on his
hollow chest. Ernest began to cry at the sight.

“‘How is it that M. Derville does not come to me?’ the Count asked his
servant (he thought that Maurice was really attached to him, but the man
was entirely in the Countess’ interest)--‘What! Maurice!’ and the dying
man suddenly sat upright in his bed, and seemed to recover all his
presence of mind, ‘I have sent for my attorney seven or eight times
during the last fortnight, and he does not come!’ he cried. ‘Do you
imagine that I am to be trifled with? Go for him, at once, this very
instant, and bring him back with you. If you do not carry out my orders,
I shall get up and go myself.’

“‘Madame,’ said the man as he came into the salon, ‘you heard M. le
Comte; what ought I to do?’

“‘Pretend to go to the attorney, and when you come back tell your
master that his man of business is forty leagues away from Paris on
an important lawsuit. Say that he is expected back at the end of the
week.--Sick people never know how ill they are,’ thought the Countess;
‘he will wait till the man comes home.’

“The doctor had said on the previous evening that the Count could
scarcely live through the day. When the servant came back two hours
later to give that hopeless answer, the dying man seemed to be greatly
agitated.

“‘Oh God!’ he cried again and again, ‘I put my trust in none but Thee.’

“For a long while he lay and gazed at his son, and spoke in a feeble
voice at last.

“‘Ernest, my boy, you are very young; but you have a good heart; you can
understand, no doubt, that a promise given to a dying man is sacred;
a promise to a father... Do you feel that you can be trusted with a
secret, and keep it so well and so closely that even your mother herself
shall not know that you have a secret to keep? There is no one else in
this house whom I can trust to-day. You will not betray my trust, will
you?’

“‘No, father.’

“‘Very well, then, Ernest, in a minute or two I will give you a sealed
packet that belongs to M. Derville; you must take such care of it that
no one can know that you have it; then you must slip out of the house
and put the letter into the post-box at the corner.’

“‘Yes, father.’

“‘Can I depend upon you?’

“‘Yes, father.’

“‘Come and kiss me. You have made death less bitter to me, dear boy.
In six or seven years’ time you will understand the importance of
this secret, and you will be well rewarded then for your quickness and
obedience, you will know then how much I love you. Leave me alone for a
minute, and let no one--no matter whom--come in meanwhile.’

“Ernest went out and saw his mother standing in the next room.

“‘Ernest,’ said she, ‘come here.’

“She sat down, drew her son to her knees, and clasped him in her arms,
and held him tightly to her heart.

“‘Ernest, your father said something to you just now.’

“‘Yes, mamma.’

“‘What did he say?’

“‘I cannot repeat it, mamma.’

“‘Oh, my dear child!’ cried the Countess, kissing him in rapture. ‘You
have kept your secret; how glad that makes me! Never tell a lie; never
fail to keep your word--those are two principles which should never be
forgotten.’

“‘Oh! mamma, how beautiful you are! _You_ have never told a lie, I am
quite sure.’

“‘Once or twice, Ernest dear, I have lied. Yes, and I have not kept my
word under circumstances which speak louder than all precepts. Listen,
my Ernest, you are big enough and intelligent enough to see that your
father drives me away, and will not allow me to nurse him, and this is
not natural, for you know how much I love him.’

“‘Yes, mamma.’

“The Countess began to cry. ‘Poor child!’ she said, ‘this misfortune
is the result of treacherous insinuations. Wicked people have tried to
separate me from your father to satisfy their greed. They mean to take
all our money from us and to keep it for themselves. If your father were
well, the division between us would soon be over; he would listen to
me; he is loving and kind; he would see his mistake. But now his mind is
affected, and his prejudices against me have become a fixed idea, a
sort of mania with him. It is one result of his illness. Your father’s
fondness for you is another proof that his mind is deranged. Until
he fell ill you never noticed that he loved you more than Pauline and
Georges. It is all caprice with him now. In his affection for you he
might take it into his head to tell you to do things for him. If you do
not want to ruin us all, my darling, and to see your mother begging her
bread like a pauper woman, you must tell her everything----’

“‘Ah!’ cried the Count. He had opened the door and stood there, a
sudden, half-naked apparition, almost as thin and fleshless as a
skeleton.

“His smothered cry produced a terrible effect upon the Countess; she
sat motionless, as if a sudden stupor had seized her. Her husband was as
white and wasted as if he had risen out of his grave.

“‘You have filled my life to the full with trouble, and now you are
trying to vex my deathbed, to warp my boy’s mind, and make a depraved
man of him!’ he cried, hoarsely.

“The Countess flung herself at his feet. His face, working with the last
emotions of life, was almost hideous to see.

“‘Mercy! mercy!’ she cried aloud, shedding a torrent of tears.

“‘Have you shown me any pity?’ he asked. ‘I allowed you to squander your
own money, and now do you mean to squander my fortune, too, and ruin my
son?’

“‘Ah! well, yes, have no pity for me, be merciless to me!’ she cried.
‘But the children? Condemn your widow to live in a convent; I will obey
you; I will do anything, anything that you bid me, to expiate the wrong
I have done you, if that so the children may be happy! The children! Oh,
the children!’

“‘I have only one child,’ said the Count, stretching out a wasted arm,
in his despair, towards his son.

“‘Pardon a penitent woman, a penitent woman!...’ wailed the Countess,
her arms about her husband’s damp feet. She could not speak for sobbing;
vague, incoherent sounds broke from her parched throat.

“‘You dare to talk of penitence after all that you said to Ernest!’
exclaimed the dying man, shaking off the Countess, who lay groveling
over his feet.--‘You turn me to ice!’ he added, and there was something
appalling in the indifference with which he uttered the words. ‘You
have been a bad daughter; you have been a bad wife; you will be a bad
mother.’

“The wretched woman fainted away. The dying man reached his bed and lay
down again, and a few hours later sank into unconsciousness. The priests
came and administered the sacraments.

“At midnight he died; the scene that morning had exhausted his remaining
strength, and on the stroke of midnight I arrived with Daddy Gobseck.
The house was in confusion, and under cover of it we walked up into the
little salon adjoining the death-chamber. The three children were there
in tears, with two priests, who had come to watch with the dead. Ernest
came over to me, and said that his mother desired to be alone in the
Count’s room.

“‘Do not go in,’ he said; and I admired the child for his tone and
gesture; ‘she is praying there.’

“Gobseck began to laugh that soundless laugh of his, but I felt too much
touched by the feeling in Ernest’s little face to join in the miser’s
sardonic amusement. When Ernest saw that we moved towards the door,
he planted himself in front of it, crying out, ‘Mamma, here are some
gentlemen in black who want to see you!’

“Gobseck lifted Ernest out of the way as if the child had been a
feather, and opened the door.

“What a scene it was that met our eyes! The room was in frightful
disorder; clothes and papers and rags lay tossed about in a confusion
horrible to see in the presence of Death; and there, in the midst, stood
the Countess in disheveled despair, unable to utter a word, her eyes
glittering. The Count had scarcely breathed his last before his wife
came in and forced open the drawers and the desk; the carpet was strewn
with litter, some of the furniture and boxes were broken, the signs of
violence could be seen everywhere. But if her search had at first proved
fruitless, there was that in her excitement and attitude which led me to
believe that she had found the mysterious documents at last. I glanced
at the bed, and professional instinct told me all that had happened. The
mattress had been flung contemptuously down by the bedside, and across
it, face downwards, lay the body of the Count, like one of the paper
envelopes that strewed the carpet--he too was nothing now but an
envelope. There was something grotesquely horrible in the attitude of
the stiffening rigid limbs.

“The dying man must have hidden the counter-deed under his pillow to
keep it safe so long as life should last; and his wife must have guessed
his thought; indeed, it might be read plainly in his last dying gesture,
in the convulsive clutch of his claw-like hands. The pillow had been
flung to the floor at the foot of the bed; I could see the print of
her heel upon it. At her feet lay a paper with the Count’s arms on the
seals; I snatched it up, and saw that it was addressed to me. I looked
steadily at the Countess with the pitiless clear-sightedness of an
examining magistrate confronting a guilty creature. The contents were
blazing in the grate; she had flung them on the fire at the sound of our
approach, imagining, from a first hasty glance at the provisions which
I had suggested for her children, that she was destroying a will which
disinherited them. A tormented conscience and involuntary horror of the
deed which she had done had taken away all power of reflection. She had
been caught in the act, and possibly the scaffold was rising before her
eyes, and she already felt the felon’s branding iron.

“There she stood gasping for breath, waiting for us to speak, staring at
us with haggard eyes.

“I went across to the grate and pulled out an unburned fragment. ‘Ah,
madame!’ I exclaimed, ‘you have ruined your children! Those papers were
their titles to their property.’

“Her mouth twitched, she looked as if she were threatened by a paralytic
seizure.

“‘Eh! eh!’ cried Gobseck; the harsh, shrill tone grated upon our ears
like the sound of a brass candlestick scratching a marble surface.

“There was a pause, then the old man turned to me and said quietly:

“‘Do you intend Mme. la Comtesse to suppose that I am not the rightful
owner of the property sold to me by her late husband? This house belongs
to me now.’

“A sudden blow on the head from a bludgeon would have given me less pain
and astonishment. The Countess saw the look of hesitation in my face.

“‘Monsieur,’ she cried, ‘Monsieur!’ She could find no other words.

“‘You are a trustee, are you not?’ I asked.

“‘That is possible.’

“‘Then do you mean to take advantage of this crime of hers?’

“‘Precisely.’

“I went at that, leaving the Countess sitting by her husband’s bedside,
shedding hot tears. Gobseck followed me. Outside in the street I
separated from him, but he came after me, flung me one of those
searching glances with which he probed men’s minds, and said in the
husky flute-tones, pitched in a shriller key:

“‘Do you take it upon yourself to judge me?’”


“From that time forward we saw little of each other. Gobseck let the
Count’s mansion on lease; he spent the summers on the country estates.
He was a lord of the manor in earnest, putting up farm buildings,
repairing mills and roadways, and planting timber. I came across him one
day in a walk in the Jardin des Tuileries.

“‘The Countess is behaving like a heroine,’ said I; ‘she gives herself
up entirely to the children’s education; she is giving them a perfect
bringing up. The oldest boy is a charming young fellow----’

“‘That is possible.’

“‘But ought you not to help Ernest?’ I suggested.

“‘Help him!’ cried Gobseck. ‘Not I. Adversity is the greatest of all
teachers; adversity teaches us to know the value of money and the worth
of men and women. Let him set sail on the seas of Paris; when he is a
qualified pilot, we will give him a ship to steer.’

“I left him without seeking to explain the meaning of his words.

“M. de Restaud’s mother has prejudiced him against me, and he is very
far from taking me as his legal adviser; still, I went to see Gobseck
last week to tell him about Ernest’s love for Mlle. Camille, and pressed
him to carry out his contract, since that young Restaud is just of age.

“I found the old bill-discounter had been kept to his bed for a long
time by the complaint of which he was to die. He put me off, saying that
he would give the matter his attention when he could get up again and
see after his business; his idea being no doubt that he would not give
up any of his possessions so long as the breath was in him; no other
reason could be found for his shuffling answer. He seemed to me to be
much worse than he at all suspected. I stayed with him long enough to
discern the progress of a passion which age had converted into a sort of
craze. He wanted to be alone in the house, and had taken the rooms one
by one as they fell vacant. In his own room he had changed nothing;
the furniture which I knew so well sixteen years ago looked the same as
ever; it might have been kept under a glass case. Gobseck’s faithful old
portress, with her husband, a pensioner, who sat in the entry while
she was upstairs, was still his housekeeper and charwoman, and now in
addition his sick-nurse. In spite of his feebleness, Gobseck saw his
clients himself as heretofore, and received sums of money; his affairs
had been so simplified, that he only needed to send his pensioner out
now and again on an errand, and could carry on business in his bed.

“After the treaty, by which France recognized the Haytian Republic,
Gobseck was one of the members of the commission appointed to liquidate
claims and assess repayments due by Hayti; his special knowledge of old
fortunes in San Domingo, and the planters and their heirs and assigns
to whom the indemnities were due, had led to his nomination. Gobseck’s
peculiar genius had then devised an agency for discounting the planters’
claims on the government. The business was carried on under the names
of Werbrust and Gigonnet, with whom he shared the spoil without
disbursements, for his knowledge was accepted instead of capital. The
agency was a sort of distillery, in which money was extracted from
doubtful claims, and the claims of those who knew no better, or had no
confidence in the government. As a liquidator, Gobseck could make terms
with the large landed proprietors; and these, either to gain a higher
percentage of their claims, or to ensure prompt settlements, would send
him presents in proportion to their means. In this way presents came to
be a kind of percentage upon sums too large to pass through his control,
while the agency bought up cheaply the small and dubious claims, or the
claims of those persons who preferred a little ready money to a deferred
and somewhat hazy repayment by the Republic. Gobseck was the insatiable
boa constrictor of the great business. Every morning he received his
tribute, eyeing it like a Nabob’s prime minister, as he considers
whether he will sign a pardon. Gobseck would take anything, from the
present of game sent him by some poor devil or the pound’s weight of wax
candles from devout folk, to the rich man’s plate and the speculator’s
gold snuff-box. Nobody knew what became of the presents sent to the old
money-lender. Everything went in, but nothing came out.

“‘On the word of an honest woman,’ said the portress, an old
acquaintance of mine, ‘I believe he swallows it all and is none the
fatter for it; he is as thin and dried up as the cuckoo in the clock.’

“At length, last Monday, Gobseck sent his pensioner for me. The man came
up to my private office.

“‘Be quick and come, M. Derville,’ said he, ‘the governor is just
going to hand in his checks; he has grown as yellow as a lemon; he is
fidgeting to speak with you; death has fair hold of him; the rattle is
working in his throat.’

“When I entered Gobseck’s room, I found the dying man kneeling before
the grate. If there was no fire on the hearth, there was at any rate
a monstrous heap of ashes. He had dragged himself out of bed, but his
strength had failed him, and he could neither go back nor find the voice
to complain.

“‘You felt cold, old friend,’ I said, as I helped him back to his bed;
‘how can you do without a fire?’

“‘I am not cold at all,’ he said. ‘No fire here! no fire! I am going, I
know not where, lad,’ he went on, glancing at me with blank, lightless
eyes, ‘but I am going away from this.--I have _carpology_,’ said he
(the use of the technical term showing how clear and accurate his mental
processes were even now). ‘I thought the room was full of live gold, and
I got up to catch some of it.--To whom will all mine go, I wonder?
Not to the crown; I have left a will, look for it, Grotius. _La belle
Hollandaise_ had a daughter; I once saw the girl somewhere or other, in
the Rue Vivienne, one evening. They call her “_La Torpille_,” I believe;
she is as pretty as pretty can be; look her up, Grotius. You are my
executor; take what you like; help yourself. There are Strasburg pies,
there, and bags of coffee, and sugar, and gold spoons. Give the Odiot
service to your wife. But who is to have the diamonds? Are you going
to take them, lad? There is snuff too--sell it at Hamburg, tobaccos are
worth half as much again at Hamburg. All sorts of things I have in fact,
and now I must go and leave them all.--Come, Papa Gobseck, no weakness,
be yourself!’

“He raised himself in bed, the lines of his face standing out as
sharply against the pillow as if the profile had been cast in bronze; he
stretched out a lean arm and bony hand along the coverlet and clutched
it, as if so he would fain keep his hold on life, then he gazed hard at
the grate, cold as his own metallic eyes, and died in full consciousness
of death. To us--the portress, the old pensioner, and myself--he looked
like one of the old Romans standing behind the Consuls in Lethiere’s
picture of the _Death of the Sons of Brutus_.

“‘He was a good-plucked one, the old Lascar!’ said the pensioner in his
soldierly fashion.

“But as for me, the dying man’s fantastical enumeration of his riches
still sounding in my ears, and my eyes, following the direction of his,
rested on that heap of ashes. It struck me that it was very large. I
took the tongs, and as soon as I stirred the cinders, I felt the metal
underneath, a mass of gold and silver coins, receipts taken during his
illness, doubtless, after he grew too feeble to lock the money up, and
could trust no one to take it to the bank for him.

“‘Run for the justice of the peace,’ said I, turning to the old
pensioner, ‘so that everything can be sealed here at once.’

“Gobseck’s last words and the old portress’ remarks had struck me.
I took the keys of the rooms on the first and second floor to make a
visitation. The first door that I opened revealed the meaning of the
phrases which I took for mad ravings; and I saw the length to which
covetousness goes when it survives only as an illogical instinct, the
last stage of greed of which you find so many examples among misers in
country towns.

“In the room next to the one in which Gobseck had died, a quantity of
eatables of all kinds were stored--putrid pies, mouldy fish, nay, even
shell-fish, the stench almost choked me. Maggots and insects swarmed.
These comparatively recent presents were put down, pell-mell, among
chests of tea, bags of coffee, and packing-cases of every shape. A
silver soup tureen on the chimney-piece was full of advices of the
arrival of goods consigned to his order at Havre, bales of cotton,
hogsheads of sugar, barrels of rum, coffees, indigo, tobaccos, a perfect
bazaar of colonial produce. The room itself was crammed with furniture,
and silver-plate, and lamps, and vases, and pictures; there were books,
and curiosities, and fine engravings lying rolled up, unframed. Perhaps
these were not all presents, and some part of this vast quantity of
stuff had been deposited with him in the shape of pledges, and had been
left on his hands in default of payment. I noticed jewel-cases, with
ciphers and armorial bearings stamped upon them, and sets of fine
table-linen, and weapons of price; but none of the things were docketed.
I opened a book which seemed to be misplaced, and found a thousand-franc
note in it. I promised myself that I would go through everything
thoroughly; I would try the ceilings, and floors, and walls, and
cornices to discover all the gold, hoarded with such passionate greed
by a Dutch miser worthy of a Rembrandt’s brush. In all the course of
my professional career I have never seen such impressive signs of the
eccentricity of avarice.

“I went back to his room, and found an explanation of this chaos
and accumulation of riches in a pile of letters lying under the
paper-weights on his desk--Gobseck’s correspondence with the various
dealers to whom doubtless he usually sold his presents. These persons
had, perhaps, fallen victims to Gobseck’s cleverness, or Gobseck may
have wanted fancy prices for his goods; at any rate, every bargain hung
in suspense. He had not disposed of the eatables to Chevet, because
Chevet would only take them of him at a loss of thirty per cent. Gobseck
haggled for a few francs between the prices, and while they wrangled the
goods became unsalable. Again, Gobseck had refused free delivery of
his silver-plate, and declined to guarantee the weights of his coffees.
There had been a dispute over each article, the first indication in
Gobseck of the childishness and incomprehensible obstinacy of age, a
condition of mind reached at last by all men in whom a strong passion
survives the intellect.

“I said to myself, as he had said, ‘To whom will all these riches go?’
... And then I think of the grotesque information he gave me as to the
present address of his heiress, I foresee that it will be my duty
to search all the houses of ill-fame in Paris to pour out an immense
fortune on some worthless jade. But, in the first place, know this--that
in a few days time Ernest de Restaud will come into a fortune to which
his title is unquestionable, a fortune which will put him in a position
to marry Mlle. Camille, even after adequate provision has been made for
his mother the Comtesse de Restaud and his sister and brother.”



ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

     Bidault (known as Gigonnet)
       The Government Clerks
       The Vendetta
       Cesar Birotteau
       The Firm of Nucingen
       A Daughter of Eve

     Derville
       A Start in Life
       The Gondreville Mystery
       Father Goriot
       Colonel Chabert
       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

     Derville, Madame
       Cesar Birotteau

     Gobseck, Jean-Esther Van
       Father Goriot
       Cesar Birotteau
       The Government Clerks
       The Unconscious Humorists

     Gobseck, Sarah Van
       Cesar Birotteau
       The Maranas
       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
       The Member for Arcis

     Gobseck, Esther Van
       The Firm of Nucingen
       A Bachelor’s Establishment
       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

     Grandlieu, Vicomtesse de
       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
       Colonel Chabert

     Grandlieu, Vicomte Juste de
       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

     Grandlieu, Vicomtesse Juste de
       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
       A Daughter of Eve

     Maurice (de Restaud’s valet)
       Father Goriot

     Palma (banker)
       The Firm of Nucingen
       Cesar Birotteau
       Lost Illusions
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       The Ball at Sceaux

     Restaud, Comte de
       Father Goriot

     Restaud, Comtesse Anastasie de
       Father Goriot

     Restaud, Ernest de
       The Member for Arcis

     Restaud, Madame Ernest de
       The Member for Arcis

     Restaud, Felix-Georges de
       The Member for Arcis

     Trailles, Comte Maxime de
       Cesar Birotteau
       Father Goriot
       Ursule Mirouet
       A Man of Business
       The Member for Arcis
       The Secrets of a Princess
       Cousin Betty
       The Member for Arcis
       Beatrix
       The Unconscious Humorists





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