II

Now, I will tell you about the beginnings of his fortune. In the

first place, honor to talent! Our friend is not a 'chap,' as Finot

describes him, but a gentleman in the English sense, who knows the

cards and knows the game; whom, moreover, the gallery respects.

Rastignac has quite as much intelligence as is needed at a given

moment, as if a soldier should make his courage payable at ninety

days' sight, with three witnesses and guarantees. He may seem

captious, wrong-headed, inconsequent, vacillating, and without any

fixed opinions; but let something serious turn up, some combination to

scheme out, he will not scatter himself like Blondet here, who chooses

these occasions to look at things from his neighbor's point of view.

Rastignac concentrates himself, pulls himself together, looks for the

point to carry by storm, and goes full tilt for it. He charges like a

Murat, breaks squares, pounds away at shareholders, promoters, and the

whole shop, and returns, when the breach is made, to his lazy,

careless life. Once more he becomes the man of the South, the man of

pleasure, the trifling, idle Rastignac. He has earned the right of

lying in bed till noon because a crisis never finds him asleep."

"So far so good, but just get to his fortune," said Finot.

"Bixiou will lash that off at a stroke," replied Blondet. "Rastignac's

fortune was Delphine de Nucingen, a remarkable woman; she combines

boldness with foresight."

"Did she ever lend you money?" inquired Bixiou. Everybody burst out

laughing.

"You are mistaken in her," said Couture, speaking to Blondet; "her

cleverness simply consists in making more or less piquant remarks, in

loving Rastignac with tedious fidelity, and obeying him blindly. She

is a regular Italian."

"Money apart," Andoche Finot put in sourly.

"Oh, come, come," said Bixiou coaxingly; "after what we have just been

saying, will you venture to blame poor Rastignac for living at the

expense of the firm of Nucingen, for being installed in furnished

rooms precisely as La Torpille was once installed by our friend des

Lupeaulx? You would sink to the vulgarity of the Rue Saint-Denis!

First of all, 'in the abstract,' as Royer-Collard says, the question

may abide the Kritik of Pure Reason; as for the impure reason"

"There he goes!" said Finot, turning to Blondet.

"But there is reason in what he says," exclaimed Blondet. "The problem

is a very old one; it was the grand secret of the famous duel between

La Chataigneraie and Jarnac. It was cast up to Jarnac that he was on

good terms with his mother-in-law, who, loving him only too well,

equipped him sumptuously. When a thing is so true, it ought not to be

said. Out of devotion to Henry II., who permitted himself this

slander, La Chataigneraie took it upon himself, and there followed the

duel which enriched the French language with the expression coup de

Jarnac."

"Oh! does it go so far back? Then it is noble?" said Finot.

"As a proprietor of newspapers and reviews of old standing, you are

not bound to know that," said Blondet.

"There are women," Bixiou gravely resumed, "and for that matter, men

too, who can cut their lives in two and give away but one-half.

(Remark how I word my phrase for you in humanitarian language.) For

these, all material interests lie without the range of sentiment. They

give their time, their life, their honor to a woman, and hold that

between themselves it is not the thing to meddle with bits of tissue

paper bearing the legend, 'Forgery is punishable with death.' And

equally they will take nothing from a woman. Yes, the whole thing is

debased if fusion of interests follows on fusion of souls. This is a

doctrine much preached, and very seldom practised."

"Oh, what rubbish!" cried Blondet. "The Marechal de Richelieu

understood something of gallantry, and he settled an allowance of a

thousand louis d'or on Mme. de la Popeliniere after that affair of the

hiding-place behind the hearth. Agnes Sorel, in all simplicity, took

her fortune to Charles VII., and the King accepted it. Jacques Coeur

kept the crown for France; he was allowed to do it, and woman-like,

France was ungrateful."

"Gentlemen," said Bixiou, "a love that does not imply an indissoluble

friendship, to my thinking, is momentary libertinage. What sort of

entire surrender is it that keeps something back? Between these two

diametrically opposed doctrines, the one as profoundly immoral as the

other, there is no possible compromise. It seems to me that any

shrinking from a complete union is surely due to a belief that the

union cannot last, and if so, farewell to illusion. The passion that

does not believe that it will last for ever is a hideous thing. (Here

is pure unadulterated Fenelon for you!) At the same time, those who

know the world, the observer, the man of the world, the wearers of

irreproachable gloves and ties, the men who do not blush to marry a

woman for her money, proclaim the necessity of a complete separation

of sentiment and interest. The other sort are lunatics that love and

imagine that they and the woman they love are the only two beings in

the world; for them millions are dirt; the glove or the camellia

flower that She wore is worth millions. If the squandered filthy lucre

is never to be found again in their possession, you find the remains

of floral relics hoarded in dainty cedar-wood boxes. They cannot

distinguish themselves one from the other; for them there is no 'I'

left. THOUthat is their Word made flesh. What can you do? Can you

stop the course of this 'hidden disease of the heart'? There are fools

that love without calculation and wise men that calculate while they

love."

"To my thinking Bixiou is sublime," cried Blondet. "What does Finot

say to it?"

"Anywhere else," said Finot, drawing himself up in his cravat,

"anywhere else, I should say, with the 'gentlemen'; but here, I

think"

"With the scoundrelly scapegraces with whom you have the honor to

associate?" said Bixiou.

"Upon my word, yes."

"And you?" asked Bixiou, turning to Couture.

"Stuff and nonsense!" cried Couture. "The woman that will not make a

stepping-stone of her body, that the man she singles out may reach his

goal, is a woman that has no heart except for her own purposes."

"And you, Blondet?"

"I do not preach, I practise."

"Very good," rejoined Bixiou in his most ironical tones. "Rastignac

was not of your way of thinking. To take without repaying is

detestable, and even rather bad form; but to take that you may render

a hundred-fold, like the Lord, is a chivalrous deed. This was

Rastignac's view. He felt profoundly humiliated by his community of

interests with Delphine de Nucingen; I can tell you that he regretted

it; I have seen him deploring his position with tears in his eyes.

Yes, he shed tears, he did indeedafter supper. Well, now to OUR way

of thinking"

"I say, you are laughing at us," said Finot.

"Not the least in the world. We were talking of Rastignac. From your

point of view his affliction would be a sign of his corruption; for by

that time he was not nearly so much in love with Delphine. What would

you have? he felt the prick in his heart, poor fellow. But he was a

man of noble descent and profound depravity, whereas we are virtuous

artists. So Rastignac meant to enrich Delphine; he was a poor man, she

a rich woman. Would you believe it?he succeeded. Rastignac, who

might have fought at need, like Jarnac, went over to the opinion of

Henri II. on the strength of his great maxim, 'There is no such thing

as absolute right; there are only circumstances.' This brings us to

the history of his fortune."

"You might just as well make a start with your story instead of

drawing us on to traduce ourselves," said Blondet with urbane good

humor.

"Aha! my boy," returned Bixiou, administering a little tap to the back

of Blondet's head, "you are making up for lost time over the

champagne!"

"Oh! by the sacred name of shareholder, get on with your story!" cried

Couture.

"I was within an ace of it," retorted Bixiou, "but you with your

profanity have brought me to the climax."

"Then, are there shareholders in the tale?" inquired Finot.

"Yes; rich as rich can belike yours."

"It seems to me," Finot began stiffly, "that some consideration is

owing to a good fellow to whom you look for a bill for five hundred

francs upon occasion"

"Waiter!" called Bixiou.

"What do you want with the waiter?" asked Blondet.

"I want five hundred francs to repay Finot, so that I can tear up my

I. O. U. and set my tongue free."

"Get on with your story," said Finot, making believe to laugh.

"I take you all to witness that I am not the property of this insolent

fellow, who fancies that my silence is worth no more than five hundred

francs. You will never be a minister if you cannot gauge people's

consciences. There, my good Finot," he added soothingly, "I will get

on with my story without personalities, and we shall be quits."

"Now," said Couture with a smile, "he will begin to prove for our

benefit that Nucingen made Rastignac's fortune."

"You are not so far out as you think," returned Bixiou. "You do not

know what Nucingen is, financially speaking."

"Do you know so much as a word as to his beginnings?" asked Blondet.

"I have only known him in his own house," said Bixiou, "but we may

have seen each other in the street in the old days."

"The prosperity of the firm of Nucingen is one of the most

extraordinary things seen in our days," began Blondet. "In 1804

Nucingen's name was scarcely known. At that time bankers would have

shuddered at the idea of three hundred thousand francs' worth of his

acceptances in the market. The great capitalist felt his inferiority.

How was he to get known? He suspended payment. Good! Every market rang

with a name hitherto only known in Strasbourg and the Quartier

Poissonniere. He issued deposit certificates to his creditors, and

resumed payment; forthwith people grew accustomed to his paper all

over France. Then an unheard-of-thing happenedhis paper revived, was

in demand, and rose in value. Nucingen's paper was much inquired for.

The year 1815 arrives, my banker calls in his capital, buys up

Government stock before the battle of Waterloo, suspends payment again

in the thick of the crisis, and meets his engagements with shares in

the Wortschin mines, which he himself issued at twenty per cent more

than he gave for them! Yes, gentlemen!He took a hundred and fifty

thousand bottles of champagne of Grandet to cover himself (forseeing

the failure of the virtuous parent of the present Comte d'Aubrion),

and as much Bordeaux wine of Duberghe at the same time. Those three

hundred thousand bottles which he took over (and took at thirty sous

apiece, my dear boy) he supplied at the price of six francs per bottle

to the Allies in the Palais Royal during the foreign occupation,

between 1817 and 1819. Nucingen's name and his paper acquired a

European celebrity. The illustrious Baron, so far from being engulfed

like others, rose the higher for calamities. Twice his arrangements

had paid holders of his paper uncommonly well; HE try to swindle them?

Impossible. He is supposed to be as honest a man as you will find.

When he suspends payment a third time, his paper will circulate in

Asia, Mexico, and Australia, among the aborigines. No one but Ouvrard

saw through this Alsacien banker, the son of some Jew or other

converted by ambition; Ouvrard said, 'When Nucingen lets gold go, you

may be sure that it is to catch diamonds.' "

"His crony, du Tillet, is just such another," said Finot. "And, mind

you, that of birth du Tillet has just precisely as much as is

necessary to exist; the chap had not a farthing in 1814, and you see

what he is now; and he has done something that none of us has managed

to do (I am not speaking of you, Couture), he has had friends instead

of enemies. In fact, he has kept his past life so quiet, that unless

you rake the sewers you are not likely to find out that he was an

assistant in a perfumer's shop in the Rue Saint Honore, no further

back than 1814."

"Tut, tut, tut!" said Bixiou, "do not think of comparing Nucingen with

a little dabbler like du Tillet, a jackal that gets on in life through

his sense of smell. He scents a carcass by instinct, and comes in time

to get the best bone. Besides, just look at the two men. The one has a

sharp-pointed face like a cat, he is thin and lanky; the other is

cubical, fat, heavy as a sack, imperturbable as a diplomatist.

Nucingen has a thick, heavy hand, and lynx eyes that never light up;

his depths are not in front, but behind; he is inscrutable, you never

see what he is making for. Whereas du Tillet's cunning, as Napoleon

said to somebody (I have forgotten the name), is like cotton spun too

fine, it breaks."

"I do not myself see that Nucingen has any advantage over du Tillet,"

said Blondet, "unless it is that he has the sense to see that a

capitalist ought not to rise higher than a baron's rank, while du

Tillet has a mind to be an Italian count."

"Blondetone word, my boy," put in Couture. "In the first place,

Nucingen dared to say that honesty is simply a question of

appearances; and secondly, to know him well you must be in business

yourself. With him banking is but a single department, and a very

small one; he holds Government contracts for wines, wools, indigoes

anything, in short, on which any profit can be made. He has an all-

round genius. The elephant of finance would contract to deliver votes

on a division, or the Greeks to the Turks. For him business means the

sum-total of varieties; as Cousin would say, the unity of specialties.

Looked at in this way, banking becomes a kind of statecraft in itself,

requiring a powerful head; and a man thoroughly tempered is drawn on

to set himself above the laws of a morality that cramps him."

"Right, my son," said Blondet; "but we, and we alone, can comprehend

that this means bringing war into the financial world. A banker is a

conquering general making sacrifices on a tremendous scale to gain

ends that no one perceives; his soldiers are private people's

interests. He has stratagems to plan out, partisans to bring into the

field, ambushes to set, towns to take. Most men of this stamp are so

close upon the borders of politics, that in the end they are drawn

into public life, and thereby lose their fortunes. The firm of Necker,

for instance, was ruined in this way; the famous Samuel Bernard was

all but ruined. Some great capitalist in every age makes a colossal

fortune, and leaves behind him neither fortune nor a family; there was

the firm of Paris Brothers, for instance, that helped to pull down

Law; there was Law himself (beside whom other promoters of companies

are but pigmies); there was Bouret and Beaujonnone of them left any

representative. Finance, like Time, devours its own children. If the

banker is to perpetuate himself, he must found a noble house, a

dynasty; like the Fuggers of Antwerp, that lent money to Charles V.

and were created Princes of Babenhausen, a family that exists at this

dayin the Almanach de Gotha. The instinct of self-preservation,

working it may be unconsciously, leads the banker to seek a title.

Jacques Coeur was the founder of the great noble house of Noirmoutier,

extinct in the reign of Louis XIII. What power that man had! He was

ruined for making a legitimate king; and he died, prince of an island

in the Archipelago, where he built a magnificent cathedral."

"Oh! you are giving us an historical lecture, we are wandering away

from the present, the crown has no right of conferring nobility, and

barons and counts are made with closed doors; more is the pity!" said

Finot.

"You regret the times of the savonnette a vilain, when you could buy

an office that ennobled?" asked Bixiou. "You are right. Je reviens a

nos moutons.Do you know Beaudenord? No? no? no? Ah, well! See how

all things pass away! Poor fellow, ten years ago he was the flower of

dandyism; and now, so thoroughly absorbed that you no more know him

than Finot just now knew the origin of the expression 'coup de

Jarnac'I repeat that simply for the sake of illustration, and not to

tease you, Finot. Well, it is a fact, he belonged to the Faubourg

Saint-Germain.

"Beaudenord is the first pigeon that I will bring on the scene. And,

in the first place, his name was Godefroid de Beaudenord; neither

Finot, nor Blondet, nor Couture, nor I am likely to undervalue such an

advantage as that! After a ball, when a score of pretty women stand

behooded waiting for their carriages, with their husbands and adorers

at their sides, Beaudenord could hear his people called without a pang

of mortification. In the second place, he rejoiced in the full

complement of limbs; he was whole and sound, had no mote in his eyes,

no false hair, no artificial calves; he was neither knock-kneed nor

bandy-legged, his dorsal column was straight, his waist slender, his

hands white and shapely. His hair was black; he was of a complexion

neither too pink, like a grocer's assistant, nor yet too brown, like a

Calabrese. Finally, and this is an essential point, Beaudenord was not

too handsome, like some of our friends that look rather too much of

professional beauties to be anything else; but no more of that; we

have said it, it is shocking! Well, he was a crack shot, and sat a

horse to admiration; he had fought a duel for a trifle, and had not

killed his man.

"If you wish to know in what pure, complete, and unadulterated

happiness consists in this Nineteenth Century in Paristhe happiness,

that is to say, of a young man of twenty-sixdo you realize that you

must enter into the infinitely small details of existence?

Beaudenord's bootmaker had precisely hit off his style of foot; he was

well shod; his tailor loved to clothe him. Godefroid neither rolled

his r's, nor lapsed into Normanisms nor Gascon; he spoke pure and

correct French, and tied his cravat correctly (like Finot). He had

neither father nor mothersuch luck had he!and his guardian was the

Marquis d'Aiglemont, his cousin by marriage. He could go among city

people as he chose, and the Faubourg Saint-Germain could make no

objection; for, fortunately, a young bachelor is allowed to make his

own pleasure his sole rule of life, he is at liberty to betake himself

wherever amusement is to be found, and to shun the gloomy places where

cares flourish and multiply. Finally, he had been vaccinated (you know

what I mean, Blondet).

"And yet, in spite of all these virtues," continued Bixiou, "he might

very well have been a very unhappy young man. Eh! eh! that word

happiness, unhappily, seems to us to mean something absolute, a

delusion which sets so many wiseacres inquiring what happiness is. A

very clever woman said that 'Happiness was where you chose to put

it.' "

"She formulated a dismal truth," said Blondet.

"And a moral," added Finot.

"Double distilled," said Blondet. "Happiness, like Good, like Evil, is

relative. Wherefore La Fontaine used to hope that in the course of

time the damned would feel as much at home in hell as a fish in

water."

"La Fontaine's sayings are known in Philistia!" put in Bixiou.

"Happiness at six-and-twenty in Paris is not the happiness of six-and-

twenty atsay Blois," continued Blondet, taking no notice of the

interruption. "And those that proceed from this text to rail at the

instability of opinion are either knaves or fools for their pains.

Modern medicine, which passed (it is its fairest title to glory) from

a hypothetical to a positive science, through the influence of the

great analytical school of Paris, has proved beyond a doubt that a man

is periodically renewed throughout"

"New haft, new blade, like Jeannot's knife, and yet you think that he

is still the same man," broke in Bixiou. "So there are several

lozenges in the harlequin's coat that we call happiness; andwell,

there was neither hole nor stain in this Godefroid's costume. A young

man of six-and-twenty, who would be happy in love, who would be loved,

that is to say, not for his blossoming youth, nor for his wit, nor for

his figure, but spontaneously, and not even merely in return for his

own love; a young man, I say, who has found love in the abstract, to

quote Royer-Collard, might yet very possibly find never a farthing in

the purse which She, loving and beloved, embroidered for him; he might

owe rent to his landlord; he might be unable to pay the bootmaker

before mentioned; his very tailor, like France herself, might at last

show signs of disaffection. In short, he might have love and yet be

poor. And poverty spoils a young man's happiness, unless he holds our

transcendental views of the fusion of interests. I know nothing more

wearing than happiness within combined with adversity without. It is

as if you had one leg freezing in the draught from the door, and the

other half-roasted by a brazieras I have at this moment. I hope to

be understood. Comes there an echo from thy waistcoat-pocket, Blondet?

Between ourselves, let the heart alone, it spoils the intellect.

"Let us resume. Godefroid de Beaudenord was respected by his

tradespeople, for they were paid with tolerable regularity. The witty

woman before quotedI cannot give her name, for she is still living,

thanks to her want of heart"

"Who is this?"

"The Marquise d'Espard. She said that a young man ought to live on an

entresol; there should be no sign of domesticity about the place; no

cook, no kitchen, an old manservant to wait upon him, and no pretence

of permanence. In her opinion, any other sort of establishment is bad

form. Godefroid de Beaudenord, faithful to this programme, lodged on

an entresol on the Quai Malaquais; he had, however, been obliged to

have this much in common with married couples, he had put a bedstead

in his room, though for that matter it was so narrow that he seldom

slept in it. An Englishwoman might have visited his rooms and found

nothing 'improper' there. Finot, you have yet to learn the great law

of the 'Improper' that rules Britain. But, for the sake of the bond

between usthat bill for a thousand francsI will just give you some

idea of it. I have been in England myself.I will give him wit enough

for a couple of thousand," he added in an aside to Blondet.

"In England, Finot, you grow extremely intimate with a woman in the

course of an evening, at a ball or wherever it is; next day you meet

her in the street and look as though you knew her again'improper.'

At dinner you discover a delightful man beneath your left-hand

neighbor's dresscoat; a clever man; no high mightiness, no constraint,

nothing of an Englishman about him. In accordance with the tradition

of French breeding, so urbane, so gracious as they are, you address

your neighbor'improper.'At a ball you walk up to a pretty woman to

ask her to dance'improper.' You wax enthusiastic, you argue, laugh,

and give yourself out, you fling yourself heart and soul into the

conversation, you give expression to your real feelings, you play when

you are at the card-table, chat while you chat, eat while you eat

'improper! improper! improper!' Stendhal, one of the cleverest and

profoundest minds of the age, hit off the 'improper' excellently well

when he said that such-and-such a British peer did not dare to cross

his legs when he sat alone before his own hearth for fear of being

improper. An English gentlewoman, were she one of the rabid 'Saints'

that most straitest sect of Protestants that would leave their whole

family to starve if the said family did anything 'improper'may play

the deuce's own delight in her own bedroom, and need not be

'improper,' but she would look on herself as lost if she received a

visit from a man of her acquaintance in the aforesaid room. Thanks to

propriety, London and its inhabitants will be found petrified some of

these days."

"And to think that there are asses here in France that want to import

the solemn tomfoolery that the English keep up among themselves with

that admirable self-possession which you know!" added Blondet. "It is

enough to make any man shudder if he has seen the English at home, and

recollects the charming, gracious French manners. Sir Walter Scott was

afraid to paint women as they are for fear of being 'improper'; and at

the close of his life repented of the creation of the great character

of Effie in The Heart of Midlothian."

"Do you wish not to be 'improper' in England?" asked Bixiou,

addressing Finot.

"Well?"

"Go to the Tuileries and look at a figure there, something like a

fireman carved in marble ('Themistocles,' the statuary calls it), try

to walk like the Commandant's statue, and you will never be

'improper.' It was through strict observance of the great law of the

IMproper that Godefroid's happiness became complete. There is the

story:

"Beaudenord had a tiger, not a 'groom,' as they write that know

nothing of society. The tiger, a diminutive Irish page called Paddy,

Toby, Joby (which you please), was three feet in height by twenty

inches in breadth, a weasel-faced infant, with nerves of steel

tempered in fire-water, and agile as a squirrel. He drove a landau

with a skill never yet at fault in London or Paris. He had a lizard's

eye, as sharp as my own, and he could mount a horse like the elder

Franconi. With the rosy cheeks and yellow hair of one of Rubens'

Madonnas he was double-faced as a prince, and as knowing as an old

attorney; in short, at the age of ten he was nothing more nor less

than a blossom of depravity, gambling and swearing, partial to jam and

punch, pert as a feuilleton, impudent and light-fingered as any Paris

street-arab. He had been a source of honor and profit to a well-known

English lord, for whom he had already won seven hundred thousand

francs on the race-course. The aforesaid nobleman set no small store

on Toby. His tiger was a curiosity, the very smallest tiger in town.

Perched aloft on the back of a thoroughbred, Joby looked like a hawk.

Yetthe great man dismissed him. Not for greediness, not for

dishonesty, nor murder, nor rudeness to my lady, nor for cutting holes

in my lady's own woman's pockets, nor because he had been 'got at' by

some of his master's rivals on the turf, nor for playing games of a

Sunday, nor for bad behavior of any sort or description. Toby might

have done all these things, he might even have spoken to milord before

milord spoke to him, and his noble master might, perhaps, have

pardoned that breach of the law domestic. Milord would have put up

with a good deal from Toby; he was very fond of him. Toby could drive

a tandem dog-cart, riding on the wheeler, postilion fashion; his legs

did not reach the shafts, he looked in fact very much like one of the

cherub heads circling about the Eternal Father in old Italian

pictures. But an English journalist wrote a delicious description of

the little angel, in the course of which he said that Paddy was quite

too pretty for a tiger; in fact, he offered to bet that Paddy was a

tame tigress. The description, on the heads of it, was calculated to

poison minds and end in something 'improper.' And the superlative of

'improper' is the way to the gallows. Milord's circumspection was

highly approved by my lady.

"But poor Toby, now that his precise position in insular zoology had

been called in question, found himself hopelessly out of place. At

that time Godefroid had blossomed out at the French Embassy in London,

where he learned the adventures of Toby, Joby, Paddy. Godefroid found

the infant weeping over a pot of jam (he had already lost the guineas

with which milord gilded his misfortune). Godefroid took possession of

him; and so it fell out that on his return among us he brought back

with him the sweetest thing in tigers from England. He was known by

his tigeras Couture is known by his waistcoatsand found no

difficulty in entering the fraternity of the club yclept to-day the

Grammont. He had renounced the diplomatic career; he ceased

accordingly to alarm the susceptibilites of the ambitious; and as he

had no very dangerous amount of intellect, he was well looked upon

everywhere.

"Some of us would feel mortified if we saw only smiling faces wherever

we went; we enjoy the sour contortions of envy. Godefroid did not like

to be disliked. Every one has his taste. Now for the solid, practical

aspects of life!